Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road' Playlist

The Road is Life: Groove Juice Special

Jan 14, 2024

The only truth is music. - Jack Kerouac

A year ago today, early in the morning, I threw an overnight bag into Minivan Halen and started the 8.5 hour trek to New Hampshire to ambush my best friend at her surprise 40^th birthday party. I had only driven to New Hampshire one other time on my own. For those of you, most of you, who probably don’t know, I didn’t start driving until well into my adult years. I was 33 when I finally took some driving lessons and got my license. It was more of an anxiety thing than a skill thing that I needed to overcome. The not-so-gentle push of divorce was what finally forced it, but I’m so thankful. Driving was a freedom I had no idea how bad I needed. It opened so many doors and opportunities for me. I didn’t really understand what I was missing until I finally had it. You won’t ever catch me doing any inner-city driving but you will find me in the mountains and on the highways that lead to my favorite places and people. Making up for lost time.

I met Jess in college. An art school on the northern Massachusetts coast that neighbored Salem. Best of all, it took a mere 5 minutes to spill out the front door of my apartment on Winter Street and hoof it to the nearest beach.

New England beaches are different though. Dane Street Beach wasn’t even really the ocean, it was more like an inlet or some shit. I’m not sure. It had lapping waves, like a vast saltwater lake. It was fall/winter when I was spending my days up there but I was there at that beach a lot anyway.

Other beaches required some driving to reach. Jess always drove.

One was, I recall, the most unbelievable thing I had ever seen up to that point. A rocky beach, cliffs more than high enough that you’d die if you fell from one and just miles and miles of ocean crashing hard against it all. Stumbling upon it, after a half mile tramp through woods, it felt magical. Kind of like discovering where the dinosaurs all might be hiding after all. I fell in love. Beaches in winter were magnificent. The sound of the waves juxtaposed with the biting New England cold: it confused my brain in a relaxing way and it made me want to write. Made me want to paint. Made me want to understand everything.

Art school up in New England is where and when, coincidently enough, I read Jack Kerouac’s, On the Road. Somewhere between Bukowski’s Ham on Rye and Diary by Chuck Palahniuk. On the Road was bleeding with the yearning for wild freedom, nonconformity, and searching for meaning and authenticity. As a young person floating out in the world alone, far away from home, for the first time, these were things that resonated with me right alongside my moody-ass screamo music, dark eyeliner and my tattered Chuck Taylors walking me through the cold, wet snow.

After spending a long overdue couple of hours in the evening with Jess and her family, the very next morning I had to point my van right back home again. It was a lot of driving but it was worth it. After a quick stop for a coffee at Dunks and filling up my gas tank, I pulled up Google Maps so I could figure out how to even find my way back home. I noticed then that the route had me skimming close to Lowell, Massachusetts and it made me recall learning recently that Jack Kerouac was from Lowell. I didn’t know that as I read his book a mere 30 minutes away from his hometown 20 years prior while at school. Lowell is also where Serge’s dad was living. Something else I didn’t know as I was discovering Marah the same 30 minutes away in 2004. Life is so weird, so random.

I decided I was going to take the detour, visit Kerouac’s grave on my way home. I found the coordinates online and punched them into my GPS. Lowell was bigger than what I was expecting. My stomach tightened as I realized it was a little too city-like for my anxious driving brain’s comfort, but it was too late to turn back. I was in it. So I just kept going, jaw clenched, white knuckles or not. I found the cemetery in no time at all, the GPS actually led me right to his bones.

The weather that day was a punch in the face. I got out and the gusts whipped my hair in front of my face over and over again. My hair was relentless no matter how many times I scraped it from my eyes. The cold stung. I threw my hood up but it really didn’t help much. I walked over to Jack’s markers. A bigger one inscribed with “The Road is Life” and a smaller one set flat into the ground, shared with his third wife, Stella, who outlived him by 30 years. This one was surrounded by trinkets related to him, things people felt like he might appreciate in death. An empty bottle of white wine and a lighter. Pens, pencils, some stuck down into the frozen ground through handwritten notes, others just laying there like they just fell out of some third-graders’s schoolbag.

I never think to bring anything.

I sent some photos to Serge to show him where I had gone and he was excited about it. He also, very quickly, joked that I should go visit his dad. They hadn’t had a relationship for most of his life. I’d never met him, of course. I looked around at the surrounding scape and wondered how close he was just then to where I was standing. I wondered how often, if ever, he thought of Serge. If he talked about him with other people warmly. If he was sad about the way it all went down. I sensed there had to be sadness. But people surprise me more and more so probably not. I’ll never know for sure.

After about 10 minutes of googling Kerouac fun facts, messing around with photos and texting with Serge I had had enough of the cold and slid myself back into my van, cranked the heat and drove home.

Serge’s dad died 2 weeks later.

A long time living ghost turned ghost ghost.

His name was Serge too.

So, the playlist? If I’m being completely honest, this playlist is not at all my own original idea. But it was just kind of randomly thrown into my orbit via a random article the other day when I went to Google to search something. Who really knows if it was their original idea either. I doubt it but I was quite intrigued and felt like it was a good fit for these playlist posts I intend to do more often. Worth the share. So give it a listen, let me know what you think!? Let me know if you’ve read the book? Let me know if you’ve spent any time in New England?! I miss it there a lot.

I would pair this playlist with cooking a nice dinner for you and your boo. It reminds me so much, aside from maybe any Beethoven, of what the soundtrack might sound like to all the nights Serge and I have spent slicing and dicing and talking and laughing through this recipe for Thai stir fry.

If you really want to go the extra mile, make yourself a mezcal margarita to honor Jack Kerouac himself. Allegedly, his drink of choice.

Rub the rim of a glass with lime, then dip in salt. Fill glasses with ice.
Muddle jalapeno and cilantro in a shaker (both optional, but c’mon) and add ice.
Add mezcal, orange liqueur (triple sec), fresh lime juice, and sweetener.
Shake well and pour over the ice.
Serve with lime!

Cheers!

Spotify Link: The Road is Life: Groove Juice Special

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Ornithology - Charlie Parker
Donna Lee - Charlie Parker
Lover Man - Billie Holiday
A Fine Romance - Billie Holiday
Fidelio, Op. 72: Overture - Ludwig van Beethoven
Manana (Is Soon Enough for Me) - Peggy Lee
Central Avenue Breakdown - Lionel Hampton
The Hunt (Rocks ‘N’ Shoals) - Dexter Gordon
Sweet Adeline - The Mellomen
Cement Mixer - Slim Gaillard
Grove Juice Special, Pt. 2 - Slim Gaillard & Bam Brown
Grove Juice Special - Slim Gaillard
Congo Blues - Red Norvo
Deep Purple - Glenn Miller Orchestra
Lester Leaps In - Lester Miller
Moon Dreams - Miles Davis
West End Blues - Louis Armstrong
Gator Tail - Part 1 - Cootie Williams
Gator Tail - Part 2 - Cootie Williams
I Like My Baby’s Pudding - Wynonie Harris
Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop - Lionel Hampton
Mambo Jambo - Perez Prado
Mambo De Chattanooga - Perez Prado
Mambo No. 8 - Perez Prado
Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee - Sticks McGhee & His Buddies
Shorty’s Got to Go - Lucky Millinder

Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road' Playlist

The Road is Life: Groove Juice Special

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