"The Road is My Mistress offers a view of America, and of the world, that has been painfully missing for at least two decades: it shows the pleasure that is gained and the kindness that is shown when a person trusts the goodwill of strangers. Rik is smart and modest enough to know that, although these are the stories of his own travels, he isn't the subject of his own autobiography. This is a book about generosity, spontaneity and the survival of the spirit, and about the uncanny ability of music--when it is a shared experience rather than a passive one using recordings--to bring out these qualities in people of different ages, backgrounds, even nationalities. When those in power are under the mistaken impression that the world is improved by force and threat, Rik's book offers a diametrically opposite and more convincing view, and we're all lucky that he has had the courage of his convictions and has lived his life so open-heartedly."

Tim Brooks, Author of "Guitar: An American Life"
and a regular commentator on National Public Radio

from the Forward:
We call [Rik] Totem Pole. Well, it suits him. Here he comes now, strong, upright, his whole body festooned with instruments: banjo, guitar and a quadriplegic goat he claims to be Polish bagpipes. And they are! Once played, they'll clean the wax out of your ears or make you wish you had more. Tote 'em Pole, that's him. Well, just part of him, the hobo part. The rest has to do with music, our music. And the road, long stretches of midnight highway, booming on to the next last lost town at the end of the world. You take all the best of who we've become, we Americans ; our plain, honest voice, our wandering soul, the deep, true poetry of all our places, trust, honor, hard-working hands and hearts at peace. Take all of these, stitch them together with our people's common music, the ring of the banjo and happy feet stomping away the darkness - and somewhere in the middle of all this you'll find Rik. He has more time and miles on him than a prospector's mule. But he has turned up the gold. It shines from a thousand stages where, night after night he gives back to some of us what he's learned from the rest of us. Always giving, only taking what balances out. Now, this book is part of that balance. The pay-back. This is an American life only because of all the American lives, past and present, that have flowed into and filled it up. All the hardship, all the open-handed love, the great adventure we're all in whether we know it or not, you'll find it all here in this one, same as you'd find it in all of us. But Rik tells it and lives it and sings it and it all comes out, like the old fiddler said, "finer than snuff and it ain't half as dusty."

- Utah Phillips, April 2003