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Lost Highway
Richard Currey's Lost Highway has attracted a legion of admirers since its initial publication in 1997. The book depicts the epic struggle of an ordinary person living his dreams and following his passion. Lost Highway is the story of Sapper Reeves, a gifted country musician from the small town of Maxwell, West Virginia. Sapper’s story covers the events of more than half a century, from his birth in a poor coal mining town through his travels on the back roads of Appalachia in search of recognition and respect. Along the way, Sapper’s embattled love for his wife and struggle to come to terms with his combat-wounded son form the basis of his artistic and personal redemption.
- GenresFiction
245 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 26, 2019
A wonderfully-written novel but which suffers from a hole in its plot. Currey (his name is spelled this way on my copy) does an excellent job showing the turmoil of Sapper Reeves' life that ultimately informs his music. Unfortunately, the tale jumps from his years of exile to his return to the entertainment world. There is no real reason to infer what epiphany led him back to the stage. This is a shame because the book is a joy to read otherwise.
July 21, 2022
How do you capture that feeling of playing live music on the page?
Like this:
“I closed my eyes, hands sighting their own country on the banjo’s face, a sense of place in the coming knowledge that music has traveled, borders in, rivers out. I played, a measured step on that passage, and the trees blew and whispered, notes walking one behind the other, a halftone drop and suddenly an octave above, and I sat on the bale in the open barn door, lacing the banjos life, chanting with it, a wild rolling tangle. Eyes open again, I looked toward the valley sky beyond the house, and the music billowed under my hand as lightning flickered to the east and the wind died and the first drops of rain rattled in the trees. The hundreds of birds went suddenly silent, and the only sound still in the night was the sound of the banjo and my humming chant and the rain came then, riveting the tin roof of the house’s sagging porch and forcing me from the bale. I stood inside the barn, inside the doorway and just out of the rain, lit by the one oil lamp behind me, the roar of the downpour all around us as I stood and watched the waterfall and played the banjo.”
Chanting. Chant. Still in the night.
In short, the answer is that the words better sing, too. As in that section above. And the story better show what it means for music to be embedded in an artist’s life, what it means at the white-hot core at the center of a character’s soul.
Richard Currey’s Lost Highway is a timeless portrait of a three-piece traveling band. A banjo, a fiddle, a guitar, and a pocketful of tunes. At first, we’re in the late 1940’s and you can almost feel the landscape coming to life after the war. There are scant references. We learn Leonard learned to play guitar on a troop ship. There’s an aging Chrysler station wagon. There is road trip lodging in “dingy third floor rooms in the sagging houses of working men and their sad rail thin wives.” There are clubs that try to stiff the Still Creek Boys. There are good times and hope and maybe a recording contract and there are come-ons. Maybe the Still Creek Boys can help country music shake this “singing cowboy thing.”
Our narrator is Sapper Reeves, the banjo player. There’s also the tall violin player Estin, whom Sapper met in a Baptist church. And Leonard on guitar. On the road, late at night after his bandmates are asleep, songs come to Sapper in the “corners of wakefulness” and he thinks of his wife, Riva, and baby son, Bobby, at home.
Currey’s novel shows us the shift from live bands on the road to bands with recordings, contracts and appearances on radio and television, the shift into leaving something permanent on the musical landscape. Are Still Creek Boys in control of their destiny? Should they accept every invitation? Are they seeking fame? Currey’s understated prose shows us Sapper’s thoughtful deliberations—and Sapper’s appreciation for what they get to do.
“We sat facing each other on metal chairs in the studio, an airless warren of half-light and microphones and electrical cordage. We drank coffee spiced with capfuls of Jack Daniels and listened to the taped replays booming into the studio with an immediacy and power that surprised us. We played and reworked and listened until the middle of the fifth night, when the album played through in its completion and I sat back in my chair, relieved and gratified and gently awed at the symmetry and generosity and honest invention, the full heart of the music we made, no longer songs finished in the moment they ended and consigned to whatever memory passed for. Twelve songs recorded across five nights to become an almanac of months and years earning this destination, and for me in the ranges of my secrets and fervent imaginings a reconciliation, a prayerful coming to terms, a midnight revival.”
