On the Road (Map) Again...

The Shortest Distance Between Two Points Ain’t Always a Straight Line

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Presumably, all young musicians, eyeing success, dream of a tour bus and private jets to whisk them from town to town, gig to gig and into the arms of adoring fans everywhere.

To reach this level of travel, you see, is a convincing statement the artist has Made It.

Even if such things weren’t obvious, some stars rub it in by writing songs that contain city-to-city itineraries — melodic litanies of “places I rocked” that sorta throw it in the face of folks like me, as if to say, “Hey, you! I’ll bet your routine job there in Mundanity City, Kentucky, never requires you to travel — and certainly not in the fashion that we do!”

True.

It seems to me that Huey Lewis & the News’ “The Heart of Rock ‘n’ Roll” might be the purest example of rock-travel-as-celebration because, as the band giddily enthuses, Rock is omnipresent and, well, it rocks — and Huey and the boys will lead the way!

H-Man dedicates intro verses to both New York and Los Angeles for their gargantuan Rockness, then adds:

“DC, San Antone and the Liberty Town, Boston and Baton Rouge /
Tulsa, Austin, Oklahoma City, Seattle, San Francisco, too …”

Yes, these are all cities whose hearts pump steadily with rock & roll, according to H and the Newsboys. Funnily, they include two cities in Oklahoma but there’s no mention of Chicago, Memphis or New Orleans. As a failed musician, I played in Tulsa and Oklahoma City. Nice enough places, but I wouldn’t position either of them as communities whose musical hearts beat more substantially than Memphis, Chicago and New Orleans.

Weird.

Later, almost as a fading afterthought, the song concludes with shoutouts to Cleveland and Detroit. One gets the feeling that album producer Jim Gaines hit the control room mic and said, “Get back in the vocal booth, Huey! I need you to punch-in an out-tag and at least add Cleveland and Detroit. You leave those out and you’ll sound like a fool!”

“I’m tired,” Huey said. “Fans will get the general idea.”

“Goddamn it, Huey!” Gaines was insistent and added, “Cleveland’s where the Rock Hall of Fame is located, and Detroit gave us Mitch Rider, the MC5, Ted Nugent, Bob Seger, the Stooges, Grand Funk, Rare Earth and the White Stripes.”

Huey sighed, put his headphones back on and ducked into the soundproofed chamber. “You’re right,” he conceded. “I’ll do it. I will point out, though, that we’re recording this in 1984. The White Stripes aren’t going to exist for 13 more years.”

James Brown’s high energy “Livin’ in America” is a classic of the music-as-roadmap form. He calls out New Orleans (New Orleans!), Detroit City (Detroit City!), Dallas, (Dallas!), Pittsburgh, PA (Pittsburgh, PA!), New York City (New York City!), Kansas City (Kansas City!), Atlanta, (Atlanta!), Chicago, and LA. The parenthetical repetition signifies where background vocalists add James’s enthusiasm for each town.

(The song’s structure is such that there’s no time for the vocal “echo” effect on the Chicago and LA references, but the listener never feels as though those cities are being slighted. Such is the magnetism of The Godfather of Funk.)

As with many of his colleagues, Brown likes to include communities in Pennsylvania because, by utilizing the state’s PA abbreviation, he sets up an easy rhyme with the long-A sound. Not sure why it has to be Pennsylvania, though, which they all seem to prefer, particularly Pittsburgh.

Why not Georgia? I can hear John Mellon Cougarcamp invoking, “We’re rockin’ Atlanta, GA!”) or Iowa (“Rollin’ through Dubuque, IA!”).

It’s mysterious, is all I can say.

Then we have Steve Miller’s “Rock’n Me.” The second verse, which is then repeated later in the song, explains:

“I went from Phoenix, Arizona
All the way to Tacoma
Philadelphia, Atlanta, L.A.
Northern California (where the girls are warm) …”

BUT! It turns out the song’s protagonist isn’t a touring star! He’s just a guy who’s “lookin’ real hard … tryin’ to find a job” so he can make his “sweet baby” happy.

Fair enough. But what Steve should have been looking for was a travel agent.

Consider his goofy itinerary!

Why wouldn’t Steve go to Tacoma on the same leg of the trip that started in Phoenix and goes through LA and Northern California — rather than veering east out of Phoenix on a circuitous route through Philly and Atlanta before going all the way back to Los Angeles and only then due north?!

Makes no sense!

Plus, Steve, I guarantee the girls are warmer in SoCal, Atlanta and Phoenix than they are in NorCal. So I’d add that, if one of the jobs Steve is looking for in the song is as a meteorologist, he’s out of luck.

Chuck Berry and the Rolling Stones both covered the cartographically excellent “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66.” The lyrics describe a variety of settlements one passes following the titular and meandering road from Chicago to Los Angeles.

One can imagine the entitled debauchery experienced by Chuck or Mick and Keef as they wound their way through “St. Louie, Missouri /

Oklahoma City looks oh so pretty /

You’ll see Amarillo and Gallup, New Mexico /

Flagstaff, Arizona, don’t forget Winona /

Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino.”

Peculiarly, there are no allusions to intriguing places on Route 66 such as Albuquerque and Tulsa, either of which is probably more fun than Gallup, Winona or Barstow. Just for example, the population of Barstow is about 25,000, so the entire town would have to turn out to fill a minimal venue the Stones would deign to play.

