It’s a bit of a stereotype that Midwesterners like myself will opt to drive pretty much anywhere over taking a flight, no matter how long of a drive it is. Looking back, a lot of the vacations I remember most as a kid were road trips, or took place at the end of a very, very long drive. So I guess I can't really deny that. And if decades of drives across the country have taught me anything, it’s that the cornerstone of any good road trip is a great road trip playlist. Because if you’re gonna sit in a car for 8+ hours with your closest friends and family and have any hopes of still liking each other by the end of it, you better have the right soundtrack.
Today, instead of making you a fool-proof road trip playlist, I’m gonna do you one better. We’re turning the road trip into a playlist using one of the most famous roads in the United States: US Route 66.
Michael Daugherty: Route 66
Some of life's finest joys trace their roots back to the city of Chicago–the Ferris wheel, deep dish pizza, Twinkies, brownies, roller derby, certain classical radio hosts, even car radio!
Route 66 starts there, too, right in downtown Chicago, and runs 2,448 miles across the country, ending in Santa Monica, CA and crossing 8 states along the way: Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California.
Composer Michael Daugherty has found inspiration across the country for many of his pieces, including Philadelphia Stories, Lost Vegas, Radio City, Mount Rushmore, Letters from Lincoln, and, fittingly, Route 66.
In Chicago, Route 66 officially begins at the intersection of Michigan Avenue and East Adams Street, right in front of the Art Institute of Chicago and barely a block down the street from the Chicago Symphony Center. There, you'll find a sign marking the start of the historic road, and a whole lot more...
This area of the city, called The Loop, is one of the most touristy areas of Chicago, and is the cultural heart of the city. It is surrounded on all sides by award-winning restaurants, Museum Campus, Navy Pier, Lake Shore Drive and the lakefront trails, impressive and eclectic architecture, and soaring skyscrapers. I spent a lot of time in The Loop as a kid, between field trips to the Field Museum, watching the fireworks over Navy Pier from the Adler Planetarium peninsula, ice skating at Millennium Park, summer day trips to Grant Park for Taste of Chicago or Lollapalooza, and numerous performances at the Chicago Symphony Center. There's something for everyone at any time of year, and as crazy busy as this place can get, it’s always a phenomenal time.
Daugherty’s Route 66 starts there, too, and manages to capture all that vibrant activity. Here are Daugherty’s program notes from the 1998 World Premiere of Route 66 with the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra:
- “Route 66 (1998) for orchestra is a high-octane nostalgic musical romp from Illinois to California along America’s first intercontinental highway, as seen through my rear-view mirror. The music takes off with four trumpets, in musical canon, and a metallic brake drum, pulsating like the yellow painted line that divides the two-lane asphalt highway. As woodwinds, mallet instruments and bongos continue the syncopation, a soaring string melody casts a panoramic soundstage down ‘The Mother Road.’ A lonely tuba solo, which signals the only traffic light of the journey, segues into a breathtaking expansion of the opening tune, punctuated by chromatic scales at lightning speed. Upon the entrance of a syncopated Latin groove on cowbell, we suddenly shift gears into a development section of exciting multilayered twists and turns. The final brassy chord signals the end of our symphonic road trip down ‘Main Street America."
In addition to capturing the chaos that comes with driving across the United States, the cacophonous congestion you hear in Route 66 is the exact kind of energy you will encounter on Route 66 at that intersection of Michigan Avenue and East Adams Street – especially now that NASCAR has started hosting street races in The Loop every July!
Virgil Thompson: The River
Leaving Chicago, Route 66 cuts southwest across the state of Illinois, eventually passing over the Mississippi River at the Illinois-Missouri border in St. Louis, MO.
The Mississippi River forms the entire western border of the state of Illinois, but despite its geographic influence on the state I’ve spent most of my life in, and despite having crossed it many, many times, I frequently forget it’s there altogether.
Most of my childhood friends moved out of Illinois for college or for work, and some of them eventually found their way back to other states in the Midwest like Iowa and Minnesota. Over the years, groups of us have taken interstate road trips to visit each other – because why would we take a two hour flight when we could cram into one car and drive for 12 hours straight instead – and usually cross over the Mississippi River at least once when we do.
Sometimes we’d cross a section of the river that was so thin and underwhelming we thought it was a small creek, and wouldn't even notice until it was well behind us in the rearview mirror. Other times, we’d pull the car over to eat lunch along the river, all the while having flashbacks to playing the Oregon Trail computer game in middle school. We’d sit there, sandwiches in hand, staring out over the rushing river musing about how we’d get across. We could either ford the river, or attempt to float across, or maybe hire a ferry to get us safely to the other side.
But I digress…
Virgil Thompson’s The River (1937) is composed of five stylistically unique sections, each evoking a different scene or mood connected to the idea of a river’s journey across the American landscape. And while this piece isn’t about the Mississippi River specifically, it’s hard not to draw some parallels. Notably, the piece’s fourth movement (“Industrial Power”) is a bold, rhythmic section evoking the machinery and might characteristic of the American Industrial Revolution, and likely also the damming, shipping, and explosion in infrastructure and industry that built up along the Mississippi River.
Just as Virgil Thomson helped shape American classical music into what it is today, the Mississippi River helped shape the US into what it is today.
Aaron Copland: Prairie Journal
I don’t know about you, but when I hear the word “prairie,” I immediately feel this visceral feeling of boredom, often accompanied by the mental image of grass gently swaying in the breeze for as far as the eye can see.
What I like about Prairie Journal is that the title alone elicits that same immediate feeling of boredom I have just hearing the word “prairie,” and then the piece itself completely subverts it. Which in my experience, is exactly what it’s like to actually drive across the prairie states, believe it or not.
