Roadtrip Soundtrack The Trail US 1 · Side A
A trail down the singing highway
Roadtrip Soundtrack

Two lanes from the potato fields of Aroostook County to the end of the road in Key West — and somebody has written a song about every stretch of it. This is the music the road made: what rode its radio, who it raised, and what got written in its motels.

01
Chapter I

Where the Music Lives

The road’s music never needed a cathedral. It plays in a beach ballroom that seats 2,200 and still feels like a living room, in borrowed studios, on pavilion stages with two guitar cases and the sky for a ceiling. Show up on the right night and the whole county is a venue.

The tour bus outside the Casino Ballroom · Hampton Beach, NH
Guitars down between takes · the studio, New York
Two guitar cases on the pavilion stage · Steuben, ME
Chapter II

The Heyday Rode
the Airwaves

In 1937, when Route 1 was just eleven years old, Rudy Vallée — the Yale man the glee club turned down — had a national hit with the Whiffenpoof Song and the first radio variety show in America. The road and the radio grew up together: records going out over the air, neon going up over the motor courts, every car a front-row seat.

Background: “Broadcasting records over the radio,” 1940s · Archives of the Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle) · public domain
First page of the Whiffenpoof Song sheet music, published 1909.
The Whiffenpoof Song sheet music, the Winged Victory edition · Minnigerode, Pomeroy & Galloway, via DPLA · no known restrictions
The Astro Motel sign: a tall mid-century pylon with a ringed starburst crown against a deep blue sky.
Astro Motel sign, Fresno · John Margolies / Library of Congress · public domain
Station to station, north to south

Ride the dial →

VAN BUREN
Potato country, where “Spud Run” came from · Aroostook County, ME
MILBRIDGE
The Crown Vics’ stage, mid-load-in · Milbridge, ME
ST. AUGUSTINE
The Aloha sign, faded but standing · St. Augustine Beach, FL
MILE ZERO
The marker at the bottom of the road · Key West, FL
Chapter III

The Answer Song

Woody Guthrie wrote “This Land Is Your Land” on 43rd Street in New York, talking back to “God Bless America” — a song about the country’s roads, written beside the biggest one we had. The trail keeps two versions of it, and it keeps the argument going: a protest-song playlist that reaches from John Brown’s March, sung through the streets of Charleston in 1865, to whatever plays at the next march. The road has always carried songs that push back.

Background: Woody Guthrie, 1943 · Al Aumuller / New York World-Telegram & Sun · public domain
1865 print: the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Colored Regiment singing John Brown's March in the streets of Charleston.
“Marching on!” — the 55th Massachusetts in Charleston, 1865 · Library of Congress · public domain
Woody Guthrie's guitar named Leadbelly, on display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Guthrie’s “Leadbelly” guitar · Sam Howzit · CC BY 2.0
02
Chapter IV

Still Cutting Sides

It didn’t end with the heyday. The Sea Street Blues Band works the rooms around Eastport and calls its record Downeast Blues. Colie Brice followed the road from California to a small town in Downeast Maine. The Infamous Stringdusters met at Berklee, right on Route One, and took home a Grammy. And one summer night in 1967, a sixteen-year-old at the Jacksonville Coliseum watched Jimi Hendrix open for the Monkees. The needle never really lifts.

Two acoustics waiting their turn · the studio, New York
Wrens Row, where “Second Hand Man” plays over the junque · Wrens, GA
The hardest-working act on the road · “All My Pals Are Clowns,” Ardmore, PA
A1Spud RunPeter Evans & Vanessa Silberman
A2Lupin RagGregory Biss
A3Second Hand ManDrew Nugent
A4The Whiffenpoof SongRudy Vallée
A5This Land Is Your LandWoody Guthrie
A6Light of My LifeAlfred James Band
A7Fork in the RoadThe Infamous Stringdusters
NOW PLAYING Seven sides from the trail
Record photograph: Evan-Amos · public domain
Scroll to work the selector.
What the dial says
0 Stops on the soundtrack
0 The year the Whiffenpoof Song rode the radio
0 Years driving every mile to gather it
Every stop on the trail

The needle’s still
on the record.

The flip side is still out there

Heard something good on Route 1?

Walk the whole trail → Add one you remember
A band, a room, a song the road made — it belongs on the trail.