Hit the road

Hey there,
as promised, here's the link to the Roller Derby Soundlides show. I'm really looking forward to shooting them some more as I didn't really get the pix I wanted. Unfortunately I had to get it for this week. Oh well, better luck next time.

Anyways, I'm leaving here in a few hours to Washington Newspaper Publisher Associations' annual convention in Yakima where I'm a guest speaker this year. So with traveling on my mind I thought I'd pass on a little list of some of my favorite music I like to take on the road with me.

I usually like to keep it kind of mellow when driving long distances (this one's a five hour trek), I also usually flip through the local public channels and NPR when driving. Of course now that I have satellite radio in the car (and playoff baseball on the air tonight) I may not get to these, but they'll likely end up in the car just the same.

• Ryan Adams & the Cardinals — Cold Roses
This is easily one of my favorite albums of the last few years. It's a double disc and both are different, yet cohesive as a whole — Disc one is a little more laid back while Disc two rocks a bit more. This is some great road music as the feel just has you cruising. It's called alt-country, but it's just cool. If you dig kinda earthy sounding bands this is a must. I really like Adams a lot, and this is probably his best album (and he has a lot for a guy whose only been putting stuff out for 8 years).

• Howlin Wolf — The Definitive Collection
I'm not a huge fan of best-of collections, but with a lot of these old blues guys their catalog is so scattered it's really good way to get a good taste of what they do. And this really is a defintive collection of his career. Not your average blues man. He was a Chicago blues, electric blues guy but was a lot more groovy than someone like Muddy Waters.


• Miles Davis — In a Silent Way
You say Miles and you just think cool and this one is very cool, in a funky blue hue. This was one of his first experiments in jazz fusion, creating a psychadelic laid back jazz sound with spaced out eleectric pianos and guitars and squeeks and squawks from the master.




• The Beatles — white album
As anyone who knows me knows, I love the Beatles. I dremed as a kid of owning a radio station called KBTL, all Beatles, all the time. That never happened obviously. This was the last Beatles album I bought as I was in the process of buying them all when I was in high school. What a great finale for me! It is such a dense and exhilarating experience to jump from songs about animals and deserts to tunes like Helter Skelter and Revolution. Great, great (double) album. Easily in my all-time top 10.


• Hayden — Elk Lake Serenade
This was a great find. My wife heard this playing at Easy Street Records in Seattle a few years back and picked up the CD, which had just come out that week. Thus began out love affair with the very reclusive (and very Canadian) Hayden. This is the last record he put out, though we've been hearing for the last two years that another is on the way. This is a very different kind of record with him playing a lot of different instruments. Very mellow. It bounces right along. Light-hearted stuff is fun and the poigniant stuff can bring a tear if you're listening. Along with Cold Roses, this one is one of my recent favorites of the last few years.