Fuel For The Open Road: Winners of the Lucinda contest & double driving mix
You guys selected some wonderful songs for my Lucinda Williams CD giveaway contest, which asked for tunes that you like to listen to out on the open road.
I’ve scouted out the songs I didn’t have, listened to every one you listed, and compiled my favorites into a double-disc driving mix. I had a hard time narrowing it down onto two discs – thank you to everyone who suggested something.
There were several that I thought I wouldn’t like but did — your suggestions combine for an unstoppable mix with a distinctly “dusty pick-up truck” feel, apropos for a long roadtrip. Giving in to the seduction of the great West, some of this stuff is quite a bit more twangy than anything else you’re ever likely to hear on this site, but the mood grabbed me and I went with it. And it works for the occasion.
FUEL FOR THE OPEN ROAD
. . . pop this baby in, each set fits onto a CD. Literally makes my fingers twitch towards the car keys.
DISC ONE [ZIP FILE]
Life On A Chain – Pete Yorn
Another Travelin’ Song – Bright Eyes
On The Hood – Matt Mays and El Torpedo
Life Is A Highway – Tom Cochrane
Fill Me Up – Shawn Colvin
Drown – Son Volt
Let It Ride – Ryan Adams
Misty Mountain Hop – Led Zeppelin
Monster Ballads – Josh Ritter
Beautiful Disaster – Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers
Indiana Wants Me – R Dean Taylor
Right in Time – Lucinda Williams
Train To Jackson – Jeffrey Foucault
The Golden Age – Beck
Where There’s A Road – Robbie Fulks
Learning To Fly – Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
Wiser Time – The Black Crowes
Born To Run – Bruce Springsteen
DISC TWO [ZIP FILE]
Where The Streets Have No Name – U2
Blue Canoe – Blue Mountain
Around The Bend – Creedence Clearwater Revival
Highway 101 – Social Distortion
My Winding Wheel – Ryan Adams
Long Vermont Roads – Magnetic Fields
I Want To Be Your Driver (Chuck Berry cover) – Nic Armstrong
Counterclockwise – Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers
Finest Worksong – R.E.M.
Golden – My Morning Jacket
Revelator – Gillian Welch
Since I’ve Been Loving You – Led Zeppelin
Gone Wanderin’ – Jackie Greene
Picture Book – The Kinks
Paris, Texas – Ry Cooder
Going Back To Georgia – Nanci Griffith & Adam Duritz
Walking In Memphis – Marc Cohn
Pink Moon – Nick Drake
Midway Park – Whiskeytown
Rearviewmirror – Pearl Jam
Yeah, last one on there is all me. Best driving song ever, in my book. And I threw in a few other old friends into the mix from my archives.
Here are my four randomly-selected winners of that contest, literally drawn from a hat (okay, bowl) by my charming husband, who loved having all that power:
Greg
Dee
Oxypoet
Leo M.
Congrats to the 4 winners! Please email me your address and I’ll mail out your copy of the re-released Car Wheels On A Gravel Road once we thaw out here. Y’all should be proud of the mix you guys assembled. Let’s all try not to get a speeding ticket.
Name: Heather Browne
downloading now, thank you Heather. Now all I need is to plan a road trip.
Kevin
kevinstl — January 17, 2007 @ 8:10 am
Not saying that I could come up with a better mix….but Tom Petty “Running Down a Dream” is quite possibly the greatest driving song of all time. I have trouble not driving 100mph when this tune comes on….
“…I rolled on as the sky grew dark
I put the pedal down to make some time
Theres something good waitin down this road
Im pickin up whatever is mine…”
Andrew — January 17, 2007 @ 9:12 am
I forgot to send in my reply to this contest — I was thinking of “Road Trippin” by RHCP — Yet, I was stoked to see PY opening disk one. “Golden Road” from the westerns EP would have been another good one…
You’ll have to have another contest for another road trip mix, so we can collect them all, you know, for those REALLY long road trips.
this blog is truly epic. thank you, thank you, thank you, and so on, ad infinitum.
ali — January 17, 2007 @ 10:28 am
How weird! I was going to ask whether you had a driving playlist… now I’ll just download these and up them to my mp3 player in the hope that I pass my test this month!
Thank you!
leavingfootprintsinthesand — January 17, 2007 @ 10:29 am
What about Golder Earring – Radar Love ?
Or just about anything from ZZ Top
Anonymous — January 17, 2007 @ 10:45 am
another home run mix from heather…
i’m sitting in my cubicle staring at my computer screen, but all i see is the open road in front of me!
kristen — January 17, 2007 @ 10:58 am
These are really great. One change was I took off that Bright Eyes song, because he is absolutly fucking rubbish, and replaced it with that Damnwells song you posted last week. Fucking awesome mixes though!
Anonymous — January 17, 2007 @ 11:06 am
ha! i came over here to put in the “Runnin Down a Dream” comment, but it looks like Andrew beat me to it.
I also like “Traveling Riverside Blues” as the Zep tune
…and why not double up on the PJ: MFC? Gone? EV’s sez they have plenty of driving songs….
Anonymous — January 17, 2007 @ 12:24 pm
I already posted about Robbie Robertson’s Somewhere Down the Crazy River. That’s my open road song.
