CAML Review / Revue de l'ACBM (Canadian Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres / Association canadienne des bibliothèques, archives et centres de documentation musicaux)

Gage, Alex

 CAML REVIEW / REVUE DE L’ACBM  46, NO. 2 (AUGUST / AOÛT 2018) PAGE 37 
Music and the Road: Essays on the Interplay of Music 
and the Popular Culture of the American Road. Edited 
by Gordon E. Slethaug. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 
2017. 280 pp. ISBN 9781501335273. 
Reviewed by: Alex Gage, York University 
 
 
Gordon E. Slethaug’s Music and the Road: Essays on the 
Interplay of Music and the Popular Culture of the 
American Road is a critical love letter to the music of 
American motion. Despite itself, Music and the Road 
reads quasi-chronologically, in three implicit acts. After 
the introduction, chapters 2–6 form the first arc, 
demonstrating how to “read the road” by tracing the 
construction of “road music” in different and sometimes 
overlapping archetypal American contexts. Chapter 2, 
“Semiotics of the Road” (Slethaug) gives the reader a 
survey of the shifting nature of both the historical and 
imagined American road, from Whitman to Turner1 to 
Kerouac. Indeed, it is Kerouac’s that becomes the quintessential American road across this volume. 
Chapter 3, “Easy Riders and Hard Roads in the Early Recorded Blues” (Steve Knepper and James Tuten), 
traces emblematic biographies and the blues’ real and imagined movements down roads and rails in the 
early 20th century. Chapter 4, “Easy Street on Mud Tires: The ‘Heartland’ and the Frontier of the Road in 
Country Music” (Virginia Shay), traces evolutionary tropes in country music’s road dealings from the pre-
depression South to present day global country stars. Chapter 5, “The Tour Bus and the Road” (Anaia 
Shaw), discusses both real and fictional tour buses and their place in the popular imagination and in the 
construction of the bus as liminality icon. Chapter 6, “Band on the Ruins: Meditations on Music and 
Motion” (Warren Leming) is a reinvigorating companion to the semiotic abstracting thus far: an 
anecdotal meditation about life on the road for a working band touring America in the early 1970s. 
Chapters 7–10 elect four gold-star American rock stars’ relationships to the road in their work and life 
for case study. “‘All That Road Going’: Brian Wilson, Van Dyke Parks, and The Beach Boys’ Smile” (Dale 
Carter) deconstructs the Smile album project from the perspective of a post-colonial reckoning with and 
critical reconstruction of Turner’s thesis of the American Frontier along with the modes of 
transportation that built and enforced it. “‘Happiness is the Road’: Bob Dylan” (Susan Kuyper) takes a 
long-view of Dylan’s life as the “Endless Tour,” examining Dylan’s effulgent status as American minstrel 
                                                          
 
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 1. See Fredrick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” In The Early Writings of 
Frederick Jackson Turner, edited by Fulmer Mood, 185-233 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1938). 
 CAML REVIEW / REVUE DE L’ACBM  46, NO. 2 (AUGUST / AOÛT 2018) PAGE 38 
against his peripatetic forebears (particularly Woody Guthrie) and his adherence to road archetypes. 
“‘Apology and Forgiveness Got No Place Here at All’: On the Road to Washington D.C. with Bruce 
Springsteen” (Chad Wriglesworth) centres around The Boss’s controversial performance at the 2014 
Veteran’s Day Concert for Valor, linking the persistence of a nation’s past to the ambivalence of the 
promise of the road. “‘But People are Strangers’: Lyric Narratives and Ethics on Paul Simon’s Roads” 
(Alexander Hollenberg) deconstructs Paul Simon’s road songs as aesthetic-ethical interrogations of both 
his lyric subjects and their historical information and the assumptions of narrative teleology 
underpinning the trope of “the journey” inherent to road song itself. 
The final implicit grouping of chapters is short but brings us to full contemporaneity. Chapter 11, 
“Gender is Over: Transgender Narrative Homecomings, Punk Music, and the Road” (Evelyn Deshane), 
presents Laura Jane Grace’s transition from her identity as Tom Gabel to coming out as an open trans 
woman as road narrative, played out in the touring and music of her band, Against Me!, questioning 
national myth, gender and trans mythic narratives, and aesthetic identity narratives. Chapter 12, 
“Knowing the Score: Road Movie Soundtracks and Cinematic Verities” (Kurt Jacobsen), is the cleanest 
example of “music and the popular culture of the American Road” interfacing directly. Its more 
“postmodern” take subverts the book’s structural tendency to reinforce an illusively diachronic narrative 
of progress; of linear (if complicated) progress down present, historical, and narrative roads, presenting 
instead a synchronistic vantage of music and road pop culture interacting across time. It is at such 
temporal nodes that many of Music and the Road’s more penetrating moments arrive. 
The focus on “the interplay of music and the popular culture of the American road” highlighted by the 
subtitle is an important ground for the reader to maintain. Music and the Road’s true subject is not the 
broad and over-vague construction of what The Road means to/in America through song; it is rather the 
discourse of music with and within the mediator of the road’s relationship to American cultural 
consciousness at large: the popular culture of the road itself.  
Slethaug admits there are more voices from the road to be heard and argues reasonably that one book 
can only present so many—the romantic attachment to Kerouac’s American road feels problematic and 
symbolically hegemonic. There is little challenge to who controls the road in popular discourse—though 
this may be less the authors’ fault than it is an honest metaflection of the interplay of music to popular 
(i.e. mainstream) American culture. Despite being something of an example of this hegemony, “act two” 
is a fascinating and propelling read with questions that nonetheless suggests a need to examine the 
“undemocratic” outcomes one finds on the road (especially Carter’s “All That Road Going”). 
Adhering to a practical, fluid, yet situated definition of road music as music that “one, invokes the road 
as explicit theme, or two, is encountered while passing through strange regions, or three, heightens the 
road experience, whatever the origin of the song or subject of its lyrics” (p. 204), Music and the Road 
lands with sure steps as a study in American popular culture and paves a guide-track for how to 
approach its subject in other national and international contexts. Though Slethaug and company take 
the idea that there is “road music” as axiom, once the music of the road has been better mapped, what 
will be especially interesting is what emerges when the fundamental concept of road music is 
questioned. 


