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.

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Music for a summer road trip

It may be August, but one of the albums that’s catching my ear a good bit these days is one whose songs are framed in ideas of winter.

Gretchen Peters’ Northern Lights offers a mix of traditional traditional holiday carols and newer songs. It's a set which includes In the Bleak Mid Winter alongside John Jacob Niles’ Appalachian based song I Wonder As I Wander and Peters’ own looking across the centuries and thinking about faith and connections song Waitin’ on Mary. Whatever the season, it’s a good listen. You might also want to know that Peters is doing live concert in Nashville which will be streamed on the web, tomorrow, Saturday 8 August. There’s more about that at her website. Peters is also talking about song writing in a tele class later this month -- click on the banner on the right hand sidebar calle Art of Song for more on that.



There is a lot of excellent new music on my desk, including CDs from Claire Lynch, Rhonda Vincent, a middle eastern family band from Indiana, new Native American recordings, The Pride of New York [a n Irish American super group which includes Joanie Madden and Brendan Dolan], Sara Milonovich, and others. You’ll get to hear about all of that in the coming days. Right now, though, in addition to Peters, I’m drawn to the work of these artists whom you 've met before along the music road:

Eddi Reader and Emily Smith are both Scotswomen with excellent and very different sorts of song writing styles. The link will take you to a video of them singing together at Celtic Connections last winter.

Carrie Newcomer is working on recording a new album just now, and preparing for a trip to India. The Geography of Light is the one of her albums I am listening to most often this summer, especially the songs There is a Tree, about, roughly speaking, what it is and is not like to be an artist and a person of faith, and The Clean Edge of Change and Map of Shadows, both about change. If you’ve ever thought you’ve ad a little too much of e mail you’ll also appreciate her funny take on that in Don’t Push Send.


There’s a gently funny song on Fine Winter's Night, too, called Julius the Christmas Cat. Ever wondered why there are no cats in famous paintings of the Nativity? Matt and Shannon Heaton give you the clue in this song, and yes, it’s another winter album. You can play them any time of year, you know. Try it, if you’ve not. The Heatons’ recording Lovers’ Well is also claiming my attention this summer. You’ll hear more about that coming up along the music road, but meanwhile, here’s a taste of what it’s about in a guest post I did for Irish Fireside, along with bits about two other excellent Irish albums you’ll like to know too.





you may also want to see

a preview of the Milwaukee Irish Fest, coming up next weekend, at Wandering Educators

Music Road: ten songs

Music Road: music for a spring road trip: six albums

If you enjoy what you’ve been reading here, a way to support it:

songs of place: Canada

Ten songs with a place name in the title or content which is about a place: that was how travel writers Sophia Dembling and Jenna Schnuer started the discussion they've been hosting about songs for road trips over at Flyover America at World Hum. Many people have commented -- I’ve added a few from folk and bluegrass -- but it also occurred to me while reading the choices that they are, with the exception of one excursion I’ve seen to Mexico, all about the United States. Up Canada! I started to think. Here are ideas for songs of Canadian places.

*Alberta Bound from Gordon Lightfoot is not only a great song but a great sing along song for a road trip, as is
*Four Strong Winds from Ian Tyson
*Rolling Home Canadian from Eileen McGann takes in the Maritimes, Laurentians, the Shield, the Plains -- it’s about the Canadian Pacific Railway
*Canadian Railroad Trilogy, from Gordon Lightfoot. Every time I fly from Ireland to the United States I get to a point where the landscape out the window makes ‘up the Saint Lawrence all the way to Gaspe’ play in my mind.
*The Island, from the Barra MacNeils, is about Cape Breton
*We Were Good People, from Maria Dunn, is set in Edmonton
*Farewell Nova Scotia, from Ian and Sylvia
*Yellowhead to Yellowstone, from Ian Tyson
*Un Canadien Errant, Ian & Sylvia
*Two Rivers, Ian & Sylvia
*Apple Blossom Tyme, Aengus Finnan

What would you add?

photograph is from a concert at the firehouse/community center in Big Pond on Cape Breton

you may also want to see

music for a spring road trip: six albums
Cape Breton Radio Live take 02
now playing: Matt & Shannon & Ian & Sylvia

-->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.

If you enjoy what you’ve been reading here, another way to support more of it:

Now playing: road music

Musicians spend a lot of time on the road, and so they often write about it. That experience often forms both direct subject and metaphor for life’s twists and turns. Here are three I like:



Muireann nic Amhlaoibh knows whereof she speaks in singing Gerry O’Beirne’s song Western Highway. Not only does she spend much time on the road, as the lead singer of the irish band Danu, in support of her solo projects, and working with Scottish singer Julie Fowlis, she grew up in the far western most part of Ireland, Dunquin in County Kerry. This song is a fine evocation of travels, changes, and landscape.

Alison Brown doesn’t sing a word on Chicken Road; she speaks with her banjo, leading a high stepping journey that yet has elements of looking back as well as looking forward.


Roads and journeys often find their way into Tish Hinojosa’s music, nowhere more vividly than in By the Rio Grande. Hinojosa is from the southwest, and has traveled all over the world with her music, taking the southwestern landscapes of her imagination, and her understanding won by living across Mexican and American cultures, down many roads.

-->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.