A New Take on Road Trip Music

Posted on | June 28, 2010 | 1 Comment

Last week, S and I took off for one of our oh-so-familiar trips to the Rocky Mountains. Believe it or not, these 13 hour rides in the car are considered sacred time in our family. We have the quiet magnificence of the Nevada desert, endless hours to spend in each others company and no cell phone reception. This is bliss.

For me, one of the great joys of road-tripping is the opportunity to listen to music, uninterrupted. About a week or so before a trip, I start thinking about where we’re going, and what music will create the perfect audio canvas for our trip, because as any experienced road-tripping music lover knows, just because you love an album at home, doesn’t mean that it will be good road music. Some things just don’t translate well to desert driving (think: the Slits).

The desert music that works for me is as spacious and expansive as the desert itself, with music that leaves me plenty of room for existing, and lyrics (or not) that relax and deepen my thinking, slowing my mind down to a more reasonable pace.

I generally take all familiar music; stuff that has proven itself to be road-worthy: Iron & Wine, Emmylou, Guy Clark, Lucinda, Mary Gauthier, Gillian and David, Whiskeytown…stuff like that.

This trip, however, I decided to try something new. I have, on my desk, a bottom-filling stack of cds that I need to listen to. Some of them are new releases, some of them are older albums that I missed the first time around, and some of them are hanging out on the keep-them-or-trade-them fence. Staring at the stack of cds, I thought, “what better time to check out all of these albums than on a road trip?” I threw them all on the new ipod (that was part of the problem, as there were no favorites already loaded onto it), and away we went, venturing out across the desert with no known music. This, I learned, is almost as bad as heading out across the desert with no water.

One of the things that I do like about ipods is that they are perfect for road trips. You have everything you want to take, without taking up any space. We plug in our little car stereo adapter, choose shuffle, and hit the road. Generally, this works like a charm. If you’ve chosen wisely, you pretty much have a customized radio station of all your favorite road-trip music, without any commercials. It’s great.

But, if of the 20 albums that you’ve loaded on the ipod, you only know two of them, it can be um, let’s just say a bit of a fail. I realized that I do not want to be asking, with every new song, “Who is this?” I also don’t want to be thinking to myself, “This album is terrible. Is there any way we can keep it from shuffling around again?” I also realized that what I love to do on the open road, is to sing along to all my favorite music, and it takes quite a few listens of a song to be able to sing along. My vocal chords didn’t get much play at all.

It wasn’t all bad. I realized that I do like Delta Spirit’s entire catalog, that the National write some really great songs, I do really dig the Carolina Chocolate Drops, and that Band of Horses is, at times, great.

However, the bad side of things went like this:

The National has a ton of songs, and I really like about 30 percent of them.

K’naan’s first album is a lukewarm prelude to Troubadour, which is amazing.

Arcade Fire’s EP is best played at home.

I’m still on the fence about Two Gallants.

It’s hard to hear the subtleties of Emily Jane White’s lyrics and delivery while racing across the desert.

And so it went. Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t like we were miserable or anything, it was just that the music wasn’t quite right. Whenever a song came on that we knew, S and I would get a burst of energy, and sing and snap and tap our toes, until it ended. Then we were back to potentially hours of stuff we didn’t know.

So, consider yourself warned. If you head out across the desert, with limited music, make sure that you have mostly music that you know, sprinkled in with a few new things, rather than mostly new things, sprinkled in with a few that you know.

Category: Culture, Music
Tags: desert > on the road > road music > road trip

Comments

One Response to “A New Take on Road Trip Music”

Rob
June 28th, 2010 @ 9:05 AM

Great article..I agree that the tried and true tunes work best for the long haul with maybe a couple of new thing thrown in..And Yay for Delta Spirit !!

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A New Take on Road Trip Music

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