Prayerful. Revival. Reconciliation.
Ultimately, Lost Highway is a love story. For family. For community. And, of course, for music—even while driving.
“The wipers slapped back and forth, doing a poor job of fanning a hole in the vapor. The wet field smoked, the weather both solace and benediction. On my side of the windshield a dead leaf caught under the blade and slid to the left, then right, left again, smearing rainwater, a veined hand waving. Estin drove on, across Tug Fork and into the state of Kentucky. South and southwest. Rain and muted light.”
Solace. Benediction.
Reverence for music and its magic oozes from the page. We sense a growing tension in Sapper. A snap here. An angry word there. And then Still Creek Boys are suddenly done and it gets worse for Sapper and his life is upside down and the realities of the world come rushing in. Nobody is immune. Sapper keeps his head down, goes to work, does the right thing one day at a time and tries not to think about destiny “or the precise and fully unexpected nature of its calling.” Lost Highway spans nearly twenty years. Events wrap up, for the most part, in the middle of the Vietnam War.
There’s a whiff of Kerouac in Currey’s elegant prose, enthusiasm and sharp details and reverence and joy and wonder all marinating together in Sapper’s universe and there is still one last chance to find redemption. Through music.
“While I was driving away from Petrie’s that night, it started to rain. A slick of two-lane blacktop disappeared beneath my truck, and I traveled along a berm of falling water, everything in fragile motion at the heart of the world, the full-throated rake of thunder and tremble of my own lagging mind. I was tired—ten hours at the hardware store and three more on the little stage at Petrie’s—and did not steer so much as sense the natural magnetism of the highway, that born away flank of ragged trust. There were names of towns I recalled from the days on the road with the band, so accurate and dreamlike it seemed they could not exist in a daylight world: Lightburn, Century, Angel, signs flickering past rain smeared windows, lost forever unless you happen to be looking at the moment of passage.”
Thunder. Tremble. Magnetism. Angel.
Lost Highway is a beautiful thing.
Like this:
“I closed my eyes, hands sighting their own country on the banjo’s face, a sense of place in the coming knowledge that music has traveled, borders in, rivers out. I played, a measured step on that passage, and the trees blew and whispered, notes walking one behind the other, a halftone drop and suddenly an octave above, and I sat on the bale in the open barn door, lacing the banjos life, chanting with it, a wild rolling tangle. Eyes open again, I looked toward the valley sky beyond the house, and the music billowed under my hand as lightning flickered to the east and the wind died and the first drops of rain rattled in the trees. The hundreds of birds went suddenly silent, and the only sound still in the night was the sound of the banjo and my humming chant and the rain came then, riveting the tin roof of the house’s sagging porch and forcing me from the bale. I stood inside the barn, inside the doorway and just out of the rain, lit by the one oil lamp behind me, the roar of the downpour all around us as I stood and watched the waterfall and played the banjo.”
Chanting. Chant. Still in the night.
In short, the answer is that the words better sing, too. As in that section above. And the story better show what it means for music to be embedded in an artist’s life, what it means at the white-hot core at the center of a character’s soul.
Richard Currey’s Lost Highway is a timeless portrait of a three-piece traveling band. A banjo, a fiddle, a guitar, and a pocketful of tunes. At first, we’re in the late 1940’s and you can almost feel the landscape coming to life after the war. There are scant references. We learn Leonard learned to play guitar on a troop ship. There’s an aging Chrysler station wagon. There is road trip lodging in “dingy third floor rooms in the sagging houses of working men and their sad rail thin wives.” There are clubs that try to stiff the Still Creek Boys. There are good times and hope and maybe a recording contract and there are come-ons. Maybe the Still Creek Boys can help country music shake this “singing cowboy thing.”
Our narrator is Sapper Reeves, the banjo player. There’s also the tall violin player Estin, whom Sapper met in a Baptist church. And Leonard on guitar. On the road, late at night after his bandmates are asleep, songs come to Sapper in the “corners of wakefulness” and he thinks of his wife, Riva, and baby son, Bobby, at home.
