From sadness to hope: The sober paradigm shift of Hand Drawn Maps

The two — who make up the band Hand Drawn Maps — had grown up together in the South Bay area of Los Angeles, bonded over music and family gatherings. So tight were their parents that the Baldwins and Crichtons took trips to Catalina together. They went camping together. And while the boys may have drifted apart, the parents stayed in touch, so Baldwin’s mother would pass along the stories of Crichton’s spiral into the abyss of addiction, and they were never good.

“He told me later that my mom would tell his mom, ‘Stewart’s messing up again. Stewart’s on skid row. Stewart’s homeless,’” Crichton told The Ties That Bind Usrecently. “He would listen and think, ‘Jesus Christ, why can’t he just get it together?’”

As 2013 dawned, however, the bad news stopped. Baldwin didn’t know it, but Crichton hit his bottom on Dec. 24 of the previous year, and as he slowly rebuilt a life in sobriety, the maternal reports about his childhood friend changed trajectory.

“He started hearing, ‘Stewart’s actually doing good! Stewart’s in treatment. Stewart’s doing music again,’” Crichton said. “He just remembers hearing through the grapevine that I was playing music in northeast Los Angeles, and from there, we were able to reconnect and start a friendship back up.”

It’s serendipitous, then, that there’s a hazy, dream-like quality to the indie rock of Hand Drawn Maps that echoes the blissful innocence of childhood, because while the two men are no longer kids, the music they make is rooted in a shared tie to that time in their lives, made a whole again thanks to Crichton’s sobriety.