Behind the guitar/ Behind the wheel / Tires whining like a pedal steel
Ian Tamblyn from "Guitar Truck Driving Man"
A couple of years ago I wrote an article for Truck News decrying the lack of Canadian trucking songs. But as researcher/writer for Highway Workplace: The Canadian Truckers’ Story, I’ve discovered a rich menu of Canadian trucking tunes.
You still can’t hear them on the radio, except "Bud the Spud," which gets light rotation on some country stations. But it’s sure nice to know that this genre doesn’t stop south of the border. Indeed, we have a deerskin mitt full of our own Dave Dudleys and Red Sovines--it’s just that nobody knows about them.
The definitive Canadian trucking song stops with Stompin’ Tom Connors. His song "Bud the Spud" is, arguably, the best-ever truck song penned on this side of the 49th parallel.
To write great a truck song you have to live the life, or at least genuinely research the topic, care about what you are writing, and treat it respectfully. Connors went ballistic in 1969 with "Bud the Spud" because it has all the triggers: it’s bouncy, fun, down-east-country. He talks lovingly of PEI potatoes and drops Canadian place-names like cigarette butts along the TransCanada. Moreover, Connors elevates the common worker to heroic status when he mythologizes his trucker-friend Bud Roberts And it’s not just another load of potatoes. It’s "the best doggone potatoes that’s ever been growed!"
"Bud the Spud" rides over the top on all cylinders with a diesel soundtrack and a police siren framing the narrative. "He hits Toronto when it’s 7 o’clock / He backs her up agin’ the terminal dock / And the boys gather round just to hear him talk / About another big load of potatoes."
It’s not surprising that Stompin’ Tom has recorded several truck driving songs. Thirty years after "Bud the Spud," he’s writing politically incorrect lines like, "You made a schmuck out of a pretty good trucker / And you done your daddy wrong" (from the title cut on the CD, Ode to the Road, 1999)
He’s done his homework. Born in St. John, NB, (the veteran hatted and hoofing performer just turned 67 this February), he began hitchhiking at age 15 seemingly randomly across Canada with his guitar and duffel bag. Connors traveled the same highways as truckers and got rides from them (this was before the TransCanada was completed and before the hippie era), taking the occasional odd job but preferring to play his songs in taverns for a few dollars. In his book Before the Fame, he recalls those days, "When I made some money I’d flop in a $2 room in one of the hotels, when I didn’t I’d just go and sleep in the park."
Finally Connors got his "break" in Timmins, Ont. in 1964, when he was a nickel short for a draft and the owner offered him a chance to perform on stage. Those were the days before the " stompin’ board." That one night gig turned into a 13 week contract and regular appearances on CKGB, the local radio station. He added the plywood board soon after and recognition soon followed.
It’s not surprising that Stompin’ Tom’s hitchhiking buddy and boyhood friend Stevedore Steve (also know as Stephen Foote) would also record several original trucking songs himself icluding, I’m a Truck Driver", "Highway White Lines", and "Country Trucker." Now retired and living in St. John. NB., the inscription on the sleeve of his album, Hard Workin’ Men, rings as true today as it did in 1971. "I wrote this for all Canadian long-haul drivers. Although I’ve never driven a semi, I’ve loaded many. Sometimes to pay for a ride with the driver to the next town or city."
But Canadian trucking music is not a static vehicle. The Canadian songs you can’t hear on the radio are continuously being replenished. While we once had standard bearers like Bud Roberts, Tom Connors and Stevedore Steve, a new generation of Canadian musicians have stepped into those 30 year old shoes. Fred J. Eaglesmith, Willie P. Bennet and Washboard Hank Fisher all write and perform trucking songs. Michael Ernie Taylor of Stratford, Ont. has just released a new song, "This Old Truck" on his album Folk and Western. And Daisy DeBolt has just stepped out of the studio after recording "Midnight Highway," a road song that she co-wrote with Governor-General and Booker award winner Michael Ondaatje.
Not surprisingly, musicians and truckers occupy the same orbit. They eat in the same truck stops, drive long distances and share the same realm of freedom and loneliness and dislocation—the last nomads of the industrial world, someone called them.
Like the people driving the trucks, Canadian trucking music is more diverse, esoteric and wider ranging than its US counterpart. Canuck songs have echoes of Gordon Lightfoot, Newfoundland and Quebec, nature and Natives, New France and big prairie skies, the Rockies and Old Europe, Cape Breton and the Dempster Highway, a veritable aurora borealis of songs.
But the last word on the subject should belong to the Canadian songwriter. Lewis Melville must have driven truck at one time. This is nice writing that resonates close to the tarmac and speaks for the Canadian trucker.
Leaving Alberta with the sun in my eyes / Home’s just a place I keep inside my mind / 17 hours from Portage and Main / But I’m closer to you than I was yesterday / Dropped my trailer in Sault Ste Marie / Bobtailed all the way to Sudbury / There’s a nickel for my payload and a quarter for the phone / To call and let you know I’m not far from home/ Takes 18 wheels to make me go / And a long hard kiss to let you know / I’ll be good, I’ll be true, I’ll be black and I’ll be blue / and I’ll be there just as soon as I can / Get these 18 wheels across this land.
Twenty-one great Canadian Trucking tunes compiled by Steven Fruitman, CIUT radio, Toronto.