Currey’s novel shows us the shift from live bands on the road to bands with recordings, contracts and appearances on radio and television, the shift into leaving something permanent on the musical landscape. Are Still Creek Boys in control of their destiny? Should they accept every invitation? Are they seeking fame? Currey’s understated prose shows us Sapper’s thoughtful deliberations—and Sapper’s appreciation for what they get to do.
“We sat facing each other on metal chairs in the studio, an airless warren of half-light and microphones and electrical cordage. We drank coffee spiced with capfuls of Jack Daniels and listened to the taped replays booming into the studio with an immediacy and power that surprised us. We played and reworked and listened until the middle of the fifth night, when the album played through in its completion and I sat back in my chair, relieved and gratified and gently awed at the symmetry and generosity and honest invention, the full heart of the music we made, no longer songs finished in the moment they ended and consigned to whatever memory passed for. Twelve songs recorded across five nights to become an almanac of months and years earning this destination, and for me in the ranges of my secrets and fervent imaginings a reconciliation, a prayerful coming to terms, a midnight revival.”
Prayerful. Revival. Reconciliation.
Ultimately, Lost Highway is a love story. For family. For community. And, of course, for music—even while driving.
“The wipers slapped back and forth, doing a poor job of fanning a hole in the vapor. The wet field smoked, the weather both solace and benediction. On my side of the windshield a dead leaf caught under the blade and slid to the left, then right, left again, smearing rainwater, a veined hand waving. Estin drove on, across Tug Fork and into the state of Kentucky. South and southwest. Rain and muted light.”
Solace. Benediction.
Reverence for music and its magic oozes from the page. We sense a growing tension in Sapper. A snap here. An angry word there. And then Still Creek Boys are suddenly done and it gets worse for Sapper and his life is upside down and the realities of the world come rushing in. Nobody is immune. Sapper keeps his head down, goes to work, does the right thing one day at a time and tries not to think about destiny “or the precise and fully unexpected nature of its calling.” Lost Highway spans nearly twenty years. Events wrap up, for the most part, in the middle of the Vietnam War.
There’s a whiff of Kerouac in Currey’s elegant prose, enthusiasm and sharp details and reverence and joy and wonder all marinating together in Sapper’s universe and there is still one last chance to find redemption. Through music.
“While I was driving away from Petrie’s that night, it started to rain. A slick of two-lane blacktop disappeared beneath my truck, and I traveled along a berm of falling water, everything in fragile motion at the heart of the world, the full-throated rake of thunder and tremble of my own lagging mind. I was tired—ten hours at the hardware store and three more on the little stage at Petrie’s—and did not steer so much as sense the natural magnetism of the highway, that born away flank of ragged trust. There were names of towns I recalled from the days on the road with the band, so accurate and dreamlike it seemed they could not exist in a daylight world: Lightburn, Century, Angel, signs flickering past rain smeared windows, lost forever unless you happen to be looking at the moment of passage.”
Thunder. Tremble. Magnetism. Angel.
Lost Highway is a beautiful thing.
January 27, 2012
There are many lovely facets to this book, but I was really hoping Currey would drive a 5 star stake through my heart. With wonderfully poetic writing, the honestly portrayed hills of Appalachia, and a banjo picker holding on to his musical dreams as a protagonist, Currey wielded a formula that could easily shoot me to the moon. And while I still thoroughly enjoyed the book and the many things that Currey did right, there seemed to be a few corners cut which prevented my hopes of lunar experience. First, the organization of the text could be laid out better in my opinion and the writing tone was uneven in places. More importantly, Sapper's dichotomy between music and everyday life is a focal point early on, but at times it is not so tight and driven. In fact, Currey seems to let his foot off the accelerator and takes a bit of an easy way out with the conflict and resolution in this man's life. Mixing Sapper' musical interest conflict with his son's later involvement in the Vietnam War helped make the story go at that point, but it also entirely switched, and in my opinion cheapened, Sapper's music vs. life conflicts. Sapper's son could have made the same decisions, reached the same tragedy, whether his father had lived the life of a musician or not. Furthermore, as the Vietnam/war conflict comes into the book, Sapper's deeper issues with the music and a musical lifestyle are eclipsed. By the end, the musical side of Sapper's life seems to have developed with little issue or conflict. For me, I would have much preferred that the conflict of this book remain grounded in Sapper's life as a musician on the back roads of Appalachia. The tragedy/conflict switching to Sapper's son going to Vietnam lessened a lot of what I loved about this book....and ruined a lot of where I hoped it was going. Still, despite the criticism, I loved the book, loved Currey's ideas, loved his warm, passionate writing. I think if he had spent more time with the book, he could have turned it into something even more memorable.
