Hwy 100

Highways have long criss-crossed the landscape of Americana Music. From Howlin' Wolf's Highway 49 to Bob Dylan's Highway 61--and Hank Williams' 'Lost Highway' which somehow encompasses them all. Luke Powers new CD takes a tour of Highway 100, half real, half myth. The real Tennessee state road 100 runs from Nashville almost to Memphis. Before I-40 became the main east-west artery in the 1950s, Highway 100 was the quot;blue highwayquot; that carried a diversity of musicians playing country, blues, R&B and gospel to and from Music City, U.S.A. Luke lives less than a mile from the real HWY 100. He lives even closer to the mythic one. His new CD chronicles the terrain that Greil Marcus famously called the quot;old weird America.quot; Part Civil War legend, part sideshow, part tall tale, part personal memory, HWY 100 gives the listener a ride and leaves him/her somewhere further on up the road. Luke says this latest batch of musical phantasmagoria is inspired by Snopes.com and Franz Kafka. quot;I won't use the cliché that these songs wrote themselves,quot;the songwriter says, quot;because I actually worked pretty hard to get them right. Or as Tommy Spurlock would say, 'wrong.'quot; The songs are generally up-tempo and under three minutes (after an internet reviewer complained that the last album had too many slow songs). quot;I know it's just one random guy's anonymous opinion,quot; Powers admits, quot;but if this guy wants fast songs, I'll give him fast songs. Maybe if I can satisfy this one [person], I can die a happy man!quot;