Casing the Promised Land

My mind veers over to the freeway today. Could be hallucinations beginning to set in after five days of looking at the same walls, staircases, hardwood floors and furniture.

In two days, I'll be hitting the six-lane blacktop with Michael Shaw (who some of you may know as the lead guitarist for erstwhile Bay Area rockers Petrol and The Aktion) down to the high desert, out to Joshua Tree and Coachella. As one might expect, there is much mischief and regrettable rock 'n roll behavior in the works.

So today I have music running through my head non-stop. Road songs. The Louvin Brothers' Cash on the Barrelhead, Gram Parsons' Return of the Grievous Angel, Modern Lovers' Roadrunner and Ride On Down the Highway, Hank Williams' Lost Highway and Ramblin' Man, hell, even the Allman Brothers' Ramblin' Man. Townes Van Zandt's Pancho and Lefty, Tom Waits' Ol' 55 and several of the songs off of The Heart of Saturday Night, Springsteen's Thunder Road, Little Feat's Willin' and Truckstop Girl, The Rolling Stones' Moonlight Mile and No Expectations and their version of Route 66. Alex Chilton and The Box Tops doing The Letter, Marvin Gaye's Hitch Hike, Doug Sahm's Is Anybody Going to San Antone?, Clarence White's flatpick guitar version of I Am a Pilgrim and Steve Earle's version too. Deep Purple's Highway Star, The Edgar Winter Group's Free Ride, Talking Heads' Road to Nowhere and The Kinks' Life on the Road. And, one of my favorites, Cheri Knight's somebody-else-is-going-on-the-road-song Wagon of Clay.

Brilliant traveling songs all.

Some with brilliantly simple lyrics like those in Roadrunner:

It helps me from being alone late at night/
It helps me from being lonely late at night/
Don't feel so bad now in the car/
Don't feel so alone, got the radio on/
Like the roadrunner/

I've got the world, I've got the turnpike/
I've got the power of the AM/
I've got rock 'n roll late at night/

Or like the poetic strains of Wagon of Clay:

If I could ride, I would follow you now/
My horses would fly overhead/
I'd keep you sewn to a ribbon of road/
Weave you around in the end

Or the astral dreamweaving of Return of the Grievous Angel:

The news I could bring, I met up with The King/
On his head an amphetamine crown/
Talked about unbuckling that old Bible Belt/
And lighted out for some desert town/
Out with the truckers, and the kickers and the cowboy angels/
And a good saloon in every single town/

Or the mock indignation of Ray Davies' Life on the Road:

When I arrived in Euston/
I was little more than a child/
And I didn't know then that the dives and the dens/
Would be so vulgar and wicked and wild/

Or the grease-smudged genius of Springsteen:

Well now, I ain't no hero, that's understood/
All the redemption I can offer, girl, is beneath this dirty hood/
With a chance to make it good somehow/
Hey, what else can we do now?/
Except roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair/
Well, the night's busting open, these two lanes will take us anywhere/
We got one last chance to make it real/
To trade in these wings on some wheels/
Climb in back, heaven's waiting on down the tracks/
Oh oh, come take my hand/
We're riding out tonight to case the promised land/

And though it's not a road song, at this moment my anxious soul is singing along with Paul Westerberg and The Replacements -- "Anywhere is Better Than Here".