This week is the calm before the Thanksgiving weekend and Christmas and holiday season craziness for many of us. It might also include a road trip to visit family. This is the rate opportunity to enjoy some time that isn’t filled with holiday sights and sounds. That is, if you avoid the Christmas music takeover on streaming services or handful of novelty Thanksgiving songs everyone feels obligated to play this week.
To help keep things at a slightly calmer pace, here are a few easy goin’ tunes I alway keep on my road trip list.
“Texas Sun” by Khruangbin and Leon Bridges
The soulful voice and well-known name of Leon Bridges helped people discover this cool Texas-based band, Khurangbin (Cur-Ang-Bin) with a shoutout to vibe of the never-ending highways of my home state, but everyone can love it, too.
“Due South Theme” from Jay Semko
Remember the 90s show about the Canadian mountie and his deaf dog fighting crime in Chicago? I always thought it was a quirky, fun time and the soundtrack was nice and mellow. Jay Semko’s theme song with lyrics is calming no matter which direction you’re heading.
“Ramblin’ Man” by The Allman Brothers
You gotta have one good classic you can just sing along with and not care who knows. The Allman Brothers are always great for the inner nomad in all of us.
“Sleep Walk” by Joe Satriani
Santo and Johnny’ instrumental vintage is such a gorgeous tune, it’s hard for there to be a bad cover of it from The Ventures to Brian Setzer. We have an entire playlist devoted to this tune, and one of the really cool and straight forward versions comes from guitar great Joe Satriani.
“Gotta Be Movin'” by The Record Company
There might be time on the trip when you’re in need of a little motoring motivation, without resorting to full-on headbanging. The Record Company maintains the right amount of balance between laying back and moving forward with this one.
If you’re not ready to jump into the holiday season overload quite yet, enjoy some feel good, laid back and distinctively non-Christmas-y tunes to help you sit back and enjoy the ride. It will get crazy soon enough, believe me.
