Good morning.
It’s the Fourth of July and I hope you’re out enjoying the day doing whatever it is you like to do on the Fourth of July.
This month’s playlist is coming early. And it is heavier than it usually is on older songs. And it kind of actually has a theme.
That’s because I saw the perfect opportunity to time a playlist to this American holiday. This group of songs is meant to represent a kind of road trip across the country covering, if not every state, than almost every region of the country through a song.
Some of these are from a playlist I made in 2020 when I was living here in Austin for six weeks at my fiancee’s parents house. That was the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and we had, probably foolishly, all taken a “family” road trip from New York to Austin starting on Memorial Day weekend.
Our route took us from New York, to a night in Washington D.C., to two nights in Brevard, North Carolina (right outside of Asheville), to a night in Nashville, to a night in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and then back to Austin.
I look back on that trip very fondly—even if it was ill-advised. It feels like another world. I remember driving on a near empty I-95 from New York to Washington, DC. I remember eating dinner in a cavernous restaurant in the town of Bristol on the border of Virginia and Tennessee and thinking it was OK because the front windows of the restaurant were completely open. I remember eating tacos in trendy, crowded Mexican restaurant Little Rock and thinking, “I don’t know if I should be this close to people.” And I remember waking up in a little lake house AirBnB outside of Hot Springs, brewing coffee, and sitting out on the wood dock before my fiancee and her family got up and feeling incredibly happy to be out of New York.
Most especially, I remember a damp evening in Brevard and my fiancee’s father helping me to find dry wood to make a fire in the backyard of our AirBnB. Once he and I got the fire lit, we all sat around the fire pit and drank beer and looked at fireflies.
It made me think of the road trip across the country I took 15 years before that. In August of 2005, me and two of my best friends drove from Long Island to Columbus, Ohio, to a campground in Wisconsin, to Montana for two nights in Big Sky, to a camping ground in Grand Teton, to Boulder, Colorado for several days to stay with another friend and his older brother. Then we went south through the San Juan Mountains to camp near the Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado. And then to the Four Corners and over to Moab and then back south again to camp at the Grand Canyon for a night.
We headed back east through New Mexico, camping at a camp ground not too far from a federal prison, and shot across the very top of Texas and into Oklahoma where we camped somewhere near Norman after one of my friends got a speeding ticket. And then we drove across Arkansas and stopped in Memphis for a night. After that, we pushed further east, driving through Asheville and the Great Smoky Mountains and stayed in Shenandoah for a night. Then we made the final push back to Long Island to wrap up the pale end of our summer vacations.
We were 20, 19, and 19 respectively. And that both feels like a lifetime ago yet at the same time I can call up sense memories from that trip easier than things from my early thirties.
Our mothers at the time said we’d never get another chance to do something like that and that we should enjoy it. We didn’t believe them. But they were right.
Or, mostly right. Until I got to take that more abbreviated trip with my fiancee’s family in the middle of the pandemic right at the cusp of summer in 2020.
See you next time.
“Wild Mountain Nation” by Blitzen Trapper
I wanted to start this playlist off with a couple songs that felt more broadly thematic. I’ve always thought of this song by Blitzen Trapper as a modern American classic. But then I realized it’s almost 20 years old now and that I’m ancient. When I first heard this song, I thought Blitzen Trapper was going to be an updated version of The Band. Those are the kinds of things you used to think when you were 22 years old in 2007.
“4th of July” by Paul McCartney and Wings
None of you will listen to me, so I’ll say it again: Paul McCartney is FUCKING insane. This is another song that’s never formally been released. It was only thrown in as an extra track on the 2014 Venus and Mars (1975) deluxe edition. A strange and beautiful song where Paul asks “Why am I crying on the Fourth of July?” multiple times. I’m telling you, we don’t fully understand just how much this one man has given us to enjoy, how great his talent for song writing really is.
“Sister Golden Hair” by America
Like anyone else, I grew up thinking that America sucked. I still do mostly. But, god damn, this song just sounds so good.
