Highway 61

A memoir

“William McKeen proves how much fun you can have in this life with a full tank of gas, some beer money and love of American music."
—Rick Bragg

"Rock authority, scholar and newly minted goold ol' boy when he feels like it, William McKeen doesn't even know how to be uninteresting, least of all on Highway 61."
—Tom Wolfe

"A trip as rich as the musical roots they explore en route."
—Curtis Wilkie, author of Dixie

From W.W. Norton & Company:

In Highway 61, a rollicking, bluesy, Dylan-worshipping book, Bill McKeen recounts his father-and-son 6,000-mile road trip down the length of Highway 61 through some of the most diverse and musically fertile land in America.

As a long-distance divorced father, Bill watched his son, Graham, grow up in glimpses during summers, holidays and long weekends. With 800 miles between them, Bill spent a lot of time on the road, making monthly round trips between Florida and Indiana. Now Graham is a freshman at Bill’s alma mater, Indiana University, and he’s only getting older and more independent. Bill decides to take Graham for one big, granddaddy of a trip—from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico along Highway 61, the legendary highway of the blues. In cheap motels and smoky bars, with obscure bluesmen and barnstorming guitar heroes, among insufferable Yuppies and those just getting by, Bill searches for an epiphany to define their relationship.

He wants to show his son parts of the magnificent country that he's never seen, to take him down the hometown streets of Bob Dylan and Mark Twain, to stand with him at Robert Johnson's legendary crossroads, and to reveal the highway's links between rich and poor, black and white. With their motto of “free spirits on the loose,” father and son talk for hours as they free fall to New Orleans, stopping whenever they want and exploring the towns and backroads along the way. They crash with friends, feed beer to goats, take in live music and local foods, and meet some of the most interesting people in America—from Lil’ Howlin’ Wolf, Dick Dale, and David Smooley Billy Bird the First to truck stop waitresses and honky-tonk bar owners.

And the road leads through more personal territory. They revisit towns that Bill remembers from his own childhood trips with his own dad, and Graham learns more about the grandfather he never knew. As Bill says goodbye to his son’s childhood and prepares for his second time around as husband and father, he seeks to assure Graham that they have a connection that can never be broken by age or distance.

Highway 61 is a fun-filled, freewheeling, heartwarming story of a father and son reunified by the highway that divides America.

For more information, contact publicist Liz Countryman at W.W. Norton and Company, 500 Fifth Ave., New York 10110. Phone: 212/790-9407; Email: egarriga@wwnorton.com