Pennsylvania Turnpike

Album: Mad Dog In The Fog (2026)
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Songfacts®:

  • Train frontman Pat Monahan left his hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1993 to pursue a music career in San Francisco. "Pennsylvania Turnpike" recalls his feelings of desperation to escape to the West Coast while he was still young enough to make his dream a reality.

    The single was inspired by his close friend, Murray Bodine, a Philadelphia native who also relocated to San Francisco a few years before the singer did. Bodine was dying during the making of the Mad Dog In The Fog (2026) album, and Monahan imagined what it would've been like if they'd been able to cruise the Pennsylvania turnpike together toward their future.

    "What if he and I knew each other?" Monahan said in an interview with the Off The Record podcast. "Because I'm from Western Pennsylvania, he's from Eastern Pennsylvania. What if we jumped in a car together, and we took a chance on our dreams?"
  • The album was released four years after its predecessor, AM Gold, the band's first album of original material to fail to chart in the US.

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