Throughout life, I’ve turned to music as a salve or even a solution for what ails me. I’ve used it to tune out many unpleasant situations over the years. It’s hard to tune out post Big Ugly bill passage MAGA triumphalism: Trump’s ugly mug is everywhere except for First Draft’s home page. We all know what the evil fucker looks like, so the ban remains in effect. Long live the ban.

That opening paragraph didn’t have much to do with today’s listicle but y’all should be used to my digressive tendencies by now. Hopefully, this list will evoke what’s best in America, not what’s worst. The worst is in power, so we need to combat the rage and angst caused by extremists fucking up our country. One small way is music.

The American Town Tunes Dozen has been percolating in my head for months. Drawing parameters wasn’t easy because there’s so much to choose from. I ended up doing some research but mostly landed on familiar songs that speak to me. This list makes no pretense to being comprehensive. I even skipped songs about New Orleans, been there, done that.

The songs are listed in chronological order. We take flight with Frank Sinatra:

Little known fact: Peggy Lee and Quincy Jones collaborated on a geographically oriented album in 1962: Blues Cross Country. The quilt on the cover looks like cross-stitch to me. But what do I know about sewing? Not a damn thing.

I do know a bit about Salt Lake City. I was born there and moved away at age 6. I did not, however, lose my sugar there.

An obvious choice that I’ve made before. It’s time to go there again because it’s my other hometown:

Johnny Cash, June Carter Cash. Jackson. Say no more.

If you have to be stuck in Lodi, John Fogerty is good company:

A family friend from Texas turned me on to the music of Doug Sahm. In fact, he gave me the album from whence this tune came. It remains a personal favorite.

Let’s bop off to Beantown with Becker and Fagen:

When Frank Zappa wrote this town tune, San Bernardino was a working class city in Southern California known for junk yards: “That’s where they take all the cars that get hurt.”

The city’s name also lends itself to nicknaming: longtime Californians call it San Berdoo. Zappa called it:

I don’t usually post sitcom theme songs; I’ll make an exception for Ian Hunter. Why? He’s the Moot The Hoople guy, that’s why. That easily trumps that crewcut schlump Drew Carey.

There’s much hyperbole about what’s going on in Los Angeles right now. In 2025, the city is under assault by the MAGA Gestapo DBA ICE but only a small section of downtown LA is host to bored Marines and National Guard-peeps. In 1980, X released their debut album. Here’s the title track.

Many swell songs have been written about Memphis. This is one of them:

I used to have family in Phoenix. I spent a fair amount of time there as a kid. My aunt and uncle owned a restaurant. I recall being put to work prepping baklava among other Greek delicacies. I overdosed on baklava back then, so I’m not a fan now. So it goes.

What does that have to do with a 2008 Aimee Mann song? Very little.

What would an Adrastos listicle be without some lagniappe? The list looks incomplete without a song about the nation’s largest city, so here’s one from John Lennon.

Finally, the lowdown on Dallas from Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely, and Butch Hancock.