B-Side Guys

Highway 55 stretches between Boise and McCall like a prayer repeated until it becomes truth. Erin Hall’s “Lullaby of 55” transforms this familiar Idaho route into something more than asphalt and mile markers—it becomes the physical manifestation of love between father and daughter, the road that leads both toward and away from home.

Hall composed this track as an actual lullaby for her father Richard during his final days battling pancreatic cancer, when their family cabin at Jug Mountain Ranch represented his only necessary destination. The song carries the weight of that original purpose, moving with the gentle persistence of someone trying to ease another’s passage into sleep. Her cello work, supported by sister Tara and husband Gabe Shuford’s guitar alongside Dave Manion’s pedal steel, creates sonic landscape that mirrors the geographical one she’s describing.

Producer Steve Fulton, an Idaho music mainstay, captures the recording’s intimate scale at Boise’s Audiolab while maintaining the expansive feeling of open road travel. The arrangement never rushes, understanding that lullabies require patience. Pedal steel adds the kind of emotional resonance that country music has long associated with both journeys and farewells, while Hall’s vocals maintain the tenderness of someone singing bedside rather than performing for an audience.

What elevates “Lullaby of 55” beyond personal memorial is how Hall transforms specific geography into universal experience. The drive from Boise to McCall becomes any journey toward peace, any route that families travel together until they can’t. Her father’s legacy in the Boise music community—concerts with Kevin Kirk that raised $40,000 for St. Luke’s Oncology Unit, later fundraising for First Responders—provides context for understanding music as community service rather than individual expression.

The track arrives during Father’s Day season with perfect timing, offering space for anyone navigating paternal loss or celebrating continuing relationships. Hall has created something both deeply personal and widely accessible, proving that the most effective tributes often work through specificity rather than generalization. Here, one Idaho highway becomes every path toward healing.