Music and the Road: Essays on the Interplay of Music and the Popular Culture of the American Road – edited by Gordon E. Slethaug (Book Review)

Rogers, Allyson

 CAML REVIEW / REVUE DE L’ACBM  46, NO. 2 (AUGUST / AOÛT 2018) PAGE 30 
Canadian Music and American Culture: Get Away From 
Me. Edited by Tristanne Connolly and Tomoyuki Iino. 
London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017. 297 pp. ISBN 978-3-
319-50022-5.  
Reviewed by: Allyson Rogers, McGill University 1 
 
 
Canadian Music and American Culture: Get Away From 
Me is a collection of essays that aims to explore the 
ways in which a selection of successful Anglo-Canadian 
pop artists grapple with Canadian identity in relation to 
the powerful influence of American culture and cultural 
industries. The book is the most recent title in Palgrave-
MacMillan’s Pop Music, Culture, and Identity series, a 
collection that offers perspectives on pop music from 
scholars outside the field of musicology. The 
contributors to this volume are all literary scholars who 
presented their work at a 2011 symposium hosted by Sophia University’s Institute of American and 
Canadian Studies in Tokyo. In her introduction, editor Tristanne Connolly explains that the essays 
are written from a fan perspective informed by literary training. “Indeed we are all writing about 
music we love,” she writes (p. 16). If personal taste and experience are prime motivators for these 
essays, this may partly account for the book’s limited scope, and the extent to which it focuses 
squarely on the music of white, predominantly male, Anglo-Canadian artists from the 1960s to the 
present. An essay is devoted to each of the following artists/groups: Neil Young, Rush, Bruce 
Cockburn, Saga, Kim Mitchell and Max Webster, The Tragically Hip, The Band, Jann Arden, Joni 
Mitchell, and Peaches. One chapter breaks the norm and discusses industrial music more generally, 
although it focuses primarily on Skinny Puppy and Front Line Assembly. 
Connolly provides several explanations for the narrowness and predictability of this survey of 
Canadian pop music. She offers the caveat that it is impossible for such a short volume to be 
representative, and regrets that artists such as Buffy Sainte-Marie, k-os, and Maestro Fresh Wes 
have been left out. While the artists included may all warrant more study, the complete exclusion 
of Anglophone Indigenous and racialized artists (with the exception of Robbie Robertson from The 
Band) is glaring, and perpetuates the erasure of these artists from histories of music in Canada. 
Connolly makes a more persuasive argument by proposing that if hegemonic American culture is 
white and Anglophone then white Anglo-Canadian artists are more likely to be implicated in 
                                                          
