When his mother became too old to live on her own, Hahn and his sister flew back to Detroit to help her empty out and sell the old house. While it had been years since Hahn had lived in Detroit, it was the closest place he had to a static point on a map that he could call home. In going back, he had to confront many lingering memories that he tried to convince himself were left in the past – difficult periods in his young life, the place where his dad had died when he was still a teen and just the general struggles of coming of age and coming to terms with finding a place in this difficult world. While he and his sister were busy clearing out the last vestiges of a physical home, Hahn was overcome by the underlying sense that this was a complete goodbye to his past and his roots. Detroit is not the type of city people generally imagine going back to for no reason, especially those living far away, and Hahn had resettled in the Southwest desert long ago.

After the house was sold and his mom got on a plane to start a new life living with his sister in Hawaii, Hahn loaded a few keepsakes in the old family station wagon and headed out alone on a 2000 mile cross country drive. He passed the cemetery where his father was laid to rest, a place now surrounded by abandoned houses. Once outside the city making his way through the back country, Hahn chose to only take two lane highways, passing through many small forgotten towns bypassed by the interstates. He spent days lost in the vastness of the rural countryside, the emptiness resonating with his own feelings of being a lone transient leaving his only home behind.

To distract himself, help put things in perspective, and document the trip, Hahn traveled with an inexpensive parlor guitar and a portable digital recorder so he could record songs along the way. His emotions would gel into proto-songs during the days as he drove and was often inspired by what he observed along the way – a lone tree standing strong against the ravages of time or a fleeting look of love exchanged between a young man and woman in a no-name town in the middle of nowhere. Hahn then arranged and put his songs to music when he stopped at anonymous motels for the night. Forever and Nowhere was written and recorded entirely over the course of four days and nights while on this road trip. In many cases, the songs were recorded in a single take while sitting on the edge of a motel bed with trucks roaring by outside. The end result is perhaps Hahn’s most sparse, emotionally raw, and introspective album to date.