Regular readers will recall my post from last week about what Tony Justice and the Trucker Nation team were kicking up for Friday last week, May 17, with “Joey’s Ride,” the big 10-4 for what might be Justice’s biggest young fan and the Tinora Elementary School in Defiance, Ohio, where Joey attends. James Crowley of Texomatic Pictures was there shooting some video of Justice’s performance and the convoy that followed with the young man (wearing the cowboy hat in the front row in Crowley’s above picture) riding shotgun with Justice in the lead truck.
I’ll be talking with Justice a little more later this week about what he calls perhaps the “easiest thing I’ve ever done” when it comes to planning an event. “The school really supported it, from the superintendent all the way down to the teachers. The trucking company,” Keller Logistics, “got behind it.” Local authorities were willing and able to help. “When things are meant to be, they just happen like that,” with nary a hitch, he says. Stay tuned for more. Meantime, a few pictures from the day.
“We took six bobtails into the school” as backdrop and learning experience for the students who attended Justice’s surprise concert for Joey there, Justice says. Once that portion of the day was over, and Justice presented the approximately $3,300 raised for the school from followers of Trucker Nation, the truckers reconvened with the remainder of the participating haulers, with Joey riding with Justice, for the convoy. The convoy rolled by the school as students looked on.
Joey got a little extra in the way of a tutorial on big-truck driving.Stay tuned for more from Justice later in the week.
Highway hauler/songwriter Will Beeley’s triumphant musical return
Forty years and many miles after his two records released when he was in his 20s, trucker-songwriter Will Beeley has cut a third, “Highways & Heart Attacks,” due this coming month via Tompkins Square, which also reissued Beeley’s first two records. Get on over to this story by my Trucker News colleague David Hollis about the now longtime hauler, whose trucking career following years booking musical acts and gigging himself.
Trucker-songwriter Will Beeley at work behind the wheel | photo courtesy of Thompkins SquareAs Hollis writes: “A south Texas high school kid has an acoustic guitar and starts writing songs back in the late 1960s. A Mississippi recording studio likes what they hear and puts out an album a few years later. Then he publishes a second one on his own. Then 40 years — yes, 40! — pass before album number three arrives. In the interim were several jobs booking musical acts for clubs, marriage, children, a career as a truck driver, reissues of those first two albums and a major health scare. …”
Hollis’ story includes a podcast talk with Beeley over his history. Catch a taste of his new bluesy dirge, “U.S. 85,” too, below, and more via the “Music to Truck By” playlist:
