For the second podcast of 2023, let us talk roads: in the trailer for these Letters from Quotidia podcasts, I featured Walt Whitman’s The Song of the Open Road and the famous song, Route 66. In that first podcast for the year, we encountered Edward Thomas’s road under the trees…where the leaflets out of the ash-tree shed/ Are thinly spread/ In the road, like little black fish, inlaid/ As if they played. Similarly, Amy Lowell’s Roads inspired the first original song of 2023 with the same name. Well, you may forget about Robert Frost’s mischievous, the road not taken but there are more roads to travel, I fear, before I will tire of the theme. Fiction offers some interesting examples: if you are shopping for a magic wand, where better for your diligent search than Diagon Alley? Should you be an overly ambitious suburban developer, your plans will be crisscrossed with paper streets which exist nowhere but in your avaricious mind and on your still-born plans. The cartographers among you will ensure that trap streets are tucked in among your painstakingly charted thoroughfares to ensnare the plagiarists who infest your industry. And how many of your children have yearned to reside at 742 Evergreen Terrace with Homer and Marge? Now, let us leave these Yellow Brick Roads of our imagination and tread along some Biblical tracks. The New Testament offers some dramatic examples; the Via Dolorosa in the old city of Jerusalem, for example is the path taken by Jesus on his way to the Crucifixion. Catholic churches throughout the world memorialise this event by the 14 Stations of the Cross found in or near the building. The Road to Damascus was the site of what Christians believe to be one of the most portentous events of human history where a man, Saul by name, commences the journey as a fierce and murderous opponent of the nascent movement known as The Way and emerges as Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles whose travels around the Mediterranean and environs still provoke wonder at their scope and duration. The Road to Emmaus, on the other hand, provides a quiet and contemplative counterpoint to the Damascene example. And I know, if I had a choice, that I would choose this road rather than that followed by the man who undertook a trip from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell in among thieves! To kick off the music component of the podcast I need to take us back to 1965 where The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan loomed large in the UK charts and The Byrds offered Dylan’s Mr. Tambourine Man as the phantasmagorical harbinger of the psychedelic movement. As I have admitted, with some embarrassment, in earlier podcasts, I threw in my lot with these shaggy-haired artists and eschewed my previous affinity with country music. So, then who is this clean-cut guy, with a suit and tie, well-trimmed hair touting a classic three-chord country song in swinging eights complete with a semi-tone modulation to get to the bridge and second half of the song? Why, it’s Roger Miller, and he’s singing King of the Road which reached number one on both sides of the Atlantic that year! I knew on a first hearing that it was a great song. Now that I’ve left the foolish partisanship of my mid-teens long behind, may I, somewhat belatedly, present this gem of a song? [insert song] At this time, too, I set sail as a journeyman songwriter but before I regale you with my latest essay as a writer of love songs let me venture down a few more roads in verse, song, prose, and popular culture. The Canning Highway in Western Australia runs from Fremantle, the long-time residence of Bon Scott of AC/DC and culminates in the Perth suburb of Victoria- a 17-kilometre four lane divided carriageway. Apparently, there was a grungy 1970s booze barn in Victoria called The Raffles where Bon would go to drink and rock out with his mates. Close to the pub there is a steep incline and accident black spot where the number of fatalities earned it the soubriquet- highway to hell. Well, that’s one story. Brian Johnston, successor vocalist in AC/DC after Bon’s death claims that it was about driving across the Nullarbor Plain from Melbourne to Perth, as Bon had done several times, into the glare of the merciless setting sun. I’ve been driving for well over 50 years and in my time, I’ve driven over roads that would qualify for the title, highway to hell and I’m sure many of you could say the same. Chris Rea in 1989 released his masterpiece, The Road to Hell, which I still listen to for its insight and power. Here are its opening lines: Stood still on a highway/I saw a woman/By the side of the road/ With a face that I knew like my own/Reflected in my window/Well she walked up to my quarterlight/And she bent down real slow/A fearful pressure paralyzed me/in my shadow//She said “Son, what are you doing here?