The highway keeps rolling in Hour 4 of Blues Before Sunrise, continuing this week’s extended musical journey through one of the blues’ favorite subjects: the open road. Every selection in this hour features the word “Highway” in its title, making for a remarkably focused collection of blues built around traveling, wandering and life on the road.

The highway has always held a special place in blues mythology. It can represent freedom, escape and the promise of somewhere better, but it can just as easily represent loneliness, trouble and the realization that leaving one place does not necessarily solve the problems waiting at the next. Blues musicians have used the road as both a literal destination and a powerful metaphor for decades.

Hour 4 digs deeper into that tradition. With every song carrying “Highway” in its title, the program becomes a kind of musical road map, with each artist offering another perspective on what it means to travel. Some sides are driving and energetic, while others reflect the more solitary and reflective side of the blues. Together, they demonstrate how a single word can connect recordings from different artists, eras and styles.

The concept also gives listeners an opportunity to hear familiar blues themes from a slightly different angle. Instead of simply following an artist, label or particular period, this hour follows a word — and discovers just how much territory that word covers. The result is a collection united not by a single sound, but by a shared subject.

Hour 4 follows the first half of the highway excursion begun in Hour 3, keeping the wheels turning for another full hour. For listeners who have ever found themselves driving with the blues playing on the radio, the connection is particularly appropriate. There is something inherently compatible about blues music and the road: both suggest movement, distance and stories unfolding somewhere beyond the next turn.

As Blues Before Sunrise continues its “Hits the Highway” theme, this hour is another reminder of the breadth of the blues repertoire. The highway has been sung about countless times, but these recordings show that there are still plenty of different roads to explore.

So keep moving. Hour 4 stays on the highway from beginning to end, with one “Highway” title after another carrying the program forward. It is a full hour devoted to the road, the blues and everything that might be waiting somewhere down the line.

Blues Before Sunrise — hitting the highway and keeping the blues rolling.