Road trips and road songs

After traveling from the coasts of Maine to the deep south, along the Mississippi, to the northern plains and the western ones, through the heartland, and to the many landscapes that make up the American west, including the far western states of Hawaii and Alaska, we’ve come to the stopping place on the great American road trip series. At least for the time being.

More than a year ago, Vera Marie Badertscher of A Traveler's Library invited me to chime in with suggestions for music to go along as she took a virtual trip across the United States through books and film which inspire travel. 2018 update This is part of The Great American Road Trip, in which I originally partnered up with A Traveler’s Library to add musical ideas to the book and film suggestions for journeys through the regions of the United States which you’d find there. The Library is closed now, but I think you will still find the journeys through music interesting.

Along the music road, here are four which have been ones you have most enjoyed. They are among my favorites as well.

Road Trip Music : Oregon in which we meet a rancher who raises Christmas trees and cowboy songs, and an Oregon native who finds her inspiration in Scotland

Road Trip Music: Indiana where we learn of a songwriter who makes music connected to both land and spirit

Road Trip Music: Michigan in which we meet an Irish American songwriter whose music builds bridges between the two countries of her heritage.

Road Trip Music: northern California in which we meet a musician who has been a vital part of American folk music for decades, and is carrying it on

Thank you for coming along. There’s more ahead on music, creative practice, and especially the varied landscapes of folk, Americana, and Celtic music -- as well as ideas from other neighborhoods now and again.

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Top 5 Favorite Music Road Trips

The Great American Road Trip has been winding from the quiet villages of New England to the Blue Ridge in Virginia, from the muddy Mississippi up to the shores of Lake Michigan. Right now, we are in the northern plains of South Dakota. Here are my suggestions for a musical road trip in North Dakota and South Dakota.

It’s also time to take a look back at which of the road trip posts you’re enjoying the most.

Tops on the list, in terms of numbers of you reading, is Road Trip Music: Michigan, in which you learn about Irish American singer and songwriter Cathie Ryan.

You’re also liking the story of the beginning of the road trip idea at Great American Road Trip: Music begins.

The midwest is holding your attention, with
Road Trip Music: Ohio, which features Wilderness Plots, an album about the history of the Ohio Valley from five contemporary songwriters, and Road Trip Music: Indiana, a look at some fine songs from Indiana native Carrie Newcomer.

Road Trip Music in Alabama: bluegrass, faith, and architecture rounds out your top favorites. Claire Lynch and her album Whatcha Gonna Do was a choice for our soundtrack through the wiregrass and red clay hills of Alabam’.


Your choice of Alabama gives me the chance to send out our congratulations to Claire, who was recently named female vocalist of the year by the International Bluegrass Music Association. That’s the top award in bluegrass music. Well done and well deserved Claire!


you may also wish to see
Looking for music from Ireland, Scotland, and Cape Breton? It is here -- check around for articles on The Celtic Colours International Festival, Heidi Talbot’s new album The Last Star, and the debut album from rising Scottish instrumentalist Matheu Watson, and loads of great stuff in our archives. There’s more to come, and more travels on The Great American Road Trip as well. Texas, California, Alaska and all the other states in the American West lie ahead.

and more music from the road trip


This is part of The Great American Road Trip, in which I originally partnered up with A Traveler’s Library to add musical ideas to the book and film suggestions for journeys through the regions of the United States which you’d find there. The Library is closed now, but I think you will still find the journeys through music interesting.

For more about the road trip (and a look at some great road songs) see Great American Road Trip: Music begins

-->Your support for Music Road is welcome and needed. If you are able to chip in, here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this. Thank you.

You can also

road trip travels: missouri moon

This summer, and beyond, we're taking you along on The Great American Road Trip.

I’m partnering up with A Traveler’s Library to add musical ideas to the book and film suggestions for journeys through the regions of the United States the Library is discovering for you.

Recently, the Road Trip traveled through Missouri. There you met Rhonda Vincent, who grew up there playing in her family's band, and has gone on to make an award winning career on her own as a bluegrass artist. Here she is, first surviving a broken guitar string, then singing the song Missouri Moon.