/My fear for you has turned me in my grave”/I said “Mama, I come to the valley of the rich/Myself to sell”/She said “Son, this is the road to Hell”//On your journey ‘cross the wilderness/From the desert to the well/You have strayed upon the motorway to Hell// At some distance in time and space from the motorway to hell of Chris Rea, is Crossroads. Written by Robert Johnston, bluesman extraordinaire, in 1936 and popularised thirty years later by Eric Clapton, guitarist extraordinaire, it has attracted that apocryphal story about Johnston selling his soul to the devil in exchange for his guitar chops- all nonsense, of course, but why let the facts get in the way of a good story. Among the most enduring stories of the road in the 20th Century are those of the truck drivers who criss-cross nations and continents delivering the goods that keep the economy humming along like those multi-wheeled rigs that flash by with artwork inspired by angels and demons. I wrote this next song in 1981. It looks backwards to the late 1960s and 1970s and features CB radios, lava glitter lamps, a little lady keeping house, reading escapist fiction, and bored out of her brain. Her husband is a trucker with a macho moniker and love of the game of darts. It would score no points from the #MeToo movement, and rightly so, but I present it as a snapshot of a time that is trapped in the aspic of the misogynistic past. Here, with apologies, is, The Goodtimes of Doris and Ronnie. [insert song]. On March 29, 1689, the Japanese writer, Matsuo Basho, set out with a companion on a journey which took more than 150 days and covered 2,400 kilometres or almost fifteen hundred miles. Here are the opening lines to his great travel book, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, translated by Donald Keene. The months and days are the travellers of eternity. The years that come and go are also voyagers. Those who float away their lives on ships or who grow old leading horses are forever journeying, and their homes are wherever their travels take them. Many of the men of old died on the road, and I too for years past have been stirred by the sight of a solitary cloud drifting with the wind to ceaseless thoughts of roaming. Last year I spent wandering along the seacoast. In autumn I returned to my cottage on the river and swept away the cobwebs. Gradually the year drew to its close. When spring came and there was mist in the air, I thought of crossing the Barrier of Shirakawa into Oku. I seemed to be possessed by the spirits of wanderlust, and they all but deprived me of my senses. The guardian spirits of the road beckoned, and I could not settle down to work. I patched my torn trousers and changed the cord on my bamboo hat. To strengthen my legs for the journey I had moxa burned on my shins. By then I could think of nothing but the moon at Matsushima when I sold my cottage and moved to Sampū’s villa, to stay until I started on my journey. Brilliant though this language is, it doesn’t tug at my heartstrings the way the imagery, novels and songs of the American West have done since I was a child. I consumed westerns avidly in both book and movie form and I still wish someone would come along and write something like Larry McMurtry’s great Lonesome Dove series. It is out of these inchoate yearnings of my soul that I came to write yet another song for my wife toward the end of January this year. The song is called The Open Range and Road, and in it I refer to the first song I wrote at age 16 in 1965. At that time, I had just finished a reading jag where I devoured, for reasons I still can scarcely comprehend, the novels in the Sudden series written by Oliver Strange who died in 1952. They are classified as Piccadilly Westerns, so-called because they were written by British authors who derived their inspiration from- who knows where?- but certainly not any first-hand knowledge of the American West. And, while I recognised that they were less than literary, they appealed to my adolescent puerile soul- captured, as it was, by the grand mythos of the old West of America. Here, then, is my latest love song, The Open Range and Road. [insert song] I solemnly promise that my next podcast will seek to avoid roads and the old West and, furthermore, I undertake to restrain the urge to cover Desperado. As a final thought, one of the guitarists I have admired since his days in the Yardbirds, Jeff Beck, died last month unexpectedly and it resonated with me because, at about the same time, my wife and I were laid low by COVID-19 and, while thanks to four vaccines shots we had eagerly taken up over the past couple of years, and in spite of our age and co-morbidities, we avoided hospitalisation and were back on our feet within a week or so. Still, it made me think of that old Irish blessing, May the road rise up to meet you,/May the wind always be at your back,/May the sun shine warm upon your face,/And rains fall soft upon your fields,/And, until we meet again,/May God hold you in the palm of His hand.//
Song lyrics in the podcast
“King of The Road” (1965)
by Roger Miller
A D
Trailers for sale or rent,
E A
Rooms to let fifty cents,
A D
No phone, no pool, no pets.
