Following what has been perhaps the toughest week for trucking as an owner-operator in the last decade, this edition of Overdrive Radio offers some diversion, hopefully, via an interview with Haley Fohr of the Chicago-based band Jackie Lynn, whose new record proceeds from a conception of the character for whom the band is named as a long-hauler with a particularly spectacular rig — a mirrored vessel that carries the weight of the world it inhabits as its cargo.
The record, called “Jacqueline,” is the group’s second, among Fohr’s other songwriting/performing projects. Part of the genesis of the project goes back to her own earliest memories of the layers of culture within trucking — right back to the old collective arm-pump of all the kids on the school bus, a tradition she hopes survives long into the future.
Also in the podcast, after some snippets of her music and a talk, our own “Long Haul Paul” Marhoefer offers presentations of two of his pensive, funny, and sometimes moving dispatches from the COVID-19 road, happy for the grocery, food and beverage loads but facing near impossible decisions in other ways. Many of you, I know, will recognize the deliberations. Take a listen:
And … following find the vid for what might be my favorite track from the new record, Dream St., an Americana-esque, string-laden ode to Ogden Ave., which cuts diagonally across Southwest Chicago, part of the original Route 66 …