Look for Great American Road Trip posts on Wednesdays at A Traveler's Library and here at Music Road. Also read over at the Library for information on travels to France and other adveneures, and here at Music Road for journeys real and virtual to Ireland, Scotland, Cape Breton, and other places.

For more about the road trip (and a look at some great road songs) see Great American Road Trip: Music begins

you may also wish to see
Music Road: Road Trip Music: Arkansas and Missouri
Music Road: Irish music, Irish landscape
Music Road: Dual: Julie Fowlis & Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh

-->If you'd like to support my creative work,
here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.Thank you.

Road Trip Music in Mississippi

From the red clay roads of its northern counties to the ports and harbors along the Gulf, Mississippi is a state drenched in music. The story of Delta blues is there, with Robert Johnson and Charlie Patton. You could call Elvis Presley a country blues singer as much as he was a rock’n’ roller. Claire Holley is a contemporary writer and singer from the Magnolia state. Country star Faith Hill is from Mississippi. So is songwriter and producer Marty Stuart. The film O Brother, Where Art Thou? with a soundtrack comprising folk, blues, bluegrass, country, and gospel music, is set there.

As the Great American Road Trip: Music makes its way through Mississippi, the soundtrack comprises two albums from another Mississippi native, Caroline Herring. Herring is a storyteller whose music is informed by history, contemplation, faith, and language. Some of her stories are personal ones, some are character pieces drawn from history, some are set in Mississippi and some have their origins in other landscapes. On her album Twilight there is a vividly imagined emotional and geographic journey on the song Delta Highway. Trace, on Herring’s album Wellspring, takes a journey of history through the lives which have been lived along the Natchez Trace.

Herring tells these tales in a distinctive alto voice that well suits her stories, and with melodies that engage. There are gems on both these albums, stories of Mississippi, Texas, the west, and the heart, all well worth your attention.

you may also wish to see
Music Road: Caroline Herring: Golden Apples of the Sun

Music Road: ten songs

Music Road: Road Trip Music in Tennessee

This is part of The Great American Road Trip, in which I’m partnering up with A Traveler’s Library to add musical ideas to the book and film suggestions for journeys through the regions of the United States which you’ll find there. Stop by and see what the Library has in mind to inspire travels through Mississippi.


For more about the road trip (and a look at some great road songs) see Great American Road Trip: Music begins

-->If you'd like to support my creative work,
here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.Thank you.

Music Road trip in West Virginia

West Virginia has a landscape that is at once both beautiful and heartbreaking. Beautiful, for the mountains, the forests, the rivers, heartbreaking because these days so much of that, and the balance of nature within them, and the lives of the people who call West Virginia home, is being lost to mountain top mining.

Two albums make a soundtrack for this duality. Still Moving Mountains -- The Journey Home finds artists, people who live in the mountains, and people who care about them, in a collection of music and short interviews explaining, illuminating, and getting at the heart of what is going on today in, as the classic song terms them, the green rolling hills of West Virginia.

Kathy Mattea is one of those who speaks out on Journey Home. Though her career as a Grammy wining country artist has taken her to Nashville, West Virginia is her home -- she grew with grandparents who worked in the mines, and heard the songs and learned the stories of miners’ life when she was young.

Her doorway into country music has always been through the folk and bluegrass side of things, but songs of the coalfields weren’t ones she felt she was called to do, or could do, until several years ago when a mountain mine disaster recalled to her how she felt facing such events growing up. So she decided to make an album, with some songs she’d known all her life, and some newer ones that speak to the lives of those who work the mines and live in the mountains. She called it Coal, and there’s more about her thoughts on the subject, and the music, here.

you may also wish to see
Mary Black and Emmylou Harris sing Green Rolling Hills of West Virginia
some years before the Coal project, Mattea wrote of her own feelings on leaving her home state in the song Leaving West Virginia
Music Road: Kathy Mattea: Coal
Kathy Mattea’s website she thought the Coal album was going to be a sort of side project for her. as it turned out, there was more.
Music Road: ten songs
to learn more of what the people are singing about in Still Moving Mountains. visit JourneyUpCoalRiver


This is part of The Great American Road Trip, in which I’m partnering up with A Traveler’s Library to add musical ideas to the book and film suggestions for journeys through the regions of the United States which you’ll find there. Stop on by to see what's on tap for West Virginia at A Traveler's Library, and for more about the road trip (and a look at some great road songs) see Great American Road Trip: Music begins

-->If you'd like to support my creative work,
here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.Thank you.

