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I Sean Hurley ever writes a book, it should be called On the Road. Like Jack Kerouac's characters, the 26-yearold bassist for alterna-pop quartet Vertical Horizon knows the road.
Sean's first taste of touring came at age 16, during a summer with folk legend Arlo Guthrie. "He wanted me to stay, but I didn't want to quit high school-that would have been foolish." After snagging his diploma, Sean headed to Berklee, but after only one semester Arlo came calling again. So Sean decided to bag the whole formal education thing and hit the highway.
It turned out Hurley's two-year stint with Guthrie's sextet was an education in itself-especially when it came to honing his listening chops. "Arlo's body of work is big, and he'd start playing songs on stage that none of us had played before. I was serious about ear training, so I'd lay out for one chorus and listen, think I'm gonna get this, then dive in. I'd nail it-the songs were easy enough-but I'd look around and realize that only Arlo, the drummer, and I were playing."
After leaving Guthrie,...