By Deborah Desilets
This past Holiday season found me traveling north to be with family. This time the Florida to Michigan trek was to need record time–I was getting out of the gate late. Pulling out maps and googling places I rediscovered the Dixie Highway and the US Route 23, or US Hwy 23. Yes, this was perfect it was the shortest route through the heartland crossing 8 states and continuing 1435.17 miles from Jacksonville, Fl to Macinknaw Michigan. A little over halfway home, I hit Kentucky and things got interesting; the road signs said it all, I had found the missing link in my quest for America’s Routes in music: I was on the Country Music Highway 23. Googling this road; I found a web site: https://cmh23.com/our-story. Learning about the new non-profit, CMH23, that “has been developed to help promote the stars of the future” I thought what a great find. Now this road trip personal; each place held special for their stars: like a museum in Paintsville, an auditorium in Prestonsburg and family homes on display.
I was grateful for the numerous road signs of this stretch of the Dixie Highway that informed me of the elite and prestigious past this road has held for America’s country music. Dwight Yoakam, a favorite son from East Kentucky sums it up in his song “Readin’ Riting and Route 23”. From his song, you gather the perils and the pitfalls of going north on Route 23. Heading north was the way out of the poverty that had mired Kentucky and her lowlands. The poverty that would be shown to America yin Lorretta’ Lynns Story, Coal Miners Daughter. And again, sung about by Dwight Yoakam in his song ” A Thousand Miles from Nowhere”…. and there’s no place I want to be.” Boy did that lyric strike at my lonely heart! As I was making my way home, I experienced anew the high lonesome sound of East Kentucky.
I was traveling on HWY 23 the very birthplace of loneliness; where the long and winding road of longing that leads you from the back the beyond actually is. I was driving through the heart and soul of East Kentucky sound. From Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass to Billy Ray Cyrus, Chris Stapleton, Ricky Skaggs and ‘Patty Loveless. This was their homeland that birthed a most distinguished sound. Even Stephen Foster was affected by this place and penned “My Kentucky Home”. Kentucky, a place whose name was first written as “A State of Kentucky” is when translated from Algonquin, “The Land of our Fathers Father”. This comes alive with the story of its music. And I recall how much father loved bluegrass music and that high lonesome sound; being from the north but living in Florida.
Driving the highway, following the trail of these musicians –marked by signs at each point of passage — was a privilege: finally, the place, the faces and the sound connected with the low wind that whines in the valley, the echo against the high hills and flowing scenes along red sandy banks. Surely it is the music that rises high above a place known for its B-B-Q Capitol, the Kentucky Derby, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and the Highland Festivals. Finally, I was in the cauldron, between the hills, where the long, lonesome sound of Bill Monroe that my father loved so much was made timeless. This sound has had its effect in the sound and speed from hillbilly to hip-hop: the beat that flows through a heart that yearns for something cannot be beaten. the heart has a phrasing, a passage in timing and in cadence that lift love to extraordinary heights. Sounds of the heart that rise high and wide as the history of country music from the hollows of the lonely hills.
Kentucky is a place that has been a homeland to Germans, Scottish, Irish, and English immigrants for centuries. Although generally considered Southern, it is also geographically unique as it touches seven states and embraces many cultural influences from the Mid-West and Southern Appalachia. Kentucky’s culture is known to most as bourbon, horseracing and bluegrass is far more complex. Kentucky was the first Southern state to integrate its schools after the 1954 Brown v. Borad of education and was the first State to in the South to adopt the civil rights act.
As I drive through listening to these sounds on SPOTIFY and YOUTUBE I thank my lucky stars I found US HWY 23 on my road trip home. And as I push the pedal to the metal on these long curvaceous roads, I thank the man, the father of the Indy 500, who had the vision “to make neighbors of us all” with his Dixie Highway. Carl Graham Fisher laid out in 1916 a plan amongst the Governors of eight States to make a north/south route through the heartland of America “to secure our country was defensible” after he saw the superb roads in Germany and France; he vowed to get America out of the mud and his Dixie Highway was our way to success in WWII. I wonder how many people from Kentucky know how much this man worked to get them out of the mud and allow them a road out? And our country a defensible position? And a road for commerce that made “neighbors of us all” and united our country. Let’s all recall that united we stand; divided we fall. Cooperation was key in the making of the roads out of the mud. Where is cooperation today?