It’s been two weeks that I have been on the road with my family and this is the last of the pre-written posts. On monday, I will be back to writing real time. (Tell me — did you even notice I was away? 😉

Mr. Studio ‘g’ spent hours and hours updating our tunes lists on our ipods before our road-trip departure. He proudly sourced and scheduled over 6 hours of new music for our trip. I hope by now I am not already tired of his latest collections. Are you headed out for a summer jaunt? Here is his much smaller collection of road trip inspired tunes. Mr. Studio ‘g’……

Riding along American highways requires (like everything else in life) a soundtrack, and American radio is too unreliable to provide a good one. On the last major (American) road trip we went on, Rochelle and I found FM coverage spotty at best, and learned that the AM in ‘AM radio’ apparently stands for ‘Anne Murray’ at least in major swathes of the midwest (this was in 2004). So bringing your own music is a requirement. Here’s five songs that shout ‘road music’ to me:

Indie/Folk band Middle Brother released a cover version of the Replacements song “Portland” which for me is as good as the original, and definitely a traveling song (“It’s too late to turn back here we go / Portland, oh no…”). We won’t be heading that far west this summer, unfortunately.

The Tom Waits song “Long Way Home” describes the conflict of a man addicted to, and apologetic for, his wandering.

Since they are ‘Gypsy Punks’, any song by the Ukrainian-influenced band Gogol Bordello is at least theoretically appropriate for wandering, but most apropos is their 2007 single “Wonderlust King”. It’s as much about lust of the regular kind, but it’s also about traveling around for it.

Again, we’re not going this far west this summer, but the Conor Oberst (of Bright Eyes fame) song “Sausalito” would make anyone want to keep driving until Golden Gate comes into view.

Finally, almost any song by Townes Van Zandt, is a traveling song, so I’ll just point out his most famous, “Pancho and Lefty”.

Happy Trails!