 
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 CAML REVIEW / REVUE DE L’ACBM  46, NO. 2 (AUGUST / AOÛT 2018) PAGE 31 
keeping the status quo intact, therefore examining how they conform and differentiate themselves 
against American culture provides particular insight into Canadian identity. It is a potentially fruitful 
angle, however many of the essays lack substantial theorization and instead fall into extended 
personal anecdotes and prosaic analyses of the lyrics. Essays on well-studied figures such as Neil 
Young, Joni Mitchell, and Bruce Cockburn tend to rehash well-worn themes rather than offer new 
insights. There is little analysis of anything musical such as instrumentation, arrangement, phrasing, 
or timbre, and there are no figures or illustrations (e.g. musical notation, album artwork, photos of 
the artists, etc.). While one does not expect a musicological study here, foundational works in 
popular music studies are conspicuously absent from the bibliography, and the authors draw 
heavily on music journalism and popular press sources. The tone tends to be more journalistic than 
scholarly. 
The essays on less studied artists such as Jann Arden, The Tragically Hip, Skinny Puppy and Front 
Line Assembly, are generally more engaging and consolidate important information. C. E. J. Simon 
provides an articulate assessment of the tension between the nationalistic furor The Tragically Hip 
incite among their fans despite the band’s persistent critique of unbridled nationalism, rampant 
consumerism, and Canadian government policies. Simon aptly draws on Eva Mackey’s work to show 
how the cultural construction of The Tragically Hip as “Canada’s band” exemplifies her contention 
that Canada’s multicultural policies implicitly reinforce a core Anglo-Canadian culture around which 
other cultures orbit (p. 185). Veronica J. Austen’s chapter examines the documentary film Jann 
Takes Manhattan (2004), which chronicles Jann Arden’s attempt to gain a more prominent foothold 
in the US music industry through a series of performances in New York City. Instead of attracting a 
new audience in New York, Arden seems to attract Canadians, and her alleged failure ultimately 
reinforces her celebrity status in Canada and contentment with returning home. Although there is 
little here on Arden’s music, it is an engaging story about staging a documentary film around an 
ostensibly planned failure to break into the American market. Indeed, the film seems to have 
served Arden well since she has transitioned successfully into television work. 
The most unfortunate aspect of this book is the lack of careful editing and seeming absence of peer 
review. The essays read like conference papers rather than published articles. The bibliographic 
style is non-standard and inconsistent, and footnotes and citations are completely missing in 
chapters four and nine. The writing is riddled with grammatical errors that obscure the arguments 
and frequently result in cryptic passages such as the following: “Rock and ideology rely so much on 
identification and affiliation—but if Rush stands for something, it is constantly and conscientiously 
reconsidering what you stand for” (p. 98). The obtuse and confusing title of the book itself is 
emblematic of the content. Too often the conversational tone becomes distracting as the authors 
digress into excessive personal detail unrelated to their arguments. While diverse perspectives and 
research on Canadian pop music are welcome, poor editing and an unsatisfactory publication 
review process ultimately make this book difficult to recommend. With a few exceptions, these 
essays revisit well-worn territory without offering substantially new research or theorization. 


English

Canadian Music and American Culture: Get Away From Me – edited by Tristanne Connolly and Tomoyuki Iino (Book Review)

-, -

CAML Conference 2018: Abstracts / Congrès de l'ACBM 2018 : Résumés de communications

Burns, Lori

The Ballad in American Popular Music: From Elvis to Beyoncé – by David Metzer (Book Review)

Complete issue

McMillan, Brian

CAML 2017 Annual Report: President’s Report

de Val, Dorothy

Up in the Morning Early: Baroque Music from Celtic Countries – Ensemble La Cigale (CD Review)

Philpott, Lisa Rae

 CAML REVIEW / REVUE DE L’ACBM  44, NO. 3 (NOVEMBER / NOVEMBRE 2016) PAGE 5 
1 Tribute: In Memory of Cheryl Martin 
 
