NorCal's Greatest Hits: a Musical Itinerary

Every great trip needs an awesome soundtrack. But sometimes, the perfect soundtrack can actually be the jumping-off point for a great trip. So today, we're composing a "playlist as itinerary" for travelers in Northern California. From enduring classics, to forgotten favorites, to modern musical postcards, cue up these songs on your iPod and let the music take you away.

"The Dock of the Bay" by Otis Redding

"Sittin' in the morning sun,

I'll be sittin' when the evening comes.

Watching the ships roll in,

Then I watch them roll away again."

Otis Redding penned the lyrics to his melancholy classic while staying in a rented houseboat in Sausalito. And with its background sounds of lapping waves, its seagull-mimicking whistles, and its lazy-afternoon tempo, the song makes it easy to picture exactly what Redding may have been looking at as he wrote it.

Just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, today's Sausalito is the kind of destination tourists love for its posh waterfront dining, chic boutique shopping, and SF skyline views. But its quirky, small-town charm is still evident in its community of houseboats just like the one Redding crooned into legend. To see them for yourself, bike or drive down to Sausalito from HI-Marin Headlands, then take a self-guided walking tour of the city's famous floating homes.

"Sausalito" by Conor Oberst

"We should move to Sausalito

Living's easy on a house boat

Let the ocean rock us back and forth to sleep

In the morning when the sun rise

Look in the water, see the blue sky

As if heaven has been laid there at our feet."

Sausalito's grip on the imagination of artists didn't stop in the '60s with Otis Redding. In a 2008 song named after the town, Conor Oberst pines for the easy lifestyle of days spent on the Bay.

"Save Me San Francisco" by Train

"Every day's so caffeinated

I wish they were Golden Gated

Fillmore couldn't feel more miles away.

So wrap me up, return to sender.

Let's forget this five-year bender – take me to my City by the Bay."

Rock band Train has a strong association with Northern California: not only is the band based in San Francisco, but a slew of their songs – and even album titles – reference the area. Perhaps their best-known track about the City by the Bay, "Save Me San Francisco," is an ear-wormy list of the many reasons singer Pat Monahan misses SF each time he leaves the city. The song references half a dozen locations you can easily visit yourself on your next visit to the San Francisco: Stay at HI-San Francisco City Center to experience the diverse Tenderloin neighborhood; join a Bike the Bridge tour with any of our San Francisco hostels for a one-of-a-kind view of the Golden Gate; do some window shopping or dance to live music on Fillmore Street; book advance tickets to visit Alcatraz (and check out our tips on tasting "hella fine merlots" without a car); and hop a cable car just blocks from HI-San Francisco Downtown (you can even jump off at the free Cable Car Museum).

And that's not all: Just across the Golden Gate Bridge, you can "take the highway to the One" – that's Highway 1 if you're following along on your map – "up the coast to catch some sun" (we're partial to Point Reyes, where HI-Point Reyes sits atop a hillside within the National Seashore). Also just across the bridge, you can "meet some ladies from Marin": just base yourself at HI-Marin Headlands.

Train's odes to the area don't stop with San Francisco, either: their song "Half Moon Bay" references the charming seaside town just between HI-Point Montara and HI-Pigeon Point.

San Francisco Bonus Tracks

The "maison bleue" in French folk singer Maxime Le Forestier's classic song "San Francisco" is still blue today – you can sneak a peek at 3841 18th Street in the city's Castro District. St. Dominic's church, the inspiration for Van Morrison's "St. Dominic's Preview," is still standing in the Western Addition neighborhood. And Rufus Wainwright fans can visit the Nob Hill neighborhood, Market Street, and even the super-posh Top of the Mark bar – all referenced in his song aptly titled "San Francisco."

"Monterey" by Eric Burdon and the Animals

"The people came and listened

Some of them came and played

Others gave flowers away.

Yes, they did, yeah,

Down in Monterey."

Several months before he wrote "Dock of the Bay," Otis Redding played the Monterey Pop Festival a few hours south of San Francisco. The line-up at the show also included Simon & Garfunkel, the Mamas & the Papas, and the Who, plus Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Ravi Shankar in their first major American appearances.

British band Eric Burdon and the Animals (think hauntingly repetitive bars of organ and guitar in their version of the song "House of the Rising Sun"), also took to the festival stage, and the whole experience left such an impression on the band that they wrote a song about it. The Animals released their song "Monterey" a few months after the festival, referencing everything from their fellow performers to the flower-children in the audience. (The Animals' love of Northern California didn't stop with Monterey. Their song, "San Franciscan Nights" opens with the words, "This following program is dedicated to the city and people of San Francisco, who may not know it, but they are beautiful – and so is their city.")

The Monterey Pop Festival itself may be long over, but Monterey's still one of the most chilled-out – not to mention music-friendly – places you can visit on the California coast. Its annual Monterey Jazz Festival is a 57-year-old juggernaut of the genre: performers over the years have spanned everyone from Billie Holiday, to Dizzie Gillespie, to the Roots. The Monterey Jazz Festival is held each year at the Monterey County Fairgrounds, which was also the site of Monterey Pop. A comparatively new jazz festival, Jazz Bash by the Bay, will celebrate its 30th year in March, 2015 (college students can snag tickets for as little as $10). For low-key, last-minute live music, take a tip from HI-Monterey General Manager David Martinez and check out regularly scheduled performances at Sly McFly's, Cibo Ristorante, and the Sardine Factory.

"Bixby Canyon Bridge" by Death Cab for Cutie

"I descended a dusty gravel ridge

Beneath the Bixby Canyon Bridge

Until I eventually arrived

At the place where your soul had died."

The Big Sur region of the California coast has exerted a strong pull on the literarily inclined since the days of Jack Kerouac. In 1962, Kerouac published a novel named after the region and based on several visits he made there. Like much of Kerouac's work, Big Sur has remained hugely influential on readers of all kinds. And Ben Gibbard, of the band Death Cab for Cutie, counts himself among them: a song called "Bixby Canyon Bridge" on the band's 2008 album Narrow Stairs recounts Gibbard's experience following Kerouac's footsteps all the way from San Francisco down to Big Sur. The song opens with Gibbard under the Bixby Canyon Bridge (more commonly known as the Bixby Creek Bridge) listening for the spirit of Kerouac.

The song, like Kerouac's book, is pretty dark, but a visit to the Bixby Creek Bridge doesn't have to be. In fact, the arched bridge, set against green hills and the rugged coastline, is so lovely in its own right that it's become one of the most-photographed bridges on the west coast. The bridge is about a half-hour drive down Highway 1 from HI-Monterey and a few hours south of San Francisco.

Got a favorite musical reference to San Francisco or anywhere else in Northern California? Tweet us your top picks @HIUSANorCal