May 31, 2011
Richard Currey wrote a phenomenal novel about the man, Sapper Reeves, who wanted nothing else than to play the banjo. Reeves, a West Virginia native, travelled all over rural America playing his banjo with his two fellow band members, Estin and Leonard. The group, known as the Still Creek Boys, played at bowling alleys, firehouses, schools, and local bars throughout the United States. Sapper spent most of his nights sleeping in a Chrylser with his band members while his wife, Riva, and son, Bob, remained in West Virginia. Sapper's band recorded an album and played for a national show but did not earn enough money to make ends meet, so Sapper eventually had to give up his dream ... for a while. Sapper's family life took a downturn and he turned to the bottle, but eventually he came back to music. At that time, Sapper's domestic situation improved but Bob voluntarily left for Vietnam, never to return the same.
Currey is a phenomenal writer. I am not particularly a fan of country western music and did not think that I would like a story about a traveling banjo man. However, I really enjoyed this book. Unlike most authors, Currey can tell a story with very few words. I admired that some chapters were only one or two paragraphs, but these chapters told in so few words were often the most meaningful. Currey has an uncanny ability to narrate the natural beauty of rural America while telling the story of a man with seemingly simple thoughts that yearns to play the banjo. I highly recommend this book and am looking forward to Currey's next novel.
Currey is a phenomenal writer. I am not particularly a fan of country western music and did not think that I would like a story about a traveling banjo man. However, I really enjoyed this book. Unlike most authors, Currey can tell a story with very few words. I admired that some chapters were only one or two paragraphs, but these chapters told in so few words were often the most meaningful. Currey has an uncanny ability to narrate the natural beauty of rural America while telling the story of a man with seemingly simple thoughts that yearns to play the banjo. I highly recommend this book and am looking forward to Currey's next novel.
July 25, 2011
I felt rather ambushed by emotion near the end of this book. I thought I was reading a rather simple history of a bluegrass trio as they struggled to make a living playing in the roadhouses along the highways of western West Virginia and Kentucky. I was later surprised at how attached to the characters I had become.
The band's travails are related in a rather simple manner by banjo player Sapper Reeves, who had found the banjo a childhood escape following the death of his father. None of the three seems to have the know-how or gumption to really make it big, but instead hope their talents will one day be rewarded. They are finding the costs of prolonged road trips to small, depressing venues are not justified by the meager emotional or financial benefits.
Sapper spends much of the time thinking and rarely shares his thoughts. It isn't until late in the book that he begins to open up and at that point I was excited to learn that he had been thinking the same things I had about his experiences - similar to that first heart-to-heart with someone you've known but never really knew.
The band's travails are related in a rather simple manner by banjo player Sapper Reeves, who had found the banjo a childhood escape following the death of his father. None of the three seems to have the know-how or gumption to really make it big, but instead hope their talents will one day be rewarded. They are finding the costs of prolonged road trips to small, depressing venues are not justified by the meager emotional or financial benefits.
Sapper spends much of the time thinking and rarely shares his thoughts. It isn't until late in the book that he begins to open up and at that point I was excited to learn that he had been thinking the same things I had about his experiences - similar to that first heart-to-heart with someone you've known but never really knew.
October 22, 2008
Boy oh boy did I love this book. The music of this book, its lyrical quality, evokes the yearning that draws me to the music of Lucinda Williams. It's just so beautifully written.
August 2, 2024
In America we tend to think in terms of winning or losing. Lost in this Manichean swirl is the reality: that most of our lives end up somewhere in between. And that since in the end we die, it’s really not worth fretting about. As corny as it may sound, all we really have are the moments we can snatch for ourselves, when we manage to stop worrying about success or failure.
