Speedballin'

New compilation packs horsepower

by Chris Erikson

Truck drivers have to put up with a lot -- boredom, low pay, long hours, lousy coffee -- but when it comes to musical tributes, they've got any other working stiffs beat hands down. Diesel fumes, truck stops, little white pills, and 18-wheelers rumbling down the highway have inspired enough songs to weigh down a tractor-trailer, from the glorious "Six Days on the Road" to the unfortunate "Convoy." While the genre may have peaked in the '60s, when guys like Dave Dudley and Red Simpson built entire careers on truckin' tunes, there's life in the old boy yet. The proof is on Rig Rock Deluxe (Diesel Only/Upstart), an inspired compilation of 16 odes to the cowboys of the interstate.

Keeping the flame alive here is Brooklyn's Diesel Only label, which began six years ago with the gimmick of turning out 45 RPM singles of big-city country-rock they dubbed "rig rock" and trying to land them in truck stop jukeboxes. The best of these singles were compiled on 1992's Rig Rock Jukebox and 1993's Rig Rock Truckstop.

This time out they've cast their net a bit wider, assembling an all-star, intergenerational cast that runs from honky-tonk elder statesman Buck Owens and trucking-music originals Red Simpson and Del Reeves to new traditionalists like Marty Stuart and country-influenced roots rockers like the Bottle Rockets. This mixing of the old and new guards is one of the album's triumphs, emphasized in a handful of cuts pairing trucking pioneers with various (relatively) young upstarts: Kay Adams is backed by Nashville phenoms BR-549 on "Mama Was a Rock, Daddy Was a Rolling Stone," Red Simpson teams up with Junior Brown on the Simpson classic "Nitro Express," and Del Reeves collaborates with Jim Lauderdale on the propulsive "Diesel, Diesel, Diesel."

The material is split between covers of trucking classics and new songs, without a weak track in the bunch. Owens is in good form on "Will There Be Big Rigs in Heaven?," which contemplates the gearjammer's final reward ("No more potholes, no more scales/No more smokies on my tail"). Texas yodel-king Don Walser shines on the truck stop chestnut "Truck Driving Man," and Nick Lowe swaggers through Johnny Horton's "I'm Coming Home," and Steve Earle offers a bluegrass-tinged version of Townes Van Zandt's "White Freight Liner Blues."

Although there are the requisite number of white-line-fever odes (the Yayhoos' blistering "Highway Junkie," Shaver's "Mother Trucker"), other cuts take a different approach. Marty Stuart's "Miss Marie and the Bedford Blaze" narrates the saga of "two losers on the lonesome side of nowhere" who pledge their love in a truck stop motel and set out for Vegas in a doomed search for outlaw rhinestone cowboy David Allan Coe. In the somber "Wagon of Clay," ex-Blood Orange Cheri Knight looks through the eyes of a trucking widow pondering her lover's addiction to the road. One track that straddles the line is Son Volt's cover of Del Reeves's "Looking at the World Through a Windshield," in which Jay Farrar's world-weary vocal seems to nod to both the glories of life on the road and the toll that it takes.

The whole thing is capped off by a rave-up rendition of the trucker anthem "Six Days on the Road," by a motley assemblage that includes Mekon Jon Langford, honky-tonker Dale Watson, head Skeleton Lou Whitney, Rosie Flores, and a few others. It's a fitting end to an album that's not afraid to mix things up and, above all, knows how to have a good time. Revved-up and righteous, Rig Rock Deluxe is sure to enliven your next long haul.