Music road trip: Cape Breton

Sea, forest, heritage, and home -- those things are strongly present in the music of Cape Breton. So strongly present that musicians from this island in northern Nova Scotia have taken their unique brand of Celtic music around the world, taught old dances they remember to Scots who’d forgotten the ancestral steps, and delighted audiences from New England to the mid Atlantic, to Vancouver, to Calgary, to Tokyo, to Istanbul and beyond.

The fiddle is a mainstay of Cape Breton music. It's a fiddle style born in the percussive playing of the west of Scotland and carried across the sea, where it met with influences and partners from other parts of the world, and with the landscape and lives on the forested places of Nova Scotia. Natalie MacMaster brings both tradition and originality to her work. One place to hear that mix clearly is on her album Blueprint

The Barra MacNeils have been making music in the family for as long as they can remember, and making music the family business for more than two decades, with fine singing, playing, and composing that express the heart of Cape Breton’s music. They celebrate this on their album 20th Anniversary Collection



Cape Breton music is deep and varied -- and it is a presence in the music of New England and the mid Atlantic states. This is part of The Great American Road Trip, in which I originally partnered up with A Traveler’s Library to add musical ideas to the book and film suggestions for journeys through the regions of the United States which you’d find there. The Library is closed now, but I think you will still find the journeys through music interesting.

For more about the road trip (and a look at some great road songs) see Great American Road Trip: Music begins

you may also wish to see

Music Road: thinking about Cape Breton: music and landscape

video on Gaelic culture on Cape Breton

Music Road: Cape Breton Radio Live take 02

Music Road: holiday gift list: music of Canada

-->If you'd like to support my creative work,
here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.Thank you.

Rhode Island road trip: Newport & Blackstone River

The Blackstone River Theatre is a small place, far up in the north of Rhode Island, which specializes in presenting Irish and Scottish music. The Newport Folk Festival is a major acoustic music festival in the coastal town of Newport. It’ll be celebrating its fifty first season this summer.

Though it is small in area, Rhode Island has a flourishing music scene in styles from folk to Irish to Americana to classical to rock, in larger places like Providence and Newport to smaller towns like Cumberland, where The Blackstone River Theatre is located.


The Blackstone River Theatre just celebrated its ninth year of presenting music related to the ethnic groups who settled the Blackstone River Valley, including music of the peoples of Ireland, Scotland, and Africa. They’ve received recognition from state and federal governments for their work, and many of the artists you’ve met along the music road have played there, including Long Time Courting, Hanneke Cassel, Natalie Haas, Cathie Ryan, and Archie Fisher.

From its first season in 1959 when a teenaged Joan Baez appeared up to present day appearances by top folk artists including Rani Arbo and Caroline Herring, the Newport Folk Festival has been a force in acoustic music. During the folk revival of the 1960s. Vanguard recorded artists in classic live settings at Newport. Here are three of my favorites of these vintage recordings



Joan Baez: Live at Newport

Judy Collins: Live at Newport, 1959-1966

Ian & Sylvia: Live at Newport



What festivals and venues have you explored in your hometown, or on your travels? I’d be interested to know your favorites.

you may also wish to see

Music Road: Road Trip Music visits Connecticut

Music Road: now playing: Hanneke Cassel (video)

Music Road: Lovers' Well: Matt & Shannon Heaton
note: The Heatons will be playing at Blackstone River later in March, sharing the evening with Kimberley Fraser and Troy MacGillivray

This is part of The Great American Road Trip, in which I originally partnered up with A Traveler’s Library to add musical ideas to the book and film suggestions for journeys through the regions of the United States which you’d find there. The Library is closed now, but I think you will still find the journeys through music interesting.