by Lisa Rae Philpott 
 
Cheryl Jennifer Martin of London, Ontario, died suddenly at University Hospital on July 15, 2016, 
age 56. Born in Niagara Falls on October 29, 1959, Cheryl was predeceased by an infant sister, her 
parents, and her fiancé Ed. She is survived by her dear cat Milly, and her brothers Dale and John. 
Cheryl held BMus., MA (Musicology), and MLIS (Librarianship) degrees from The University of 
Western Ontario. Her library career encompassed cataloguing, teaching, management, and 
metadata, taking her from London Public Library to the University of Western Ontario, Memorial 
University of Newfoundland, the Metro Toronto Reference Library, the Archives and website of St. 
Mary Magdalene Church (Toronto, as a volunteer), McMasters University Libraries, the Library of 
the Royal Conservatory of Music (Toronto), with a return to Western Libraries in 2009. A brief foray 
into banking with the Royal Bank (RBC) persuaded her that libraries were indeed her calling. Cheryl 
had just completed her term as President/Past-President of the Canadian Association of Music 
Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres (CAML) in June 2016, having held nearly EVERY 
position in our organization at one time or another—including nearly seven years of service editing 
CAML Review. She was also active in both the Music Library Association (US) as a MLA Shop 
volunteer, and the International Association of Music Libraries (IAML). At the time of her sudden 
passing, Cheryl was Canada’s representative on IAML’s International Inventory of Musical Sources 
project (a memorial noting some of her work as RISM Canada Coordinator has been posted on the 
RISM site), and she was the Deputy Chief Negotiator for UWOFA-LA, Western’s Librarians and 
Archivists union. 
Despite numerous and significant health challenges, Cheryl maintained an active life and a positive 
outlook. She enjoyed travel and loved to explore her Mennonite roots in Ontario’s Vineland area 
near Niagara Falls. A voracious reader, avid researcher, and keen knitter, she was a much-valued 
contributor to Ravelry.com’s “Ivory Tower Fiber Freaks” group where she mentored colleagues and 
friends and took great delight in attending “meet-ups” with other ITFF members in her travels 
(Dublin, Toronto, New York, and Calgary, to name but a few destinations). She had high 
expectations of her friends and colleagues, demanding everyone’s best work, and had little 
                                                          
 Lisa Rae Philpott is the Music Reference, Collections, and Instructional Librarian at Western University’s Music 
Library, located in London, Ontario. 
 
 
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 CAML REVIEW / REVUE DE L’ACBM  44, NO. 3 (NOVEMBER / NOVEMBRE 2016) PAGE 6 
patience with those whose level of dedication did not match what she deemed necessary for the 
task at hand. 
Cheryl liked rules—I suspect this made her an excellent cataloguer. She had a short fuse where bad 
drivers were concerned, and would not hesitate to pull over to report a license plate with a call to 
911. Despite her passion for rules, though, sometimes they simply didn't apply to HER! Following 
her successful hip replacement in January 2016, she was to meet with her surgeon BEFORE she was 
to resume driving...of COURSE, she drove herself to that appointment!  
Cheryl was irked by anyone who denied her an opportunity because of her declining mobility: her 
body might have moved slowly, but her mind was sharp, and she was savvy, perceptive and 
capable. She was aware of her physical limitations, and compensated for them with hard work and 
careful planning. She dealt with her many challenges with determination, and fiercely valued her 
independence. She had so many plans—genealogy connections to untangle, research projects to 
pursue, friends to meet, places to visit, cats to cuddle, and Scotch to sip. Giving in to her physical 
frailties was NOT an option for her, and death was definitely NOT on her radar, notwithstanding a 
family history of heart issues. 
Classical music, Anglo-Catholic Anglican liturgy, friends, dark chocolate, single malt Scotch, coffee, 
Murchie’s tea, accessibility of public spaces, genealogy, and cats numbered among her passions. 
Cheryl sang soprano in the Lyra German Choir in London, Ontario, from January 2015, and is greatly 
missed both musically and personally by her fellow choristers.  
I know that Cheryl is mourned by a host of friends and colleagues; I shall personally miss her as my 
conference travel-companion and travel-organizer: her travel needs were sufficiently complex that I 
knew I would never choose all the appropriate options, so it was just smarter to let her make the 
arrangements for both of us, and call-in my credit card details. She recently said to me, “I don’t 
think I’m high-maintenance!”—at which point I diplomatically bit my tongue… 
A celebration of Cheryl’s life was held on Thursday, October 6th in the Talbot College Atrium at 
Western University, gathering together her friends and colleagues from Western Libraries and the 
Faculty Association, former classmates, and colleagues from CAML and the Toronto Reference 
Library. 
[Donations to your local cat shelter, the Heart & Stroke Foundation, or a charity of your choice 
would be appropriate ways to remember Cheryl Jennifer Martin.] 
 


Tribute: In Memory of Cheryl Martin

 CAML REVIEW / REVUE DE L’ACBM  44, NO. 3 (NOVEMBER / NOVEMBRE 2016) PAGE 7 
1 Tribute: In Memory of Jane Pearce Baldwin 
 