“Old Cape Cod” by Patti Page
The first time I ever heard this song was in the fourth season of Mad Men in the third episode of the season called “The Good News,” which came out in the spring of 2010. Don is slow dancing with his “niece,” Stephanie during one of his trips to California. Whenever I hear this song, I think of Mad Men. They both give me a similar aching, searching feeling in my chest.
“Coney Island Baby” by Lou Reed
When I turned 15, my dad gave me a CD called Different Times: Lou Reed in the 70s (1996). This was the last song on the album. That CD served as my introduction to Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground and started my journey in really exploring and piecing together music history. This Lou song (and probably “My Friend George”) will always remind me of my dad.
“Philadelphia Freedom” by Elton John
I’ve never put together a list of the songs that will always put me in a good mood, but this one would certainly be on it. I alway get swept away when the tune changes keys and the crunchy guitars first come up in the mix at about 1:14 and then the song moves into the chorus and begins to soar. Elton John from 1970-1975 really was something else.
“Baltimore” by Nina Simone
An absolutely devastating song written by Randy Newman and adapted and performed to perfection by Nina Simone. If you never get around to watching The Wire, you could probably listen to this song and get the gist. Just take a look at the lyrics. There is such a purity and economy of feeling to the way Simone sings the following lyrics: “Get my sister Sandy / And my little brother Ray / Buy a big old wagon / To haul us all away / Live out in the country / Where the mountain's high/ Never gonna come back here / 'Til the day I die.”
“Birmingham” by Randy Newman
You could put together an amazing playlist about the United States composed of only Randy Newman songs. This is maybe one of my five favorite Randy Newman compositions. From the piano melody that I can only describe as Rag Time-meets-Ken Burns-Civil War-documentary to the brilliant lyrics (“My daddy was a barber / a most unsightly man / was born in Tuscaloosa / died right here in Birmingham” “Got a big black dog, his name is Dan / Lives in my backyard in Birmingham / meanest dog in Alabam’ / get em Dan”) this song is a work of art.
“Midnight Train to Georgia” by Gladys Knight & The Pips
I mean you can’t leave this song off an American road trip themed playlist.
“Dixie Chicken” by Little Feat
I’ve already covered the fact that I love Little Feat and Lowell George. This is probably their best known song and one of the best Southern Rock songs. Little Feat remain probably the best American band that no one really talks about anymore.
“New Madrid” by Uncle Tupelo
As someone who got deeply into Wilco at the age of 16, Uncle Tupelo is deeply important to me. I made my way through their catalog mainly during my freshman and sophomore years of college. I always love going back and listening to young Jeff Tweedy sing. This song is actually about an earthquake that was predicted to hit the New Madrid fault line that runs around the borders of Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
“Cleveland Rocks” by Ian Hunter
A couple months ago I was thinking about The Drew Carey Show. I was such a sicko for watching TV when I was a kid I’d watch shows like The Drew Carey Show or The Jonathan Silverman Show just because they were on. That’s why I never really liked the Jon Stewart Daily Show. The original Daily Show was satirical—it was just another show that was on every day. Jon Stewart made it something with a purpose.
Anyways, on The Drew Carey Show they used to do these involved opening credits from time-to-time where the whole cast would dance and lip-sync to the theme song. They would promote the unveiling of the new credit sequence as a big event. They did it for this song because The Drew Carey Show took place in Cleveland. I had no idea who Ian Hunter was. I had no idea, really, why Drew Carey was even famous. He was just on TV.
Now that I think about it, things haven’t changed too much.
“Right Down the Line” by Gerry Rafferty
Ostensibly this is when the road trip across America would be getting right to the middle of the country. So I figured why not throw this one on here? A song that has quietly become more present as years go by. You hear it in bars, stores, parking lots more than you’d expect. I think this is a song that will somehow find a long afterlife. There’s something appealing about it that makes you feel as if you are discovering a secret for the first time that will prevent it from ever sounding too old.
