'Roll On, Alabama': On the road with tour hauler Josh Gentry for music titans' Roll On II tour

Overdrive Radio

Thursday, July 18, would be a short day of work for operator Josh Gentry, starting at a leisurely 10 a.m. in Fort Payne, Alabama, outside the Quality Inn in town. There, Gentry met Overdrive Radio host Todd Dills to get rolling, the pair starting the day in Gentry's Chevrolet en route to the site of an old auto dealership in town that, since the mid-1980s, has been the home base of the fan club for longtime country-rock group Alabama. It's also home base for the group's tour truck, in which Gentry was about to set out on a run. Josh Gentry is son of one of the last two founding members in the band, bassist and harmony singer Teddy Gentry. Josh, after years pursuing music himself, then hauling grain around his home region (some of those years as an owner-operator), today serves as hauler of Alabama’s touring operation, moved in a single truck and 48-foot Great Dane show trailer emblazoned with the band’s insignia and the "Roll On II North America Tour" logo. That truck, a 2021 Kenworth T680 detailed in this week's podcast, rekindles an old partnership between the Alabama group and the Kenworth company, dormant after an official farewell tour in the early part of this century. As you’ll hear on this run to Nashville to load in for Alabama's July 19 show at Bridgestone arena, Kenworth’s relationship with the band tracks back to the 1980s, when the tour operation was as many as four trucks and trailers, and the band was at the height of its popularity with big hits like "Mountain Music," "Tennessee River" and, yes, the classic "Roll On (18 wheeler)," in past named by Overdrive readers in the top five for best trucking song of all time: https://www.overdriveonline.com/channel-19/article/14875984/these-are-the-top-10-trucking-songs-of-all-time Gentry's come full circle with his growing involvement in the tour operation, after a childhood spent enamoured by all things trucking and immersed in his father's band's music. Despite that long history, though, there's still opportunity for new experiences. By 11 a.m. Thursday last week he and Dills were pulling out with a lightly loaded trailer toward the Soundcheck facility’s docks to pick up more gear situated a very-short haul across the river from downtown. As the truck and trailer merged onto I-59 toward Chattanooga from Ft. Payne that morning, just as Dills readying his audio recorder for the talk with Gentry, a voice came over the radio -- "Roll on, Alabama!" -- invoking the classic trucking song. Gentry called tour manager Jeff Davis to mark the moment and give him an update on progress toward Nashville for load and staging. Yet the over-the-air atta-boy wasn’t the very first bit of attention the wrapped truck and trailer have gotten over going on two years Gentry's been guiding the tour, taking him as far as, most recently, North Dakota and into Manitoba and elsewhere in Canada. Dive into Josh Gentry’s trucking history and otherwise in this first episode featuring Overdrive's talk with the operator, the principal interests of his life to date all coming together now in live entertainment hauling with the family business. Catch more views of the truck and trailer, and from the Friday, July 19, live show in Nashville here: https://www.overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio/podcast/15680069/roll-on-alabama-ft-paynenashville-with-trucker-josh-gentry Find all episodes of Overdrive Radio via https://overdriveonline.com/overdrive-radio