Santa Monica Man Who Never Learned an Instrument Wins Route 66 Song Contest

Bart Blackburn's "I Know the Way" topped more than 100 entries after he spotted the contest in a pizza-shop window.

Bart Blackburn never learned to play an instrument. He found out about Santa Monica's Route 66 song contest from a sign in the window of Vito's Pizza, his neighborhood spot on the old highway.

Then he won it. The Santa Monica data scientist took the $10,000 grand prize on Nov. 5 at BroadStage for a song called "I Know the Way," the Santa Monica Daily Press reported. Mayor Caroline Torosis was one of the nine judges, according to the panel the Santa Monica Lookout reported in September. She and four City Council members were among the officials who handed him the check.

He also had an old act to follow. The judges wanted a song that would bring back the spirit of Bobby Troup's "Route 66," which BroadStage's artistic director, Rob Bailis, noted has been around for 80 years, the Santa Monica Lookout reported in September. Nat King Cole covered it in 1946 and the Rolling Stones in 1964, according to the Lookout.

And it wasn't a small field. Santa Monica Travel & Tourism, the nonprofit that sells the city to visitors, opened the contest to songwriters in 10 countries, from India to Ireland, its launch release said. More than 100 people entered, and the judges didn't know where any of them lived, the Lookout reported after the ceremony. The winner, it turned out, lives where the road ends.

The song runs on the road's oldest story. On stage, Blackburn said he'd read about the Dust Bowl migrants who headed west in the 1930s. He said he "could relate to that because I, like so many people, like Nate, came to LA 20 years ago, looking for an adventure, looking for my chance," the Daily Press reported.

The chorus calls Santa Monica "a place where the mountains meet the bay," according to lyrics the Lookout published. Troup's song told people to get their kicks on Route 66. Blackburn's comes from a man who made that drive two decades ago and stayed, the Lookout reported.

"I'm not a professional songwriter by any means," Blackburn told the Daily Press. He supplied the words and the tune, and Nate Morgan, a Santa Monica film and TV composer, wrote the music. The two were classmates on the East Coast, and Morgan cut the track over one weekend, layering slide, electric and acoustic guitars with bass, the Lookout reported.

The rest of the world hears it next. Misti Kerns, the tourism bureau's chief executive, said the bureau intends to get the two men a professionally produced studio version, the Daily Press reported. The song's public debut is set for the Route 66 Centennial on Wednesday, the Daily Press reported, though the BroadStage crowd already got a listen: the ceremony's livestream is on YouTube, and the Lookout pointed readers to the song in it.

That, Blackburn told the Daily Press, is what Route 66 is about: nobody knows what they'll find out there, and sometimes they get lucky. "And that's what happened to us."

Source: smdp.com, retrieved November 10, 2026. Other sources: surfsantamonica.com, santamonica.com, surfsantamonica.com (2).