Country music star Zach Bryan buys original Jack Kerouac scroll to display in new center dedicated to Lowell author

LOWELL, MASS. (WHDH) – Country music star Zach Bryan has purchased an original scroll written by late Lowell-based author Jack Kerouac, to be displayed in a new Jack Kerouac Center when it opens in a few years.

The GRAMMY-winning artist bought Kerouac’s On the Road (1957) scroll and other historic items for more than $12 million at auction.

On the Road was inspired by Kerouac’s travels across the United States, and it still has a broad cultural influence. His estate says the work “challenged conventional form and was part of the most important literary and artistic movement of the 1950s.”

“The scroll was typed in 1951, it was typed over three weeks,” said Sylvia Cunha, Marketing and Business Development Director of the Jack Kerouac Estate. “It is on long sheets of contact paper and he just wanted to keep on writing without stopping, so he called it spontaneous prose.”

The novel was the inspiration for Bryan’s hit song Burn Burn Burn.

In May 2025, Bryan also purchased the former Saint Jean Baptiste Church in Lowell, where Kerouac served as an altar boy, and mourners gathered for his funeral mass in 1969. The church is currently being remodeled and will become the home of the Jack Kerouac Center – an incoming cultural hub that will feature exhibits, live music, public readings, and community events.

Cunha said Kerouac used a continuous roll of paper in a typewriter because he wanted the flow of his writing to be spontaneous and uninterrupted by paper changes.

“It came in a little box and I’m standing next to it, and then when he laid it out, it’s just nothing like you’ve ever seen because it is single spaced, there is almost no margins, no paragraph breaks, it kind of looks like a roll of film than anything else,” she said.

In addition to that scroll, Bryan also purchased another piece of literary history.

“Zach also won The Dharma Bums scroll which was about finding spiritual exploration, so you have these two dynamic scrolls,” said Cunha. “He had the church and now you have to put stuff in it, and what do you put that is just historical? The scrolls.”

Both pieces are now set to be on display when the Kerouac Center opens in a few years.

“The On the Road scroll is 120 feet and The Dharma Bums scroll is 60 feet,” said Cunha. “We’re just so excited. They’ve never been shown together.”

Cunha said the On the Road scroll is in good condition, except for one piece that Kerouac’s dog bit off.