Music as Medicine

There is only one crucial measure of a roadtrip companion: taste in music. A soundtrack sets the tone for the trip, the rhythm of the ride. For me, my father is the gold standard of fellow travellers. His playlist includes tons of Elton John: Tumbleweed Connection and Madman Across the Water, most notably. Then there’s Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever. Cat Stevens’ Tea For The Tillerman. Joni Mitchell. The Beatles. The Stones. Clapton. It’s a soundtrack that traces my father’s wonder years through his early twenties: the songs that made the man. And it’s a hard soundtrack to beat.

Late last June, dad and I listened to that soundtrack as we drove from Boulder, Colorado to just outside Charlottesville, Virginia, where my folks have a house on a lake. It was just the two of us in a minivan for three days, and I enjoyed every minute of it: both as rare bonding time with my father, and as a short but sweet respite from my own four young kids. (As they say with kids, “The days are long and the years are short — but seriously, the days are super long.”) Wheeling across the blurred landscape of I-70 in summer, the songs turned hours into minutes and sent our hands out the windows to catch the wind. There was also plenty of car karaoke, as pitchy as you can imagine. I have a picture of my dad leaning into the drive as he belted out Petty’s defiant anthem I Won’t Back Down. But beneath all the pounding pianos and restless…