In The News

Former carpenter now crafts songs about trucking, life's ups and downs

DALLAS — Formerly a carpenter by trade and a singer-songwriter by passion, 35-year-old Joplin, Mo., native Matt Coleman has been deeply touched by the struggles he's seen his trucker friends go through.

"I've listened to their stories ... they hardly see their kids, yet they love driving," he said, adding that they're often torn between their families and the road.

More lately, he's witnessed truckers' financial struggles.

"We need these people," he says about a nation of consumers who are mostly unaware that nearly everything they have came on a truck.

So Coleman did what any red-blooded songwriter would do, he wrote a song about it.

Called "Fire It Up," it thanks long-haulers for the job they do every day. It's a song that speaks both to the "old school" knights of the road and to the younger generation of truckers.

As it turned out (it was a "God thing" says Coleman), mutual friends brought him together with Brian Martin from the Chrome Shop Mafia and formerly of "Trick My Truck" fame.

Martin also hails from Joplin, so it seemed like a natural fit.

"He was looking for a theme song and I was wanting to write one," Coleman said Wednesday prior to the opening of the
Great American Trucking Show here today and Friday.

The result, "Fire It Up," is an in-your-face country number about hard-working truckers.

Coleman will be at the Midnight Trucking Radio booth off and on during the show.

Truckers may be familiar with "Fire It Up" already: it's the first song on the Chrome Shop Mafia Web site.

Coleman hopes to cross over to mainstream country; he's been slugging away at the music industry, now, for some 14 years.

"I love music; I love to touch them [listeners]; I love performing," he said, adding that he wants to take his "God-given
abilities and succeed."

At one point, the music business nearly got the best of Coleman. "I was never home and partying all the time."

When his family left he realized what (and who) was important. "I hit my knees on my mom's bathroom floor" and told God "I can't do it myslef; I need help. He restored my life and my dreams."