A few years ago I helped a friend move across the country from Boston to Denver, and joined him for the drive from Chicago to his new apartment. To be honest, I originally planned to sleep most of the way (sorry Dan) – at least after we left St. Louis, and decided it would be a good idea to drive across the entire state of Kansas in a single day. A decision that, by now, should be shocking to no one.
Instead, I was wide awake, and staring out the window pretty much the entire time.
Copland uses wide-open intervals, flowing musical textures, and a lingering sense of space in Prairie Journal that reflect the vast landscapes it represents. Is the prairie vast and empty? Yes. Is there not much to look at? Also yes. But there was still way more there than I ever expected to see.
On the entire last leg of our drive through Kansas towards Colorado, you could see so far out in any direction that you could actually see yourself approaching the Rocky Mountains. I don’t just mean the mountains themselves, but the gradual, rolling elevation gain and its undulating, unrelenting progression, kind of like when you slowly increase the incline on a treadmill, but in every direction, and entirely made of grass. This plus the rolling hills and occasional mobs of cows or sheep or hay bales (and somehow not even a single gas station for way longer than we were comfortable with) made for a surprisingly scenic drive.
As much as I will always poke fun at them, the Great Plains have well-earned their name. They were indeed pretty Great. I still think about that drive across Kansas way more than I ever thought I would. It was gradual, grand, majestic, sweeping, empty, open, and somehow still incredibly surprising all at the same time.
Just like Prairie Journal.
Ferde Grofé: The Grand Canyon Suite
Speaking of places that have earned their name…
Though Route 66 is no longer an officially recognized US highway, it’s still a popular road trip route with many tourist destinations and worthwhile stops along the way. One of the most notable Route 66 detours is the Grand Canyon.
Route 66 cuts straight through the heart of Flagstaff, AZ. If you hop off of Route 66 at Flagstaff, it’s only about an hour or two drive north (or roughly 80 miles) until you reach the south rim of the Grand Canyon.
Ferde Grofé’s 1931 composition The Grand Canyon Suite is a piece in five movements, each with different styles, textures, and moods that musically portray the varied and awe-inspiring landscape and atmosphere of the Grand Canyon. The second movement (“The Painted Desert") is also a nod to the Grand Canyon’s eponymous neighbor, which runs from near the east end of Grand Canyon National Park and southeast into Petrified Forest National Park, spanning about 150 miles and practically hugging Route 66.
While I haven’t yet been to the Grand Canyon itself, I have been hiking and climbing in this part of the country a bunch over the years. What I like about the piece so much is how it very cinematically captures the vibe of exploring the great outdoors while out west – the serenity of watching the sunrise over the desert, the playful apprehension of hiking down into and around canyons, and the shock and awe of dealing with the unexpected weather changes that inevitably pop up while you’re out in nature.
The Grand Canyon was carved over millions of years by the Colorado River, and sits there at a whopping 277 miles long, 18 miles wide, and over 1 mile deep. The massive size and depth of the canyon means weather conditions can vary dramatically, even within different parts of the canyon. Which, they do. And they will. Even in the desert.
Case in point:
Back in high school, I went to Red Rock Canyon with my Mom. When we arrived at Red Rock Canyon, the park ranger briefly mentioned they were keeping an eye on some unusual weather patterns in the area, despite what looked to us like a crystal clear blue sky day. And from what my mom and I had read before arriving there that day, it only stormed in the canyon maybe one or two days each year, max.
Guess which day we’d chosen to go hiking.
Less than 10 minutes later, clouds had formed, lightning was everywhere, and we were ankle-deep in a flash flood.
So yeah, spoiler alert: Grofé did a good job with this one. Enjoy.
Andrew Lloyd Weber: Sunset Boulevard Suite
We reach the end of our Route 66 road trip in Santa Monica, California, a town just northwest of Los Angeles, and the setting of one of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s musicals: Sunset Boulevard.
Though I still haven’t made it out to Los Angeles myself, I spent a month in NYC this summer where I got to see the recent Sunset Boulevard revival on Broadway, aptly named Sunset Blvd. Just like the title differences between the two, the revival is a stripped down version of the original – so stripped down, in fact, that there is no set. The show still takes you back to the golden age of Hollywood through the only medium it needs: music.
The revival, like its predecessor, is based on the 1950 film of the same name starring Gloria Swanson. It is a story of faded fame, delusion, and obsession, as told through the relationship between a down-on-his-luck screenwriter trying to catch a break and a once-great silent film star trying to make a comeback and stay relevant in a new era of film.
US history is full of stories of folks heading west across the country in search of a better life. Route 66 itself grew to fame as Americans fled west for relief from droughts during the Dust Bowl in the 1930s, and earlier settlers booked it to California in the 1800s looking for gold. To this day, actors and actresses arrive in LA still looking to strike gold by making it big as Hollywood celebrities. Andrew Lloyd Weber’s musical, its recent revival, and the Sunset Boulevard Suite capture all the drama that comes with moving west to chase your dreams – the highest highs to the lowest lows.
Route 66 may have found its end both in Los Angeles and as an officially-recognized US highway, but America’s “Mother Road” has fully embedded itself in our country’s history, leaving behind far more than retro traffic signs and touristy tchotchke shops. Countless classical pieces take inspiration from stops along the historic superhighway, and its influence extends into other genres, too.
And like the millions of folks who have traveled west on Route 66, the end of one journey just means the start of another.
Whatever that journey is, just make sure you have the right playlist for it.
→ Still have some gas in your tank? Check out Kendall Todd’s interview with violinist Augustin Hadelich about his album, "American Road Trip".
