Numbered in order of the states she set out to visit in succession between August 15 and October 13, this map of the United States, worn from use in a manner no other musician has ever even tried to achieve, tells the story of a 25-year-old Boston-born folk singer who set out to do what any novice traveler would say is absolutely crazy. And in doing this, she accomplished what many readers of the Guinness Book of World Records will shake their heads and ponder at for years to come.

But perhaps what makes Lis Harvey different is that she didn't sit around and carefully measure her fingernails, walk on hot coals, or see how long she could stand on her hand. She simply followed the lines on the map to the corresponding numbered states, combining the two things she loves the most ó traveling and playing music.

Having traveled frequently with her parents growing up, who as she describes thought nothing of taking a 6 hour road trip and often scheduled vacations to other parts of the world, Lis was already familiar with much of the landscape of the country before she set out on this most advantageous mission.

"I guess you can blame them for my roaming spirit," said Harvey in an interview after returning from the road yet again, less than two weeks after she had completed the tour. "And Oregon Trail. That probably remains the golden brick in the foundation of my career as a touring musician."

Considering the planning involved and the amount of traveling the adventure entailed, Harvey's tour quickly became the ultimate challenge for an Oregon Trail junky, a challenge no computer game could ever replicate.

"The most difficult part of it all was the fact that, in many cases, I only had one day to play a state," Harvey said. "For example, I could only play in Texas between my Oklahoma City and Colorado Springs dates - and that was a one-day window. Thus, I couldn't get down to Dallas or Austin or Houston, cities that are repleat with folk venues. Finding the Iron Horse Pub in Wichita Falls was just lucky... and even so, I had to leave immediately after that show to start the drive to Colorado, in order to make it on time."

And as the vastness of the Western states opened up, Harvey found herself traveling close to 700 miles from Helena, Montana to Laramie, Wyoming, catching a flat tire on the way.

"I made that show just in the nick of time, about 15 minutes before showtime," Harvey said, describing what would later prove to be her closest call of the tour.

In order to make the world record official, Harvey had to adhere to specific Guinness guidelines, which meant she needed another stack of papers in tow for club owners and concert promoters to document that each show was official. It also meant that Harvey's willingness to play "high schools, college campuses, sock hops or block parties" would have to be slightly altered. House shows were not counted toward the tally.

So instead of playing anywhere she could find a spot, Harvey had to systematically approach each state and often forgo various sightseeing rendezvous she normally would take. The car had to keep moving, Harvey looking to her numbered map and paging through her three ring binder of directions, contracts, and information on every show she was playing.

In between Harvey says it was just a matter of keeping herself awake (in one journal entry late in the tour, she estmiates that she almost fell asleep about "80 times") and heading in the right direction. National Public Radio quickly became a savior on the road, Harvey said, and also became the source of a dream come true before she pulled up in St. Paul, Minnesota to complete the tour.

"I have just experienced a dream come true," she wrote in her journal on October 11. "I was interviewed for NPR! Maybe it seems very simple and silly, but this is like IT for me. Just shoot me now. I will float away in a little puff of happy joy. Special and eternal thanks to the Public Library of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, for letting me use a spare phone in a quiet office for the call. Nice librarians! They are not so few and far between as we had feared."

Two days later, the media coverage continued as Harvey's story was picked up by the Associated Press and appeared on CNN.

"I never expected to be on CNN, even in the ticker-tape news bit that runs across the bottom of the screen," Harvey said, describing her "fifteen minutes" of fame that will carry on in the pages of the Guinness Book of World Records. "I think it was a great day for independent music and folk in general, when I made "national news." Anytime we hard-working independents, who are willfully not owned by Sony, Geffen, Virgin, etc. are acknowledged as legitimate participants in the entertainment world, it's a little step forward. A little chunk chipped away from the stagnant institution that is the music industry at large."

Still, aside from the benefit the tour has already had on her music career with her breaking into 24 states she had never once played, as she celebrated the completion of her feat before an enthusiastic St. Paul crowd, who as she explained in her journal entry had the fortune of watching her perform after 49 days of practice, Harvey quickly was able to reflect on so much more.

"I think the touring musician has a unique opportunity to learn the states and cities of this country on a personal, tangible level," Harvey said. "When you talk to me now about Arizona, or Utah - or even Alaska - I can feel those states and their geography with my memory. Actually driving the interstates that you trace with your finger on a road atlas is a very big, almost spiritual experience. It's larger than life. I can't exactly explain it, save to say that it changed the way I view the country, the world, and the earth as both a close-knit and vast community of individual landscapes and inhabitants."

The way Harvey now sees it, there are two kinds of towns ó ones that wave and ones that don't. And now that's she's traveled and played in all fifty states, she can make the proper notation on her road map, which towns are what, especially since there's a good chance she'll be back again visiting many of the places she first embarked on during this whirlwind tour.

And what about the lesson she's learned from it all?

"People want inspiration, and will take it generally however they can get it," she said. "It's our job as humans to provide inspiration to each other - whether we are politicians, musicians, carpenters, nurses, teachers, bus drivers. We've all got the power.

"Me, I strive to put myself out there - to prove to anyone who will listen that it's ok to be yourself, to go your own way, and to even look silly on the journey, if need be. Where, therefore, does my voice fit in? Kind of anywhere. Sort of everywhere. In the cracks between war protests, and movies about Columbine, and letters to senators, and speeches by police chiefs."

Still, Harvey isn't about to take herself too seriously. Reading her journal entries, which she has posted on her website, updating her fans each step of the way, it's quickly apparent that she has embraced that spirit of the humble and down-to-earth folk singer with a conscious approach.

"I try not to be precious about what it is that I do; in the grand scheme of things, I'm just a tiny cog in the effort toward change - or, rather, toward the acceptance of change," she explained. "But sure, every once in a while I get a little indignant about what is being ignored or neglected in our society, and out comes a Will Folk For Food Tour, my friend Sarah Pinsker and I, on the road, playing at colleges and coffeehouses to generate donations for and awareness of local domestic violence shelters."

As for what she has learned about herself after logging 20,000 plus miles on her car and spending two months being in a different place every single night, only once in a library in Boise, Idaho having no clue where she really was, Harvey said she has a long way to go still to find out.

"You'll have to ask me when I'm 89," she said