Maybe it comes down to the fact that the tune rocks even though it wasn’t written by Chuck and/or the Stones. The songwriter was Bobby Troup, and we can’t ask him because he’s dead. But Troup is the wild card that makes this whole exercise really interesting.

At least to me and my wife Eileen.

Y’see, Bobby Troup also starred as kindly but brilliant emergency room physician Joe Early on Emergency!, an action/adventure/medical/firefighting TV show that aired from 1972-79 — and which is currently in heavy rerun rotation locally.

We try never to miss an episode!

The cast also includes Randolph Mantooth as paramedic Johnny Gage* and Kevin Tighe as his partner Roy DeSoto** as well as famous singer Julie London, who portrayed ER nurse Dixie McCall at the hospital where Roy and Johnny routinely delivered mangled and burned victims for Joe and Dixie to repair.

So, yes, Dr. Joe Early also had a career as an esteemed composer (and it’s worth noting he wrote “Snootie Little Cutie,” a tune recorded by Frank Sinatra during his stint in the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra but that is otherwise seldom covered by artists today for some reason. Maybe it’ll yet pop up on a Radiohead B-side).

And, finally, perhaps the ultimate musical travel song is Johnny Cash’s arrangement of “I’ve Been Everywhere” — albeit that the narrative seems to be describing the carefree meanderings of a career transient back in the day when tramps had a certain charm lending itself to the chronicling of raconteurs.

The tune was written in 1959 by an Australian country singer named Geoff Mack and originally named dozens of towns Down Under. Cash’s version cleverly name-drops about 100 mostly North American cities, which the artist delivers in the tongue-twisty, top-speed fashion of a trigger-happy nut with an AR-15 in an upper floor Vegas hotel room overlooking the Strip.

I can only find one video of Cash performing the song live, and that was in a trading-verses format with singer Lynn Anderson. Not surprising, really. You’d need the lung power of a Coast Guard deep-sea rescue diver to sing this song with any regularity.

It’s rumored that, when the song became a hit, Cash’s management team felt he should capitalize by including it in performances. Cash, though, was a heavy smoker (see above — and look at those boots!), and the effort to nuance the syllable-crammed lyrics became so frustrating that, after a fan incessantly requested the tune during a concert, the singer shot him — just to watch him die.

And with that — and the President’s gas prices making air travel less affordable than ever — let me suggest that you use a car or van this vacation season. Maybe take Route 66, or go from Phoenix, Arizona, all the way to Tacoma, or turn up the sound system and groove to Huey’s backbeat rhythm that really, really drives you wild. If you go to Pittsburgh, make sure you add “PA” after it when you say it.

“Mom, I really need to go to the bathroom!”

“Hold on, honey, we’re nearly to Dubuque, IA, and they have a Cracker Barrel Old Country Store where we can relieve ourselves and enjoy peering delightedly at all sorts of tourist tchotchkes!”

Hopefully, your vacation will wind up in Northern California. As Mark Twain apocryphally said, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco — but at least the girls were warm!”

*Maybe 30 years ago, my wife Eileen and I were visiting our friend Tim Choate in Los Angeles. Tim was best man at our wedding and an actor of some success; he’d starred on Broadway in Da for an extended run, had major roles in films like The Europeans, Ghost Story and Deaf-Con 4, and was a cult favorite for his recurring part as Zathrus on the hit TV show Babylon 5.

Tim, Eileen and I were on a grocery store run one afternoon when we spied Randolph Mantooth in the wine section. Eileen was mildly amused in that “there’s a celebrity” way, but Tim and I were fascinated! You’d think Tim’s relative status would preclude his being at all impressed by Mantooth, but you’d be wrong.

Because, here was Emergency! paramedic Johnny Gage in the flesh! And that amused us.

As Mantooth made his way through the market, Tim and I trailed behind him like detectives shadowing a criminal. Occasionally, Tim and I would see Eileen at the far end of an aisle. She was engaged in pushing the grocery cart through the store and doing the actual shopping.

When out paths crossed, she’d sigh and shake her head at the sight of two 40-year-old men going full fanboy over the reality that Randolph freakin’ Mantooth shopped in grocery stores just like you and me!

**Many believe the height of Kevin Tighe’s accomplishments was portraying the desperate bar owner in Roadhouse, but you ain’t seen nothin’ until you watch him in the Season Two Emergency! episode titled “Zero,” where he had to put on a safety demonstration for a noon-time local TV news broadcast. The comic relief of the teleplay was that Roy was extremely nervous to be on camera, bumbling about until a crew member accidentally started a fire on set! At that moment, of course, Roy and Johnny hopped into hyper-efficient mode and saved the day.

It’s a magnificent performance, and one cited as a prime inspiration for Roger Allam’s 2010 Olivier Award-winning portrayal of Sir John Falstaff in Henry IV Parts 1 & 2 at the Globe Theater in London. Not kidding.

In fact, in the image above, you only think that’s Roger Allam as Falstaff. In fact, that’s Kevin Tighe as Roy Gage in the dynamic “Zero” rescue scene.

OK, that’s it! And if you’ve read this entire thing, it’s perfecting fine if you think, “How the fuck did we get from Huey Lewis to Kevin Tighe and Roger Allam?”