But I dare anyone to deny that the world’s best pedal-to-the-metal driving song is Ten Years After’s live version of I’m Going Home from the Woodstock soundtrack. 12 minutes of beat-crazy hard-driving boogy woogie/rockabilly crazy-ass music.
And Heather, you’re getting better and better! Zipping these files (and earlier ones) is fantastic!
Happy New Year!
Dan — January 17, 2007 @ 1:24 pm
yeah, keep it up and you’ll all get a Vol. 3
heather — January 17, 2007 @ 3:13 pm
Thanks for the great mix. I’ve been listening to it all day and will add this to the road trip mix on my iPod. Very very good mix.
Stephen K. — January 17, 2007 @ 3:58 pm
fabulous list, but sadly I cannot load it on to my computer for reasons unknown.
kneedeepinthesea — January 17, 2007 @ 7:54 pm
You ROCK! Now if I can dig my car out from the snow, I’ll go for a drive…
Jeff C. — January 17, 2007 @ 10:56 pm
Hi, can you put up a full size picture of that road photograph…that was pretty!
Anonymous — January 18, 2007 @ 7:34 pm
thank you for doing this. even though i wasn’t a winner, dammit i felt like one for participating.
kingseyeland — January 18, 2007 @ 9:52 pm
Two years ago it was 7 hours to Montreal for PJ. Last years 6 hours to Nantucket.
26 hours (got to drive back home) in two years. I’ve been worked on some road mixes.
I missed the original thread and I am late into the game on this one.
But some songs that served me well:
On The Road Again — Willie Nelson
Going Mobile — The Who
Running Down a Dream — Petty (I am just lending my voice to the chorus for this one.)
No Sleep til Brooklyn — Beastie Boys
Already Gone — The Eagles
Under the Milky Way — The Church (good at night)
In a Big Country — Big Country
Lawyers, Guns and Money — Warren Zevon
Let’s Go — The Cars
In The Aeroplane Over the Sea — Neutral Milk Hotel
Six Months in a Leaky Boat — Ted Leo
(the last two should be paired together)
szg — January 18, 2007 @ 9:52 pm
kingseyeland, you WERE a winner in my book.
(i’m good enough, i’m smart enough, and doggone it…)
heather — January 18, 2007 @ 9:58 pm
i meant to post this earlier, but this is a great mix for driving or just listening to
j.d. — January 19, 2007 @ 7:25 am
I like that you added Social D to the list.
SINEDDIE — January 21, 2007 @ 10:16 am
Now that’s a GREAT mix !
Well done.
Samuel
Anonymous — January 31, 2007 @ 4:06 am
I’m embarking on my 3rd road trip this year, tomorrow. For each trip, I made a mix CD. Here are some of the songs that I enjoyed driving to.
“This Road I’m Travelling” by Mojave 3
“Gravel Road” by William Elliott Whitmore
“No Man’s Land” by Sufjan Stevens
“Sleeping on Roads” by Neil Halstead
“Homeward Bound” by Simon & Garfunkel
“Road Song Blues” by Gary Jules
“Later In Life Lift” by Death Vessel
“Hitch hiker” by Pickering Pick
“On The Road to Find Out” by Cat Stevens
“Wagon Wheel” by Old Crow Medicine Show
“Born on The Cusp” by the American Analog Set
“Simple Life” by Denison Whitmer
“Teacup Woozy” by Holopaw
“All of My Friends Have Been Replace With Cities” by Chris Bathgate
“Somewhere They Can’t Find Me” by Simon & Garfunkel
“Brand New Towns” by Robert Gomez
“Free as a Bird” by the Beatles
“New Morning” by Bob Dylan
“This is the Dream of Win & Regine” by Final Fantasy
“There’s a Hole in the Sky” by Gary Jules
… These are a few of the songs I picked up along the way. I love them all!! And they were great on my past road trips. Give them a listen if you can find them.
I’m working on finding more road trip songs this very moment.
I have two more road trips to take after this one. Which makes 5 this year.
I will have put between 17000 and 20000 miles of road trip on my Mazda Protege this year. All trips just to live, for the story, the beauty of the road, and the adventure.
Don’t talk about road trips. GO!
~Chris~
http://www.myspace.com/afraidofeverything
http://www.last.fm/user/blessuresgraves/
Anonymous — April 18, 2007 @ 8:16 am
heather-
is your mix still up for downloading? i tried clicking on the zip file and it said something along the lines of “this file/server is not found.” any chance i could still get this?
thanks- emily
Anonymous — May 7, 2007 @ 9:02 am
Hi Heather,
I’m a fairly regular reader but have spent the past year in Namibia, where the internet is too slow to download anything. Now that I’m back in the land of speedy internet I was hoping to be able to download these mixes, which I was really excited about when you first posted them. However, the links seem to be broken. If there’s any way to restore them, that would be lovely.
Thanks,
Nadine
Nadine — October 17, 2007 @ 5:51 pm
hey there…looks like an awesome set..the zip file isn’t working, anychance of reposting it??
Tom
Tom — April 15, 2008 @ 10:13 pm
I missed this one and it looks really good…is there a way to still get it. I’d love to roadtest it on an upcoming road trip.
Anonymous — August 7, 2008 @ 7:53 pm