Americana Highways/Bill Bentley Review of Mountain Roads & City Streets

Allan Wachs, Mountain Roads & City Streets. It might be more correct to call this vinyl pressing of Allan Wachs’ MOUNTAIN ROADS & CITY STREETS a reissue, but just for fun it’s going in the new release section. What hopefully will happen is that people will listen to these ten songs with totally fresh ears and discover one of the great American albums of folk-based music ever recorded. Wachs’ mixture of country-edged musical styles and a hard-eyed look at American culture hasn’t quite been equaled since its original release in 1979 on Wachs’ small independent label True Vine Records. When first heard 45 years ago, there weren’t a lot of other contemporary albums like it. With Wachs wandering up and down the West Coast highways, from Los Angeles’s wild-eyed metropolis to the rural wilderness of Oregon’s coast, the man was able to see what the country had been and what it was quickly turning into. With songs like “Adventures of the Invisible Dog” and “Least of My Strangers” bumping into “The Lord Will Provide” and “Traveling Light,” the musician was able to capture a shifting culture that hadn’t really found its real footing. Not that it has today, but with all the confusing elements of the world’s present craziness, it’s a unique occasion to hear from a singer-songwriter who was looking at America when an open-eyed wonder was a bit more possible. Hearing how Allan Wachs captured that time is something that won’t ever happen again. Listen and feel.

Bill Bentley/Bentley’s Bandstand

Americana Highways

12/22/23