May 12th, 2026

Written by River Epperson Photography by River Epperson and Regan Jones

On a warm Sunday in October, Katie Wheeler and I found ourselves on Chicago’s Lakefront Trail, deep in the midst of filming a music video for her debut single “Bruised Up.” In between takes, Katie, a close friend from college who’s better known to Chicago’s indie heads as “ktwheels”, begins to lay out her plans for her first-ever, completely self-made tour. Immediately, my mind begins to run a million miles a minute trying to concoct a reason why she should take me along, too. Much to my surprise, I don’t even have to ask. The next sentence out of her mouth is: “Would you be interested in coming with me?”

Six short months later, we are packing up our rental van on a Tuesday morning as we prepare to head to Detroit, our first stop on a journey that will take us all the way to New York City, and I am filled to the brim with excitement and anxiety. Excitement, because I still can’t quite believe this is happening and little old me gets to come along; nervousness because I feel as though I’ve jumped off the deep end, and the water is quickly rising above my head. This is my first tour, and some of the first shows I’ve ever photographed will be on the road. What if I can’t pull this off? What happens if I don’t take a single usable photo? What if I don’t get along with the rest of the band? A million questions flood through my mind, and there’s only one thing I know for certain: I am so honored to be here. This will be a learning experience no matter what, so I might as well buckle up for the ride and prepare to fail boldly.

My relationship with Katie goes way back, to the years before we moved to Chicago, to when we were schlepping it through the halls of the Lee Norvelle Theatre & Drama Center at Indiana University, in Bloomington, Indiana. Katie and I met in the university’s theatre program. We always ran in the same circles and knew the same people, but never quite closed the friendship gap. Truthfully, in theatre school, there isn’t the time to get to know all of your colleagues on a deep level: the 12+ hour days packed full of classes and production work barely leave you the time to shovel down food on your breaks. One cold January morning in 2023, however, everything changed. On the first Tuesday of the semester, I walked into my first class of the day, and Katie was there, sitting off to the side of the room. After lunch, I walked into my next class, and there she was again: we had unknowingly signed up for the same day of classes, and this fluke would end up changing my life in ways I could never dream of.

I am not the first writer to point out the humbling nature of a road trip through America’s interior, nor will I be the last, but I still feel compelled to do so. Words fail to capture the vastness of the sprawling landscapes and how the sights are so magnificent that they become almost incomprehensible. As the rolling hills of Pennsylvania stole my breath again and again, I found myself thinking, “How is it that we only left Chicago a few short days ago?”. At this point, a mere five-or-so days into our trip, we had already seen and experienced so much, our normal lives felt years away. In Washington D.C., crammed between strangers in the sold-out living room of what seems to be the biggest house I’ve ever seen, tears stream down my face. This is not the first time I find myself overcome with emotion during our week on the road, nor will it be my last. I can remember when Katie first started playing sets of her original music at outdoor craft fairs, where I was one of the only attendees truly watching. There is a special kind of joy out there, one that can only be obtained by being a spectator: the elation which comes with watching someone you love achieve the thing they are destined to do is almost indescribable, and it’s a contact high I could chase for the rest of my life. The world is falling apart in terrible ways that bring the rumbling in my brain to an unbearable cacophonous symphony, but right now, none of that matters because I’m watching my friends play one of the best shows of their lives. There is nowhere else I would rather be tonight, or any night. I could hang onto this moment forever.

So it is said that it is a certain kind of humbling to drive across America’s interior, and if that’s true, it is another kind of humbling altogether to do so as a musician. Art is a public good, after all. A painting has an owner, sure, but once it’s hung, its creator has no control over how it’s received. And if art is a public good, then music is its universal language. There is a song in everyone’s heart, no matter how small. A mother sings a lullaby as she rocks her baby to sleep. A child sings “Happy Birthday” while washing his hands, ensuring the hot water and soap have had enough time to cleanse them. A singer sings a song to a crowd, and the audience eats it up, or sings it right back, because they have heard the song enough times to attach a certain emotional significance to it, and the song has transformed itself into something entirely different. To be in a different city each night, sharing a common tongue with different groups of strangers each time, is an experience so breathtaking it can become overwhelming: these people could go to any bar in any city, yet they’ve chosen to share this experience with you. Music is one of humanity’s only common grounds. No matter who you are, or where you are, you’re basically guaranteed to have listened to a song on the radio, hummed a tune, or plunked something out on an instrument. As I stand behind the merch table each night, slinging t-shirts and CDs and exchanging contacts and anecdotes with people I will almost certainly never see again in this lifetime, I find myself thinking, “How on earth did I get so lucky?” I’ve stumbled upon an abundance of serendipity, and I never want to let it go.

When I think back on this experience, I don’t think about the incredulous amount of money I spent on photo gear and camera supplies, or the late nights that turned into early mornings as we traveled east. Instead, I think of the time we spent together: late-night grilled cheese and tomato soup as we celebrated a show well-played, an afternoon in a Pittsburgh brewery where the only things on the table were playing cards and enjoying each other’s company, and the hours spent in our rental van where our conversations never turned sour, and we shared an infinite amount of music amongst ourselves. We didn’t turn a profit, sure, and I ended up hundreds of dollars in the red, but none of that matters at all. We set out to share music with crowds of strangers across the country, and we did exactly that. “Don’t get caught up in who's at your show or how many people are there. Ignore the metrics of playing shows…” Katie tells me as we sit across from each other in a dive bar after we’ve returned to Chicago, “... and just enjoy the company of the people that you're with and the people that you get to play for.” As usual, she’s right on the money. In fifty years, no one will know if you made money off of the art you created; they’ll only care if you fulfilled yourself with creating it, and if it provides some sort of meaningful experience for them. Chase the creativity that fulfills you, and the rest will follow in due time.