From a songwriting session in early 2019 with Nashville-based John Allan Miller, Airgas company driver Guy Archer, based in Dayton, Ohio, determined to get back to Music City to continue work in songwriting later that same year. Yet a back injury derailed that plan, then COVID happened in 2020, and getting back into his truck after unloading one night Archer happened to hear an advertisement early in 2021 for the Overdrive-Red Eye Radio Trucker Talent Search.

As many regular listeners will know, Archer went on to win the competition, and early in November, he was back in Nashville at the Jay’s Place recording studio with producer-engineer Jay Vernali laying down five of his original tracks, all of which you can listen to via this playlist he was kind enough to share with us: https://soundcloud.com/overdriveradio/sets/2021-trucker-talent-search-winner-guy-archers-prize-recording-session

For this edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast, we’ll take a tour through some of those results as well, likewise a long talk with Archer about his life in music, and trucking but of course.

He got his start in 1992 with J.B. Hunt and has done a little bit of everything, including driving massive articulated dump trucks off-highway, on up to his current work for Airgas. His wife, Linda, joined him on the trip the Nashville for the session, where Vernali brought in Tony Graci on percussion and, on guitar, a player with a little trucking-music lineage behind him. Guitarist Chris Leuzinger’s pretty famous for his long and exhaustive work with country music leading light Garth Brooks, but he also played on one of the most famous trucking songs of all time, “18 wheels & a dozen roses” by Kathy Mattea.

Results from the session are spectacular.

Catch Archer's winning Talent Search performance on video here: https://www.overdriveonline.com/trucker-talent-search/article/15114790/guy-archer-named-trucker-talent-search-winner