-->If you'd like to support my creative work at Music Road and elsewhere,
here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.Thank you.

Music of Maine: Lissa Schneckenburger

Song

Lissa Schneckenburger grew up in Maine, where she started out as a fiddler focusing on music for contra dances, and through years she’s added singing and song writing to her work in music. Through the course of several recordings, and in her live shows as well, she explores the unique music that’s found in northern New England. That music arises from a mix of influences brought by people from Ireland, Scandinavia, France, England, Scotland, Quebec, Acadia, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the Appalachian mountains, and forged by people who lived in the mountains, forests, small towns and big cities, and along the waters of the coasts of Maine and neighboring states.

Schneckenburger is known for her fiddle playing, and she a gifted singer too. Some of the music on her album Song might sound both a bit a bit familiar and a bit different. She has delved deep into research for older songs from New England, and indeed they do carry hints of those flavors from other landscapes. You might’ve met relatives of Little Musgrove in English and Scottish collections, for example, and The Old Beggar Man has cousins in the Maritimes. Schneckenburger has put her own stamp on these pieces, though, making the historical tales as vivid as though they happened just yesterday.

Supporting her on Song are a number of New England based musicians you’ve met before along the music road, among them Hanneke Cassel on fiddle, Keith Murphy on guitar and harmony, Matt Heaton on guitar, Corey DiMario on double bass, and Natalie Haas on cello.

Want to know more about New England fiddling? Schneckenburger gives good insights on it in the FAQ section of her web site.

Maine has produced several other fine storytellers in song, too.
Aroostook County native Ellis Paul’s latest album is The Day After Everything Changed. Catie Curtis, who grew up in Saco, shares her music most recently on the recording Hello Stranger, and Patty Griffin, whose songs have been recorded by artists as diverse as The Dixie Chicks, Kelly Clarkson, and Emmylou Harris, is from Old Town. Her latest release is Downtown Church.


This is part of The Great American Road Trip, in which I originally partnered up with A Traveler’s Library to add musical ideas to the book and film suggestions for journeys through the regions of the United States which you’d find there. The Library is closed now, but I think you will still find the journeys through music interesting.. For more about this (and a look at some great road songs) see Great American Road Trip: Music begins

you may also wish to see
Another Fine Winter's Night: Matt & Shannon Heaton

music of Vermont: Nightingale

for another way to hear about and think about Maine, listen to Presence in the Wild, an interview with Kate Braestrup, chaplain to the Maine Game Warden search and resecue services, from the public radio program Speaking of Faith.

-->If you'd like to support my creative work at Music Road and elsewhere,
here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.Thank you.

Music of Vermont: Nightingale

A land of green hills and white mountains, rural home places and welcoming cities, lakes, rivers and winding roads, Vermont is a crossroads of music. There are communities of musicians who draw on backgrounds in Irish music, the music of Scotland, French Canadian music, the sounds of Cape Breton, bluegrass music, old time styles, the music of the Maritimes, and contra dance tunes. One band which brings all these aspects in to play, and creates new music honoring these threads of connection as well, is Nightingale.

Nightingale is Becky Tracy on fiddle, Keith Murphy on guitar, mandolin, and singing, and Jeremiah McLane on accordion and piano. Each was already an accomplished player when they met in the early nineties and formed a group playing primarily Celtic based traditional music for regional contra dances. Over the years, they’ve continued to do that, and have gradually focused more on original material, as well as writing and playing music that fits the club and festival stage as well. They like the balance of the two. “It’s great to be able to play music at a concert, where you can really go anywhere you want with it, and are not restricted by timing, as you are when you play for dancing,” says Murphy. “But there’s nothing like the energy of being literally in the middle of two hundred people stamping and swinging and dancing!”

The trio have four albums out -- they have just released the fourth one, called Jolie. Each of the projects, while differing one from the other, offers a lively mix that shows the band’s interest in and mastery of the confluence of musics that make up Vermont.

