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Voices: An alternate path to South By Southwest


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Goin' places that I've never been
Seein' things that I may never see again
And I can't wait to get on the road again

Willie Nelson's ode to the road isn't just a song. It's a way of living.

Like many others, I've felt the call of the road throughout my life. Heading out on the highway is again on the rise — perhaps, in part because of throwback gas prices — with Americans setting records for miles traveled in 2015, according to the Department of Transportation.

More to explore than to riff on oil economics, I've joined three co-workers — Jim Lenahan and Patrick Foster, who produce Dad Rock, Paste BN's music podcast, and Managing Editor of Multimedia Steve Elfers — in cutting a swath across the U.S. headed south by southwest to absorb music, history, food ... and beer.

In destinations such as Asheville, N.C., Nashville, Memphis and Dallas, we're seeing the sights, diving into the local culture — especially music and music history — and documenting what we find on the way to the South By Southwest Festival in Austin.

Among our expected stops: The Country Music Hall of Fame, the Grand Ole Opry, Graceland, Sun Studios and Stax Records. In each city, I'll investigate a small, independent craft brewery, as these establishments have become local gathering places and residential points of pride.

Some of us will be bunking in a restored vintage 1964 Airstream, something that is conjuring up miles of memories from my childhood. As a teen growing up in Kansas, we'd pack up the camper, which rested atop my father's Ford pickup, and hit the road to see the haunting Mesa Verde cliff dwellings, ride the narrow gauge train and pan for gold in the old mining towns of southwestern Colorado. Other times, with our boat in tow, we sped off to water ski and swim in the crystal clear lakes surrounded by the Ozark mountains.

In college, I continued my road-tripping ways. My fraternity brothers and I took joyrides to Louisville and South Bend, Ind., just to watch our beloved University of Kansas Jayhawks men's basketball team.

Music often awaits at the end of the road. For another college road trip, a carful of us drove all night to attend a Rolling Stones outdoor show at the University of Colorado's Folsom Field. Years later, my friend John and I made a beeline from the Ozarks for a Dire Straits concert at the Oklahoma City Zoo Amphitheatre. A Bruce Springsteen performance in St. Louis led another pal, Tim, and I to traverse Missouri.

Jack Kerouac wrote in On the Road that "the road is life," and on one of my Paste BN assignments two decades ago I met a college professor who turned that dictum into a course called The Majic Bus. The professor, noted U.S. historian Douglas Brinkley, took his students on the road in a sleeper bus across the country to see historic spots and meet famous writers, politicians and musicians including Jimmy Carter, Toni Morrison, Kurt Vonnegut and Maya Angelou.

They read Mark Twain alongside the Gateway Arch and considered William Faulkner while exploring Oxford, Miss. I so enjoyed meeting him and his students that the next year, I spent several weeks on the road with them chronicling their travels.  "The road unshackles the American psyche like nothing else," Brinkley wrote in a 1993 book about his inaugural American Odyssey course.

My wife, Julie, recently offered the observation that before you marry someone, you should go on vacation with them. I unwittingly followed that practice nearly 20 years ago by asking her if she would like to fly to Kansas City, visit my parents and then cruise west to see the Rockies, a sight she had yet to experience.

Our swing through Colorado included a stay at The Stanley Hotel, the inspiration for Stephen King's The Shining, and a foray through Estes Park, a place my family visited years ago. Those adventures deepened our bond, and I proposed to her on a return trip to Colorado Springs.

We enjoyed our road trip so much that a few years ago, Julie and I flew to California and met my parents, who were traveling in their RV, for an expedition up the coast to Seattle where I celebrated my birthday in the Space Needle.

Julie won't be my traveling partner on this trip, but she will be a welcome sight at the end of the road.

Snider is a Paste BN technology writer. Follow him and his time on the road on Twitter: @MikeSnider