More, today, from my run with Josh Gentry. As detailed in last week's Overdrive Radio edition, Gentry’s the son of country music titan Alabama’s founding member and bassist Teddy Gentry. Today, we dive into the history of the band with some of the hands at its headquarters in Ft. Payne, around which all three founding members -- Gentry, lead vocalist Randy Owen, and the late guitarist Jeff Cook -- grew up and kept ties to family farming operations over the years of chart-toppers, touring, and all the trucking involved with the operation.
As also noted in Part 1, the Kenworth company is sponsoring Alabama’s current tour -- the "Roll On II North America Tour," using the name of Alabama's trucking-song classic "Roll On (18 Wheeler)." Kenworth’s sponsorship rekindles an old relationship between the band and the truck company.
Founding member Teddy Gentry called the original relationship a product of necessity back during the height of the band’s popularity, when he said the tour was supported by as many as five tractor-trailers full to the gills with equipment the band’s operation toted from place to place. No one at Kenworth, nor Gentry, could recall quite just how it started, but “we needed trucks," Gentry said, "and we were exploding on the scene as far as the music goes." Teddy Gentry called it certainly a “good promotion for them,” Kenworth, too, with Alabama trailers festooned with band insignia pulled across North America by Kenworth.
According to Kenworth reps involved in the current sponsorship, when they talked to the band and family members involved in the past operations about those old days, all attributed their access to newer-model trucks as a lynchpin of their growth, and reliability, as a touring band.
"They were struggling with older trucks breaking down a lot," said Erik Kremsner, Kenworth product planning manager for over-the-road and engines. "The idea was when we gave them these first trucks, it was the first time they could confidently make shows, [which] lent to building on their reputation" without having to leverage money to invest in equipment. "They had an opportunity to have a good, reliable source of transportation to do more shows, helping them grow in their early career."
It was good for the band in other ways, too, recalled Teddy Gentry, leading to Alabama featuring in the driver-tribute show year after year at the Mid-America Trucking Show from the late 1980s up through an official farewell tour in the early 2000s.
This rekindled sponsorship, Teddy Gentry added, has been great to “reunite a relationship that works, and especially that my son’s involved,” he said.
For Josh Gentry, his father felt, trucking with the band and family is like “a dream come true” in some ways after years pulling a hopper bottom in ag operations, some of them as an owner-operator.
[Related: 'Roll on, Alabama!': On the road with tour hauler Josh Gentry]
Josh’s own words underscore that in the podcast, as he reflected during our run in the single 2021 Kenworth T680 that powers the Alabama-controlled portion of the tour. Like so many an owner-operator and drivers the nation over, Gentry truly takes pride and plenty enjoyment in doing what he does.
If you missed last week’s podcast, you’re going to hear Josh Gentry today speaking on the Thursday ahead of Alabama’s Friday, July 19, show at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville. The bulk of the talk was recorded in-cab with Gentry on the haul up to Nashville from band headquarters in Ft. Payne, where we also spoke with staff about their longevity working for the group and memories of the past supporting their relationship with their fans and the many, many tours.
Among them is Greg Fowler, who went to work for the band after becoming friends with them when he was a radio DJ in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, in Alabama's early years as the house band at the Bowery club there. In the podcast, hear Fowler's recollections from the road with the band in the 1980s and on, where he was a fixture doing all manner of things. Today, he's headquartered in Ft. Payne at the band and fan club headquarters.
The 1974 Dodge Van that the band toured in during its early days, when it was called “Wild Country.” It's now housed in the museum at the Alabama Fan Club headquarters in Ft. Payne. I asked Teddy Gentry for any recollections of those days and the van in particular. The primary thing he remembered: changing the oil religiously, every 2,000 miles. “We were using Kendall oil,” he said, and the van was key to the band’s livelihood – everything depended on it. They’ve come a long way, that’s sure.
And we’ll drop in at the load site in Nashville where Alabama’s gear is housed, and where Josh Gentry and crew filled the wrapped 48-foot Great Dane show trailer to stage that Thursday night at Bridgestone.
Tour operations managers and crew there spoke to all manner of aspects of Josh Gentry’s and their own work for the band, and the tight relationship between father and son Gentry as well. Pictured here is longtime tour pro Bob Harrer, pushing a gear case into the trailer for transport.
Dive into this on-highway portrait of country music titans Alabama, with destination a show that would see something you don’t see every day, that’s sure. It opened with a Kenworth video that, in essence, is a tribute to the importance of American trucking. That video ended with a message, in this case sent out to 20,000 people all in one very, very big room: “Thank you to drivers everywhere,” it read. “Roll On.” Take a listen:
Talking to Kenworth representatives this morning, reps there added to the portrait of the band's and truck company's mututally benefiicial relationship, a good bit of it centered around the Mid-America Trucking Show where opportunities to engage the trucking audience were most prominent.
Reps ran down several initiatives that were a direct result, including special-edition collections releases. At Kenworth dealerships, too, a special Christmas cassette from the band was distributed one year. Reps recalled a donation bin set up at MATS intended to benefit families at the children’s hospital in Louisville. One year, more than $10,000 was raised, and the band members went to the hospital to deliver it and visit with families there.
As is also noted in the podcast about Alabama's -- and Josh Gentry's, for that matter -- fan appreciation through the years, the Kenworth sponsorship brought along more than just trucks with the operation. As Kenworth PR Manager Mari Colbourne put it, clearly there "was a lot more to [Alabama's] engagement in the ways they were interacting with the community -- and the trucking community, particularly."
In some ways, as evidenced here, that tradition continues. ...
[Related: 4 million miles of increasing efficiency for owner-operators 1995 Kenworth T600]