by Lisa Rae Philpott 
 
Jane Ann Pearce was born in Vancouver, British Columbia on April 1, 1952. Her childhood was spent 
in Deep River, Ontario and later Victoria, British Columbia, where she earned both her Bachelor and 
Master of Arts degrees in Music at the University of Victoria. There she met and married her 
husband Barrow Baldwin; they moved to Toronto, Ontario in 1975, where Jane attended the Faculty 
of Library Science (FLS), earning her Master of Library Science degree. While a library science 
student, Jane successfully lobbied the University of Toronto’s library school administration to offer 
a special three-week summer intersession course in music librarianship, one which was taught by 
the late Carol June Bradley, followed by a two-day practicum at the Music Library of The University 
at Buffalo, with additional supervision by the late James B. Coover. During her second year in the 
FLS program, Jane served as the teaching assistant for their computer programming course. She 
became a member of both the Canadian Association of Music Libraries (CAML) and the Music 
Library Association (MLA) while a student and attended meetings of both organizations, eventually 
serving on the CAML Board as a Member-at-large, serving on the Publications Committee, and 
assisting with local arrangements for CAML's 1978 meeting in London, Ontario.  
Jane was a “triple threat,” excelling as flutist, librarian, and scholar. As a mentor, she influenced 
several generations of librarians: at one notable MLA meeting, four of us at the “First Time 
Attendees” session realized that Jane was a significant and common influence on our chosen career 
paths. Doubtless, there were others.  
The University of Western Ontario Music Library hired Jane as a music cataloguer on May 16, 1978; 
within two years, she became the Music Reference Librarian. She taught flute at the Faculty of 
Music upon the death of faculty member Nicholas Fiori in 1979; prior to her arrival at Western, she 
taught several Music History courses at Wilfrid Laurier University. In 1983, Jane was awarded a 
Commonwealth Scholarship. She and her husband Barrow spent a memorable year in the UK, 
where Jane researched eighteenth-century music at King’s College, University of London, and 
                                                          
 Lisa Rae Philpott is the Music Reference, Collections, and Instructional Librarian at Western University’s Music 
Library, located in London, Ontario. 
 
 
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 CAML REVIEW / REVUE DE L’ACBM  44, NO. 3 (NOVEMBER / NOVEMBRE 2016) PAGE 8 
revelled in exploring the collections of the British Library. Together Jane and Barrow attended more 
than 100 concerts during their sojourn abroad. 
As is frequently the case with highly capable music librarians, Jane’s talents took her away from 
Western’s branch Music Library to serve as Acting Systems Librarian, followed by a brief stint as 
Western Libraries’ Acting Head of Collections Management—a position for which she successfully 
competed. She maintained her formidable flute technique by playing principal flute with the 
London Community Orchestra; she also played in the pit for numerous productions given by the 
local Gilbert & Sullivan society, and performed as a guest flutist for chamber music evenings at the 
home of the late Dr. James L. Whitby and Dr. Margaret Whitby.  
Jane was poised to return to Western’s Music Library as its Director in 1996, when she was 
diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. She endured surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy 
treatments. Despite a dismal prognosis Jane survived an astonishing 19 years. During this period, 
she received the Canadian Association of Music Libraries’ inaugural Helmut Kallmann Award (2000) 
recognizing her contributions to Canadian music librarianship, witnessed her daughter’s marriage, 
and rejoiced in the birth of her granddaughter.  
Upon receiving the news of Jane’s death, Western’s Dr. Richard Semmens offered this tribute: “How 
well I remember learning of Jane’s remarkable academic preparation for the position she held at 
our Music Library, when I was just a young faculty member. I didn’t really understand what an 
“afterpiece” was in the theatrical life of England in Restoration or Georgian/Augustan times. Jane’s 
study with Curtis Price opened a world to me that I left unexplored, personally, until about 2008. 
My current (final?) book project, nearing completion, deals with a special variety of English 
afterpiece entertainment, the pantomime. Your sad message reminds me that my new book was 
kindled by the spark of inspiration a promising young, and brilliant librarian/scholar presented me 
with so many years ago. I had almost forgotten. I think my new study will be very good. It will be 
good, in part, thanks to Jane.” 
Music was the great passion of her life. With impeccable timing, Jane Ann Pearce Baldwin died on 
June 25th, 2015, while the joint IAML-IMS Congress was underway in New York City (and mere 
hours after I delivered my first IAML paper—Lisa). A concert in celebration of her life was given by 
music alumni, colleagues, and faculty members on September 20, 2015 in London, Ontario. Jane is 
survived by her brothers Geoffrey (Magda) and David (Vivien) and their children, her husband 
Barrow, her daughter Julia, son-in-law Andrew, her granddaughter Emily, and a host of friends and 
colleagues. 
[Donations in Jane's memory may be made to The Mount Hope Fund, with cheques payable to St. 
Joseph's Health Care Foundation, 550 Wellington Rd., London, Ontario N6C 0A7.] 
 


Tribute: In Memory of Jane Pearce Baldwin

Stephen, J. Drew

Music for Silent Film: A Guide to North American Resources – by Kendra Preston Leonard (book review)

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