Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/978209
Diversions May 2018 | Overdrive | 35 New recordings from Talent Search winner Singer-songwriter Jason Lee Wilson, an Overdrive- RedEye Radio Trucker Talent Search winner, brought down the house at Progressive Commercial's Mid-America Trucking Show booth in March. One of Wilson's six perfor- mances at the show can be accessed via video at Over- drive's Youtube channel (Youtube.com/Overdrive- mag) and in audio format in the Music to Truck By playlist (SoundCloud.com/ OverdriveRadio, or search "music to truck by" at OverdriveOnline.com). There you'll find knockout solo perfor- mances of, among other tracks, his 2016 Talent Search-winning "Truck- stop Betty" original, a tribute to a waitress at the old Monteagle Truck Stop along I-24 in Tennessee. You also can find his song "CDL," which those "who've been dealing with the results of these 'fun' ELDs can relate to," Wilson said at MATS. Both tracks are on a new five-song EP Wilson pro- duced in tandem with the show. They're also available on Wilson's 2008 "Another Hole in Another Wall" record. – Todd Dills Back in 2010, it seemed my terminal manag- er, Kevin Glass, and I often would work on log corrections for about 20 minutes, then spend the remainder of those mornings Youtube-ing Americana artists. Turns out we both were fans of a songwriter who was getting a lot of play on the Sirius XM Outlaw Country Channel 60, one Mary Gauthier. Her music was raw. It was gritty. It was right as rain. Finding anoth- er Gauthier fan in 2010 Richmond, Indiana, was a cause for celebration. Glass, a gravel-voiced Kentuckian, pulled a fruit jar from his file cabinet, took a sip and handed it to me. Gauthier (pronounced go-Shay), a recovering alcoholic now 27 years so- ber, got me out of a lot of remedial paperwork, and the shine was the smoothest I had ever tasted. I never dreamt that one day I would interview "The Queen of Country Noir" about her most lauded album to date, "Rifles & Rosary Beads." It's co-writ- ten with military veter- ans in conjunction with SongwritingWith:Soldiers, a program birthed by Aus- tin-based singer-songwriter Darden Smith and Mary Judd, his longtime partner. Judd has compared the project's many songs to Civil War diaries. The process borrows from the oral tradition, Smith says, pairing soldiers with top songwriters. At the retreats where the writers meet the soldiers, the only agenda is the song. Once the story is ascertained, as Gauthier says, "the songwriter's job is to disappear" from the narrative. Smith and Judd, with their dream team of songwriters, have midwifed a genre unlike anything this gear-jammin' music junkie has ever heard. It's a collaboration consecrated to transcribing the traumas and truths of those who have sacrificed the most. These retreats' songs now fill 27 albums, in- cluding this new one from Gauthier. They possess a scope and import so Ho- meric that it seems like an outright crime they're not more widely known. Find out more at Songwriting- WithSoldiers.org. Vets' songs compared to Civil War diaries By Paul Marhoefer The new "Rifles & Rosary Beads" record of songs written by Mary Gauthier with U.S. military veterans is avail- able most anywhere music is sold. Read more about it in trucker Paul Marhoefer's "Faces of the Road" series by searching "Mary Gauthier" at OverdriveOnline.com. Photo courtesy of Laura Partain Several tracks on trucker Jason Lee Wilson's special five-song "Chasin' the Moon" EP can be purchased from Apple Music and other online retailers. ACCESS OVERDRIVE'S "MUSIC TO TRUCK BY" playlist of tracks from established and emerging talents among truckers, music-focused editions of the Overdrive Radio podcast and good driving songs via SoundCloud.com/OverdriveRadio or search "music to truck by" at OverdriveOnline.com.