Kennedys – Songs Of The Open Road

What could be more American than the open road?. The concept was compelling enough to persuade Pete and Maura Kennedy to drop their usual emphasis on originals and focus on material that enjoys heavy rotation in their van as they roll from show to show. If there’s a theme to this playlist, it’s not tempo. They treat Gram Parsons’ apocalyptic “Sin City” as a dreamy waltz, and crank it up a bit on the Byrds’ “Eight Miles High”, complete with Coltrane-inflected twelve-string solo. References to travel crop up overtly on Jimmy Webb’s “Galveston” and Gene Clark’s “Gypsy Rider”, but more inferentially on “I’m On My Way”, with its premonitions of nearing “Canaan land”, and Nanci Griffith’s “Late Night Grande Hotel”, the perfect closer for pulling up to the Red Roof Inn after an all-night haul.