“Blue Moon of Kentucky” by Elvis Presley
First heard this song via the Al Kooper cover on his debut solo album I Stand Alone (1967) but it's obviously a bluegrass classic written by Bill Monroe in 1945. Elvis obviously made it incredibly famous in the 1950s.
“Kansas City” by Little Richard
To me, Paul McCartney’s screaming vocals on the Beatles version of this song will always be definitive. But Little Richard wrote the thing and Paul was always trying to be Little Richard so you have to give credit to The Real King of Rock n’ Roll.
“Wichita Lineman” by Glen Campbell
I could’ve also put “Galveston” on here. I like that song better but Wichita Lineman fit in the flow of this journey across the country and is probably Glen Campbell’s most favorite song. When I was driving from New York to Austin with my fiancee’s family during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in May of 2020, there was a stint where her father and I were driving alone in one of the two mini-vans we rented. I was worried about running out of things to say, so I asked him about the city Galveston because I knew the Glen Campbell song “Galveston.” That got the conversation flowing again plus I learned a lot of great history! Last month at a sushi restaurant my fiancee and I sat next to a couple in their mid-forties who were out for the night, leaving their daughter at home with a baby sitter. The woman said she was from Galveston and asked me if I knew were that was. I said, sure, because of the Glen Campbell song. She’d never heard of it.
“Louisiana Rain” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
This is the album-closer to Damn the Torpedoes. It’s an excellent example of the anthemic album closing song. Of course Tom knew how to fucking sequence. I’ll always have a soft spot for this song even if it isn’t one of his absolute best. There’s a deep well with Tom Petty.
“Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love)” by Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson
Still never been to Luckenbach even though I pass the exit for it every time we go back and forth to West Texas. Though I am now more familiar with the rich tradition of German immigrants coming to Texas and establishing towns. I’ve been to Gruene and Gruene Hall at least!
“Albuquerque” by Neil Young
Only been to Albuquerque once. Arrived in to the airport late at night on my way to a family vacation with my fiancee’s family. The entire family needed somewhere to eat. I found this truck. The food was really good. I don’t know if this song makes me think of Albuquerque in any specific way but it's one of my favorites from Tonight’s the Night (1975). There’s something unsettled and unresolved about the whole thing and maybe that’s why it sticks with me.
“Santa Fe” by Bob Dylan
One of my favorite Basement Tapes era Dylan songs. One time, maybe ten years ago though you could tell me it was 50 years and I’d believe you, some close friends of mine were going to stay up late at a friend’s parents house in New Jersey and make and record music in the basement. I couldn’t do it because I had work. They asked for pitches for a cover. My mind immediately went to this song.
“Colorado” by Stephen Stills
Say what you will about Stephen Stills, but sometimes he just brings it. This is a sturdy, melancholy mid-tempo ballad with some excellent instrumental work. The drums, piano and pedal steel are fantastic on this song.
“Portland” by The Replacements
I don’t know too many songs about the Pacific Northwest. Maybe you know a few? I needed one to put on there. Why not a little chestnut from The Replacements that has become one of my favorite tracks of theirs?
“Mendocino” by Sir Douglas Quintet
My friend Nick used to have a band called Forest City. I used to love seeing them play in Brooklyn at places like The Brooklyn Rod and Gun Club and Union Pool. They used to play this song as a set closer at a lot of shows. Back then I didn’t know much about Doug Sahm but now I know a lot more. After Forest City broke up, I collected assorted recordings they’d made and put them together into a record. It’s still one of my favorite little things I’ve done.
“San Francisco” by Foxygen
Foxygen. Funny band. Remember when they were on the come up? Feels like it happened in a different world. Always liked this song.
“I Love L.A.” by Randy Newman
Like I said, you could put together an entire album of songs written and recorded by Randy Newman to try and capture a road trip across the United States. I think I did pretty well limiting myself to using only three. How can you not like this song? It’s hysterical, entertaining, never gets old, and somehow, if you just go with the energy of the song, seems somehow poignant.