More about their work, their CDs, and solo projects by the musicians, may be found at the
band’s web site

side note while we're in Vermont: Music Road offers good wishes and congratulations to Hannah Kearney from Norwich for her accomplishments at the winter Olympics in Vancouver

photos above courtesy of Nightingale



This is part of The Great American Road Trip, in which I originally partnered up with A Traveler’s Library to add musical ideas to the book and film suggestions for journeys through the regions of the United States which you’d find there. The Library is closed now, but I think you will still find the journeys through music interesting.

For more about the road trip idea (and a look at some great road songs) see Great American Road Trip: Music begins.



you may also wish to see

Hanneke Cassel

Leahy: Live in Gatineau

The Greencards

Update: Nightingale is disbanded. You may like to see what I have to say about Keith Murphy's latest solo recording Land of Fish and Seals.

-->If you'd like to support my creative work at Music Road and elsewhere,
here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.Thank you.

Road Trip Music visits Connecticut

The varied landscapes of Connecticut are the location for a look at a fine recording from the Connecticut based band Rani Arbo and daisy mayhem.

Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem: Big Old Life

From the lively burst of hope that opens the collection to the clear eyed and still hopeful look at resilience which closes it, Rani Arbo and the men of daisy mayhem offer a refreshing, invigorating, and thoughtful journey. The hope and joy they speak of is not necessarily hard won. Sometimes it's just spontaneous, like laughing at a wildflower or admiring an extravagance of stars -- that's the being ready for joy to return in the opener, as well as the learned hope they speak of at the close. But it's all life, and as Arbo's original title track would suggest, the hard knocks and that field of stars are each as much a part of it. Fitting right in with this is Bob Dylan's fractured image journey of Farewell Angelina and Anand Nayak's existential (maybe) slice of philosophy on What's That.

That's just talking about ideas, too -- no small part of any daisy mayhem project, to be sure. But the four have been together more than eight years now as a band playing some fairly off the mainstream music, and the connection and compassion among them is clear musically as well as lyrically. Each of them sings, with Arbo most often taking lead. She's also the fiddler in the group, while Scott Kessel handles percussion from the home made Drumship Enterprise to the drum kit, Andrew Kinsey plays bass, and Nayak is the guitarist in the group. Listen to it for the words, listen to it for the voices, listen to it for the stories, listen to it for the melodies but most of all, just listen.

The band has just released a children's album too.


for a taste of the band live, take a look at the video in this post
rani arbo & daisy mayhem: house be blessed

This is part of The Great American Road Trip, in which I originally partnered up with A Traveler’s Library to add musical ideas to the book and film suggestions for journeys through the regions of the United States which you’d find there. The Library is closed now, but I think you will still find the journeys through music interesting.

you may also wish to see

Aoife Clancy: Silvery Moon

Voices: Carrie Newcomer: faith and laughter

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A way to support: you could

If you enjoy what you are reading here, I've recently begun publishing an occasional newsletter at Substack with more stories about music, the people who make it, and the places which inspire it. Come visit and check it out!

Great American Music Trip: Massachusetts

The Great American Road Trip over at A Traveler's Library is in Massachusetts, particularly an area near the sea coast town of Gloucester. The music of the sea, and the lives of those who live by it, inspire music of all sorts. Two modern day musicians take a look at the seafaring past of Gloucester, both serious and funny, in the album Souls of the Sea.

From Gloucester to the Apalachee Bay, from North Uist in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland to the China Sea to the Straits of Magellan to Galway Bay and back again, and all seashores and waters in between, there’s great music and inspiration for music in and on the water.

for more music of the waters in America, Ireland, and Scotland, you may also want to see
Music Road: Oceans & Journeys: Road Trip in Maryland

Cathie Ryan: The Farthest Wave

Dual: Julie Fowlis & Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh

and to learn about the Great American Road Trip and the musical ideas I'll be adding to the journey, you might want to see this: Great American Road Trip: Music begins

-->Your support for Music Road is welcome and needed. If you’d like to chip in, here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this. Thank you.

