Richard Levesque

When I write, I usually picture my books unfolding like films, and a good movie needs a good soundtrack.

Since music figures pretty heavily into Jed Strait’s character and his adventures in The Blacktop Blues, I thought it would be great to offer you a soundtrack to go along with the book. If you want to head over to YouTube, you can get the whole playlist here.

So, here you go–

1. Bob Dylan: “Things Have Changed”
This song was used in the film Wonder Boys, but it strikes me as the perfect soundtrack song for a noir novel–following the story of someone who feels like he should care about things but is faced with a world where he’s disconnected from just about everything and can do nothing but react and survive, trying to stay ahead of the bullets that are bound to fly. If The Blacktop Blues was a movie, this would play over the opening credits.

2. Charlie Hightone & The Rock-Its: “Hangover Blues”
There are a few songs out there called “The Blacktop Blues” but when I was writing Chapter One and imagining Jed playing the song, I pictured it sounding a lot like this instead. When I listen to this song, it makes me think about how people would have reacted if it had come out in our world’s version of the 1950s, so it seems like a natural fit to drop it into the 1948 of The Blacktop Blues.

3. Alice Jayne: “Crazy”
The Gnarls Barkley song gets the Johnny Cash treatment in this cover by Alice Jayne. Before the end of Chapter One, Jed is convinced he’s losing his mind. What better way to accompany his crisis than with a rockabilly exploration of madness?

4. Buddy Holly: “Down the Line”
This early track by Buddy Holly does a beautiful job of capturing the urgency to move and to make it happen with four wheels and an engine, coupled with the energy of the song’s guitar and vocals. As Jed burns up the road in his Western journey towards the girl he’s lost, it’s easy to imagine this song playing on his Meteor’s AM radio.

5. Dwight Yokum: “A Thousand Miles from Nowhere”
This song slows things down a little and captures the feeling of the latter part of Jed’s journey west. He’s isolated in more ways than one, and while he’s not literally a thousand miles from nowhere, he certainly feels that way.

6. Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians: “Raymond Chandler Evening”
Hitchcock beautifully captures the feeling of a noir novel or film–strange occurrences, a feeling of disillusionment and disconnection, and the sense that something big and dark is lurking just around the next shadowy corner.

7. Fall Out Boy: “Jet Pack Blues”
This is a change of pace for this list, but the song fits nicely. You’ve got the jetpack reference, which is kind of obvious for dieselpunk. But there’s also the lost love, the rain, the dark coat…and all the big questions. It’s a world where nothing seems certain and not even a jetpack will get you where you need to be, so this song complements things well.

8. Warren Zevon: “Carmelita”
There isn’t any heroin use in The Blacktop Blues, but there is a character named Carmelita. In addition to that connection, I find this song to be an amazing look that the dark side of the California Dream–which seems to turn into the California Nightmare in most noir films and books. You’ve even got the reference to “pioneers” in this song, which fits nicely into the California mythos–although here, that image is significantly (and fittingly) distorted. Another plus is that Echo Park, referenced in the song, is very close to Dodger Stadium, which was built on the site of the Chavez Ravine neighborhood where Jed comes across Garcia Industries.

9. Gogol Bordello: “Through the Roof and Underground”
Jed Strait feels trapped in many instances in this book–both physically and on a more existential level. If it’s not people with guns and superior technology holding him at bay, it’s the uncanny feeling that things are not as they’re supposed to be. This song does a nice job of capturing those feelings of desperation and the need to do something–anything–to break free and find some measure of normalcy again.

10. Trio Los Panchos: “Perdida”
Perdida is a little dog Jed encounters. She may seem like a nice bit of background in the scenes where Jed is finding out more about Garcia Industries, but if you read to the end, you’ll find there’s more to Perdida than meets the eye.

11. Allah-Las: “Catalina”
This song is about loss and longing, and though its title references a woman named Catalina, it also invokes the island off the coast of California where key moments in the book take place.

12. Z Berg: “To Forget You”
It’s time for the closing credits. The mysteries have been solved and the bullets have flown. When the dust settles, it’s time for introspection and second guessing. Parts of this song’s narrative could apply more to Annabelle than to Jed, but that’s okay. It’s her story, too. When I first heard this song, it felt like something that should have been in a film soundtrack from the 1960s, so I couldn’t resist putting it here to round out the listening experience of The Blacktop Blues.

That’s it. The lights come up and the curtain comes down…until the sequel, of course.

Don’t have your copy of The Blacktop Blues yet? Grab it now!