E
I ain’t got no cigarettes.
A D
Ah, but…two hours of pushin’ broom,
E A
Buys an…eight-by-twelve four-bit room.
A D
I’m a man of means by no means,
E A
King of the road.
A D
Third boxcar, midnight train,
E A
Destination Bangor, Maine.
A D
Old worn out suit and shoes,
E
I don’t pay no union dues.
A D
I smoke…old stogies I have found,
E A
Short, but not too big around.
A D
I’m a man of means by no means,
E A
King of the road.
(Key change from A to Bb)
[Bridge]
Bb Eb
I know…every engineer on every train,
F Bb
All their children, ‘n all of their names,
Bb Eb
And…every handout in every town,
F
And…every lock that ain’t locked when no one’s around.
Bb Eb
I sing…trailers for sale or rent,
F Bb
Rooms to let, fifty cents,
Bb Eb
No phone, no pool, no pets.
F
I ain’t got no cigarettes.
Bb Eb
Ah, but…two hours of pushin’ broom,
F Bb
Buys an eight by twelve four-bit room.
Bb Eb
I’m a…man of means by no means,
F Bb
King of the road.
[Outro] (bass only)
Bb Eb
Trailers for sale or rent,
F Bb
Rooms to let, fifty cents,
Bb Eb
No phone, no pool, no pets.
F
I ain’t got no cigarettes.
Bb Eb
Ah, but, two hours of pushin’ broom,
F Bb
Buys an eight by twelve four-bit room…
The Goodtimes of Doris and Ronnie
Doris pulls the blinds as she blinks another morning
A day can last all week long
Thinks about the Teasmade promised for her birthday
And hums a current hit song
Doris, she believes in magic
(We all need magic in our lives)
Doris, she reads Denis Wheatley
And the Devil rides out once again
She saw her Ronnie drive off as the dawn was breaking
CB chat filling the air
Doris, she recalls the afternoon she met him
She was a young girl with flair
Ronnie was a handsome creature
She squealed excitedly and said
Ronnie treat me like a flower
So he plucked her where they lay
Doris switches on the glitter lamp he gave her
Watching colours collide
Ronnie won that prize with the last dart of the evening
He still remembers it with pride
And he told all the truckers
Ears on now the Devil has some news
I throw a mean set of arrows
Come play me if you choose or you dare
Doris lays the table sets the stove to simmer
Her day has passed in a haze
Sometimes she regrets the loneliness she faces
With Ronnie gone so many days
But there are compensations
Yes! so she reckons now and then
She hears that diesel rumble
As the Devil rides home once again
Open Range and Road
Sitting here with the Spanish guitar you bought for me so many years ago
Across my old lap I pluck at these fine familiar chords again
At 16 I wrote my first song for you and sighing wished that it was better
This first song for you in 2023 has me sighing just as much
Such thoughts go streaming out across my mind as bison across the Great Plains
Or a Thunderbird chasing the setting sun from Las Vegas to LA
Away spin these similes in a losing dance to capture my love for you
Like a parched man staggers in the desert sun in search of water to survive
Such thoughts go streaming out across my mind as bison across the Great Plains
Or a Thunderbird chasing the setting sun from Las Vegas to LA
Away I must follow these wayward thoughts on the open range and the open road
That my mind spreads out like a tapestry woven with my love for you
(So, I must follow this open range and this open road to find my love for you)
Credits: All written text, song lyrics andmusic (including background music) written and composed by Quentin Bega unless otherwise specified in the credits section after individual posts. Illustrative excerpts from other texts identified clearly within each podcast. I donate to and use Wikipedia frequently as one of the saner sources of information on the web.
Technical Stuff: Microphone- Shure SM58; (for the podcast spoken content) Audio Technica AT 2020 front-facing with pop filter); Apogee 76K also used, from time to time, for songs and spoken text.
For recording and mixing down: 64-bit N-Track Studio 9 Extended used; Rubix 22 also used for mixing of microphone(s) and instruments. I use the Band in a Box/RealBand 2023 combo for music composition.
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