Songs of the Immigrants

From the First Peoples making their way across the Bering Strait to the just arrived, the United States is a nation of immigrants. Cathie Ryan gets to the heart and courage involved in such a journey in her song The Back Door. Here’s a vintage video of her singing it, with Joanie Madden on flutes and whistles, from 1992.



Fiona J. Mackenzie, a renown Scottish Gaelic singer, made an album of songs of emigrants from Scotland her contribution to the Homecoming Year. Learn more about A Good Suit of Clothes

What are your songs and stories of emigration and immigration?



This post is part of The Great American Road Trip: A Traveler's Library is taking you on a trip across the United States though books and film, and I’m chiming in now and then with music to go along. Read about what's on tap over at A Traveler's Library for today.

you may also want to see

Voices: Cherish the Ladies

Cathie Ryan: Songwriter

harvest time: Native American music

-->If you'd like to support my creative work at Music Road and elsewhere,
here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.Thank you.

Great American Road Trip: Music begins

Each day you travel. That journey might involve walking from one room to the next at your home; you might go down the street to market; you might go across the world to see a friend or hit the road to do your work of the day. Each sort of journey will, if you allow it, surprise and change you.

By the nature of their trade, musicians spend much time on the road, and that experience often finds its way into song. Christine Albert and Chris Gage reflect on wishing well to someone striking out on a trip while missing them as they go in Far As You Can See; Tish Hinojosa takes a physical journey, vivid with detail of her well loved New Mexico, to think about change and the moments of leaving in the song Taos to Tennessee, while Ian and Sylvia Tyson look at the same idea from a different perspective and geography in Four Strong Winds.

Caroline Herring considers the layers of history inherent in the roads we travel in Trace; Matt and Shannon Heaton celebrate the possibilities of travel and bicycles with Giant of the Road. Cathie Ryan looks at traveling through life’s uncertainties with hope and grace in Somewhere Along the Road, Gordon Lightfoot celebrates the joys of the journey in Carefree Highway, and Trisha Yearwood reflects on what may be learned in a passage trough holiday celebrations in Take a Walk Through Bethlehem.

There are, naturally, dozens more road songs, from Woody Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land to Lee Ann Womack’s A Little Past Little Rock. This is meant to invite you to start thinking about music and travel, music and landscape, music and journey, and what may be learned from all that.

This is part of The Great American Road Trip, in which I originally partnered up with A Traveler’s Library to add musical ideas to the book and film suggestions for journeys through the regions of the United States which you’d find there. The Library is closed now, but I think you will still find the journeys through music interesting. This from the original post is a bit of background...

It’s meant to invite you to start reading, as well. Over at A Traveler’s Library, host Vera Marie Badertscher is kicking off The Great American Road Trip, a year (and maybe more) of weekly posts on books and films which inspire you to travel through the corners, back roads, byways, small towns, and big cities of the landscape of the United States. She will be posting on this subject every Wednesday. Often, I’ll chime in here at Music Road with suggestions about music and artists related to the state or region she’s visiting. Come join us!
If Irish and Scottish music are what bring you here, have no worries: it's Scotland's year of the song, so great singers ahead, and there are many fine Irish music experiences in store for you along the music road as well. As part of the Great American Road Trip we'll often explore ways Irish and Scottish music have traveled across the seas, also.

-->If you'd like to support my creative work at Music Road and elsewhere,
here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.Thank you.

Music from the Great American Road Trip

Following along with a virtual road trip across the United States organzed by A Traveler's Library, I offered a series of posts on music which inspires and reflects aspects of the American landscape. Along that music road trip you met artists as varied as country music star Josh Turner, classical violinist Rachel Barton Pine, the school children of the Kid Pan Alley Project in Charlottesville, Virginia, folk legend Judy Collins and her Colorado connection, and Montana based songwriter Stephanie Davis. Here's a round up of your favorite posts Music Road: road trips and road songs
and you can also do a search on the name of your favorite state here on Music Road to find other posts in the series.

Here are recordings from several artists whose music is part of this series. * an update to this post coming along soon..*

-->If you'd like to support my creative work at Music Road and elsewhere,
here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.Thank you.