Todd DeFeo • Find a Way Home
Released in 1999.
- Walking in Paradise
- Running Home
- Good-Bye to Yesterday
- Jewel of the World
- Find a Way Home
All songs written by Todd DeFeo (ASCAP).
All tracks recorded live on WDUB-FM in Granville, Ohio.
The album was included on The Todd DeFeo Collection. This album was included on and replaced by Live for the Day.
Album Review
Find a Way Home (1999) reads like the document of a younger narrator standing at the edge between restlessness and belief, caught in motion yet still convinced that ahead lies a place worth reaching.
The album, driven by momentum and hope, opens with “Walking in Paradise,” which immediately establishes that paradox. The title suggests ease and beauty, but the lyrics are filled with loneliness, confusion, and emotional contradiction. Paradise here isn’t peace; it’s isolation.
That motion accelerates with “Running Home,” one of the album’s most kinetic tracks. Gambling imagery dominates — cards, dice, odds — framing love and life as risks worth taking, even when the outcome is unclear. The narrator is reckless, romantic, and self-aware just enough to know the stakes are real.
What makes the song compelling isn’t whether the gamble pays off, but that the act of choosing to play feels essential. “Running home” becomes less about geography than intent: a desire to head toward something meaningful, even if the path is uncertain.
With “Good‑Bye to Yesterday,” the album slows down and turns reflective. This song marks the first clear pivot from chasing experiences to examining them. The song’s lyrics revolve around time and reliving moments that have already slipped away, and are presented not as closure, but as a willingness to stop standing still long enough to move forward with intention.
“Jewel of the World” expands the album’s emotional scope outward. The narrator has seen countless places and faces, yet still feels unsatisfied, still searching. Travel and discovery are no longer glamorous; they blur together.
The “jewel” at the center of the song feels symbolic rather than literal — a person, a dream, or a sense of belonging that remains just out of reach. There’s longing here, but not regret. The road is still open, and even disappointment carries the promise of another attempt.
The album closes with “Find a Way Home,” which brings its emotional thesis into focus. Home isn’t framed as a fixed destination or a return to where things started. It’s something that must be discovered, chosen, and perhaps built from fragments along uncharted paths.
The song balances humility and resolve: the narrator has been lost, fallen, wandered, but remains standing. What matters isn’t getting everything right; it’s believing there is still a way forward.
Taken as a whole, Find a Way Home captures a moment in time when uncertainty feels energizing rather than exhausting.
The album leans into the hope that motion, belief, and connection can still align. It’s the sound of someone learning that the road ahead may be unclear, but trusting that moving forward is better than standing still, and that home, however defined, is worth finding.