Fly Solo, Fly Free — An adult woman pilots a small sailplane above sunlit Central California mountains, fields and coast beside a soaring eagle

The songbook

Fly Solo, Fly Free

Words by Douglas Heyes Jr. Listen to the recorded versions and follow the lyric below.

Original Doug Heyes lyrics · AI-generated music & vocals

A son addresses his father across memories of California mountains, music, family fracture and hard-won survival. Affection sits alongside anger and inherited hurt, but the father's voice and creative tradition live on in the son's work. Their separate paths remain joined by love, remembrance and the freedom to keep moving.

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Recorded versions

5 recordings. Different voices and arrangements bring another side of the song into the light.

Lyrics

Fly Solo, Fly Free

Words by Douglas Heyes Jr

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Fly Solo, Fly Free

Fly Solo, Fly Free
Across the open distance
Between you and me
It comes up from the mountains
And and it sets behind the sea
The sun is here to light our way
Through all eternity

You were like the Sun to me
At morning’s rise and shine
A golden ray to light the way
Until the end of time
Somewhere we lost the meaning
Of our rhythm and our rhyme
When our lights went off again
We never saw the sign

When you fell off the mountain
You didn’t mean no harm
Your booming laugh a phonograph
Black vinyl, that’s your charm
The ladies were all over you
When the old boys looked at me
We told them all the same thing
We fly solo, we fly free

So if there is a message
Somewhere in this song
How something completely right
Can go completely wrong
Alll we ever wanted
Was to sing another song
Or write another lyric
Or right another wrong

CHORUS:
FLY SOLO, FLY FREE
ACROSS THE OPEN DISTANCE
BETWEEN YOU AND ME
FLY SOLO, FLY FREE
SOMEWHERE IN CALIFORNIA
WHERE THE MOUNTAINS MEET THE SEA
YES, SOMEHOW WE DID SURVIVE
A BROKEN FAMILY
THAT’S WHY WE FLY SOLO
THAT’S WHY WE FLY FREE

Fly solo, fly free
From the mountain high above us
To the ever turning Sea
In everything I do
There is a part of you and me
That’s why we fly solo
That’s why we fly free

So Papa listen closely
Your voice now comes through me
We carry a tradition
Through all our family
Generations behind us
Deep in our family tree
I uphold tradition
That you passed along to me

Way up in the mountains
High Sierra trail
You made it to the fountains
I went off the rails
Somehow you were always there
In time to make my bail
That is why I love you
And why I'll never fail

Somewhere on the prairie
On the Oklahoma trail
The things they did to kids back then
Could land a man in jail with
With your anger and your rages
We turned a lot of pages
With the difference in our ages
We both heard the four winds wail

May those winds rise up to meet you
May you cast a long shadow
May the Sun be always at your back
Wherever you may go
As long as you shall follow
The way the four winds blow
You and I till it’s goodbye
Will fly free and we'll fly solo

CHORUS & OUT