Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/148061
Diversions By Sean Randall If you follow country music, you might have heard a single this year from Mickie James, formerly a World Wrestling Entertainment Diva and now TNA Impact Knockouts champion. Her album for E1 Music, "Somebody's Gonna Pay," debuted in May. James also is no stranger to trucking. Her stepfather – handle: "Blue Goose" – drove a logging truck for years before moving to his current job at Century Concrete. Not only that, James had a year-and-a-half stint as a waitress at the All-American Truck Stop in Doswell, Va., when she "was a struggling wrestler who couldn't pay the bills, so I moved back home," she says. "Sometimes I'd be there at 4 in the morning," James says of her waitress days. "They'd often come in exhausted just wanting a cup of coffee and a shower and maybe some conversation. The connections I made fascinated me about life on the road." While wrestling has been a big part of her life the past 12 years, her music roots are deep. "I've played violin since I was 5 years old," says James, who was born in 1979 in Richmond, Va. "I grew up with music. I want to sing the music that I love." Currently on the road for TNA Impact for up to 150 days a year, James still hopes to keep her music career going between full-time wrestling responsibilities. "I recognize that I can't wrestle for the rest of my life, but I'm not ready to retire yet," she says. "Hopefully, even if the music does take off, wrestling will always be a part of my life, whether it's a special appearance or something else." Blast from the past By Todd Dills By the early to mid-1980s, "Magic Lady" Genie Mack Brown of Prague, Okla., had split with her team owner-operator partner – down the middle: "He took the truck, The new album by Mickie James, who used to work in a truck stop, is available via online retailers in CD and digital formats. Learn more at MickieJames.com. Courtesy of Mickie James Ex-waitress juggles wrestling, singing Scan the QR to pull up a video for the title track on Mickie James' new record, "Somebody's Gonna Pay." Alternately, search "Mickie James" at OverdriveOnline.com for sample tracks. And her time in the ring has been paying off. James won the TNA Impact Knockouts Championship, making her the only female wrestler to be a champion nine times over, as well as the only person to ever hold the WWE Women's, WWE Divas and TNA Knockout Championships. She plans on having more music out soon. "I hope to have another album by the end of the year," she says. I took the music," she says – and headed to Nashville, Tenn., where she was told a woman in her late 30s was too old to become a star country singer. Today, she's 69 and retired, but her music is enjoying new life on account of a Wyoming friend who put a few of her old tracks up on ReverbNation.com. They're oldtime-tinged country, one of them an anthem mentioned in 1980 in Overdrive: "What will we do when the trucks are gone?" Brown was introduced to the trucking world in June 1979 when she saw a news program about independents shutting down in Mesquite, Texas, "which was not far from where my home was." She promptly wrote the song "We're Independent Truckers" and "played a little tape 50 | Overdrive | August 2013 Diversions_0813.indd 50 7/29/13 9:02 PM