Sam and Will Steffen dressed to the nines
Someone Else's Blues: A Podcast By Will Steffen

Someone Else's Blues is a podcast about the origins of Boise-based singer-songwriter, Sam Steffen.

If you don't know it already, Sam Steffen is an identical twin. In August of 2019, Sam married Jimil Ataman--who is also an identical twin. In part, this podcast is an attempt to explain what it is like to be a twin--a sibling relationship that can generate competition, contempt, collusion, or even co-dependence. But it is also an attempt to explain what it is like to watch your twin--my twin--experience something for once unsharable and deeply traumatic. It is an attempt to explain what I hear when I listen to my brother's music.

Someone Else's Blues is also an attempt to explain why I decided to embark on a bicycle trip half way across the country only two years after Sam attempted a cross-country bike trip, which ended tragically when one of his travelling companions, Bill Cranshaw, was struck by a car and killed outside of Searcy, Arkansas. This is the story of what happened on our respective bicycle trips. This is Someone Else's Blues.

Episode 1 - Someone Else's Shoes

Will tries to honor his brother with a toast at Sam's wedding, where Sam marries an identical twin. Will remembers being mistaken for his twin brother by a grieving mother.

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Episode 2 - Death Was Out Riding His Horse in the Desert

Two years after Bill's death, Will and Bob embark on an 1,100-mile bike tour from Massachusetts to Wisconsin.

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Episode 3 - Am I My Brother's Keeper?

Will and Bob arrive safely in Wisconsin. Sam writes a song about a strained relationship between two brothers, and Sam shares his bike journal with Will.

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Episode 4 - Better Sandy Than In Love With Someone Who Doesn't Love You Back

Hannah and Paul recount a terrifying ordeal from the second day of their bike trip with Sam and Bill.

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Episode 5 - The Lost Feather

Sam, Bill, Hannah, and Paul give a motivational speech to a group of students on their way across the Navajo Reservation. Sam, Paul, and Hannah also recount some of their more memorable hosts from the trip, and Bill has a terrifying encounter with a stranger at midnight.

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Episode 6 - I Think I'm Coming Down With Something Serious

Sam writes a song about Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, the book that Bill was reading on the trip.

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Episode 7 - Much Too Brave

Will revisits Sam's journal entry about the day Bill died. Sam, Hannah, and Paul remember their friend.

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