The foregoing might be true, but it doesn’t always make for scintillating fiction. People want a rollercoaster, high highs and abyssal plunges. It takes a steady hand, an emphasis on prose and characterization as much as plot to make something seemingly inconsequential (or at least nuanced and ambivalent) sing. Thankfully this is where Richard Currey excels.
I’ve read his works before—some of them masterpieces—and while this one doesn’t quite rank up there with the best, it’s a worthy addition to his oeuvre.
“Lost Highway” deals with the travails and joys and everything in between endured by Sapper Reeves, a banjo player and singer with The Still Creek Boys.
The novel follows him riding along that Lost Highway Leone Payne sang about, going from gig to gig and making a decent living with his band. Some of the honkytonks they play are raucous and fun, others are hell gigs. Still others make for transcendent evenings, experiences where the music and atmosphere of the crowd gel just right, making all the trouble worth it.
At first, at least. As any travelling musician will tell you, what starts out as romantic eventually becomes disheartening, then finally tedious, at least until you take a break.
Sapper has a wife at home, and a baby, but work comes first. The only problem is that work doesn’t pay that well, and if Sapper can’t finally make the big time, he may have to abandon music and get a steady local gig. The disjunction between dream and reality grows, but not in the way one would expect.
That’s what makes this tale unique, the way the hardships are gently counterpointed by little moments of grace and blessing. Through it all Currey manages to make poetry of the mundane, to find haunting, warm resonances in describing everything from motels to country filling stations. And music—that most ephemeral and hard-to-describe art—comes alive as a tangible thing in his prose.
File this one as Exhibit #1,234 in my case arguing that the better the author, the less prolific. And unless I’ve missed something, it looks like it’s been a month of Sundays since Currey published anything. It would be nice if he came back, but even if he doesn’t, everything I’ve read by him thus far merits at least one reread.
That ought to tide me over for a time. Recommended, especially for music fans.
The foregoing might be true, but it doesn’t always make for scintillating fiction. People want a rollercoaster, high highs and abyssal plunges. It takes a steady hand, an emphasis on prose and characterization as much as plot to make something seemingly inconsequential (or at least nuanced and ambivalent) sing. Thankfully this is where Richard Currey excels.
I’ve read his works before—some of them masterpieces—and while this one doesn’t quite rank up there with the best, it’s a worthy addition to his oeuvre.
“Lost Highway” deals with the travails and joys and everything in between endured by Sapper Reeves, a banjo player and singer with The Still Creek Boys.
The novel follows him riding along that Lost Highway Leone Payne sang about, going from gig to gig and making a decent living with his band. Some of the honkytonks they play are raucous and fun, others are hell gigs. Still others make for transcendent evenings, experiences where the music and atmosphere of the crowd gel just right, making all the trouble worth it.
At first, at least. As any travelling musician will tell you, what starts out as romantic eventually becomes disheartening, then finally tedious, at least until you take a break.
Sapper has a wife at home, and a baby, but work comes first. The only problem is that work doesn’t pay that well, and if Sapper can’t finally make the big time, he may have to abandon music and get a steady local gig. The disjunction between dream and reality grows, but not in the way one would expect.
That’s what makes this tale unique, the way the hardships are gently counterpointed by little moments of grace and blessing. Through it all Currey manages to make poetry of the mundane, to find haunting, warm resonances in describing everything from motels to country filling stations. And music—that most ephemeral and hard-to-describe art—comes alive as a tangible thing in his prose.
File this one as Exhibit #1,234 in my case arguing that the better the author, the less prolific. And unless I’ve missed something, it looks like it’s been a month of Sundays since Currey published anything. It would be nice if he came back, but even if he doesn’t, everything I’ve read by him thus far merits at least one reread.
That ought to tide me over for a time. Recommended, especially for music fans.
May 27, 2009
Every writing technique that I hate was used in this book. Dreams, uselessly flowery prose that doesn't mesh with the authors style, and explaining to me how I should understand all the deep metaphors the author threw in.
The promise of the story drew me in, but the execution was lacking.
Thanks, but no thanks.
The promise of the story drew me in, but the execution was lacking.
Thanks, but no thanks.
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