Being part of a touring band can be exhilarating, a nonstop string of gigs in a new town every night. But at the start, the material rewards are often slight: Long hours far from home for barely enough dough to pay for gas to make it to the next club, while coping with broken drive shafts, lousy food and surly club owners. Yet generation after generation, this is how bands often begin their journey, inevitably leading to a bounty of vivid memories and hard-won experiences that can’t be acquired any other way. Here are a few songs that put us in the driver’s seat of the tour van.
Alison Krauss, “Endless Highway”:
Counting the heartaches with every passing mile.