The journey begins in Hour 1 of Blues Before Sunrise, setting the stage for a five-hour program built around discovery, travel and the many roads that run through blues history. This week’s show is titled “BBS Hits the Highway,” and while the highway theme takes center stage in the middle hours, the opening hour gets the trip underway with a broad selection of blues designed to ease listeners onto the road.

There is a natural connection between the blues and traveling. From the earliest days of the music, blues musicians have written about leaving home, catching trains, walking down roads and searching for a better place. Travel can mean freedom, but it can also mean separation, uncertainty and loneliness. Those competing emotions have given the blues an endless supply of stories to tell.

Hour 1 establishes that atmosphere before the program moves into its more tightly focused features. It is the beginning of the journey, introducing the musical territory that will eventually lead into the two-hour “Highway” sequence in Hours 3 and 4.

The opening hour also reflects one of the fundamental principles behind Blues Before Sunrise: there is always more music to discover. The blues is not a small catalog of familiar songs and famous performers. It is an enormous musical history filled with regional recordings, independent labels, overlooked artists and sides that can disappear from view for decades before being rediscovered.

That spirit of exploration runs throughout this week’s program. Hour 2 will turn the spotlight toward Piney Brown, the recording name of Columbus Perry, following Kokomo Mojo’s long-awaited release devoted entirely to his sides. Hours 3 and 4 will then take the show onto the highway, with every song title containing the word “Highway.” Finally, Hour 5 will explore recordings from the three-CD collection originally issued on J.R. Fullbright’s Elko label.

Hour 1 therefore serves as the launch point for a program that keeps changing direction while remaining firmly rooted in the blues. It begins the morning’s musical journey before the show starts making its more deliberate stops along the way.

For longtime listeners, that variety is part of what makes BBS worth following from beginning to end. For newer listeners, the opening hour provides an introduction to the broad approach that will define the rest of the program: familiar sounds alongside overlooked recordings, established artists alongside names that deserve another hearing, and plenty of unexpected turns.

The highway is coming. Piney Brown is coming. The Elko recordings are coming.

But first, the engine starts.

Hour 1 of Blues Before Sunrise gets the journey underway.