Kathy Mattea Broke Bonds with Trucking Song for Female Audience

Contrary to popular belief perpetuated by her late 1980s country music video,

Kathy Mattea never met a retiring truck driver named “Charlie” at a truck stop, and

she never autographed a photo for Charlie to give to his wife (whom we’ll refer to

as “June”) upon arriving home. Likewise, she didn’t write a song inspired by this

chance meeting that never happened.

All this may be hard to digest for those who know Mattea’s 1988 award-winning

“18 Wheels and a Dozen Roses” as a popular and lasting music video accompanying

the song’s release on country radio. Perhaps no song in country music history

better highlights the gap between interpreting meaning in a song and watching

someone else’s interpretation play out on the screen. What a songwriter has in mind

when composing may or may not be what the music video producers have in mind

when setting a song to film. In fact, what listeners interpret may be much more than

the songwriter ever intended.

Kathy Mattea grew up in West Virginia, but music did not run in her bloodlines.

It wasn’t until college that she joined her first bluegrass band. After two years at the

University of West Virginia, Mattea took what she’d learned from her campus band

and headed for Nashville where, like so many others, her dreams of stardom turned

into a journey of odd jobs. But unlike so many others, Mattea eventually received

the opportunity to record demo tapes for other artists to consider when planning

upcoming albums. After recording enough demos, Mattea’s voice caught the ear of

a record executive. By 1983, she’d signed a contract with Mercury Records, and her

first two albums enjoyed moderate success. But her 1986 album “Walk the Way the

Wind Blows” brought the stardom Mattea had left college to find. A single from

the album, “Love at the Five and Dime,” scored a Grammy nomination, and in the

meantime, she picked up a number of country music awards.

While the story of “18 Wheels and a Dozen Roses” may not have risen from

a chance meeting with a truck driver seeking an autograph, it did follow the route

many songs take toward “hit” status. The song was a product of demo tapes like

those Kathy Mattea recorded before landing her own contract.

While preparing to record her fifth Mercury album, “Untasted Honey,” Mattea

picked up a stack of demo tapes her producer had selected. Some songs fit her style;

others were thrown in to help her focus on the songs she liked best. The process was

likely straightforward, and the songs the producer expected Mattea to choose rose

to the top. But, on occasion one of the demo tapes “thrown in” becomes a diamond

in the rough. Such was the case with “18 Wheels and a Dozen Roses.”

Kathy Mattea liked the trucking song as written by Paul and Gene Nelson,

but she knew she had slim chances of recording it. Female artists didn’t record

trucking songs, and songwriters didn’t write them with female artists in mind. For

whatever reason, Mattea overcame the odds with “18 Wheels and a Dozen Roses.”

The Nelsons granted her the rights to record their song, and likely unbeknownst to

them, they also struck a chord of marketing genius. After all, when a female gains

admittance into a male-dominated genre, the audience for a song basically doubles.

In the case of “18 Wheels and a Dozen Roses,” the audience received an extra

boost. Mattea’s voice allowed a theme hidden in the song to shine through — one

the songwriters may not have considered when penning the lyrics. The result was a

“throw in” demo tape of a trucking song riding an unlikely superspeedway to country

gold.

“Charlie,” as both the song and music video suggest, is a truck driver on the

last leg of a 30-year career on the road. The gold watch his carrier presented as a

retirement gift hardly compares with the untold number of miles Charlie drove.

The watch is deemed even more insignificant when the discerning listener realizes

Charlie’s career kept him from spending time with his devoted wife (June, as we

named her at the outset of this column). Like the gold watch, the dozen roses Charlie

gives June after parking his truck for the last time cannot possibly pay her for the

years she spent standing behind Charlie counting the days until his return.

At this point in the song, just before the first chorus, the impact of Kathy Mattea’s

voice in a truck driving song is fully realized.

The words to “18 wheels and a Dozen Roses” do tell a story of Charlie and his

retirement, but with Mattea’s voice, the meaning expands. The song isn’t just about

Charlie after all. Instead, it is Charlie, June, and their relationship. The phrase,

“…she’ll no longer be counting the days…” is the turning point. For the remainder of

the song, June, even if unnamed, is what keeps the story alive. Without her, Charlie’s

retirement means little and the lyrics no longer have a purpose.

One would think Charlie would like to settle down and spend some time at home

after a lifetime on the road, but when considering June’s life, the second half of the

song reinforces that we’re listening to a story of a relationship.

“They’ll buy a Winnebago,

Set out to find America,

Do a lot of catching up

A little at a time.”

“With pieces of the old dream,

They’re gonna light the old flame,

Doing what they please

Leaving every other reason behind.”

Charlie has seen the sites of America. Now it’s time to see them again, but this

time with June and as a couple. Charlie’s retirement is not an end; rather, it’s the

beginning of what Charlie and June have waited for their entire adult lives.

With Mattea’s voice, what may have been intended as a simple trucking song

becomes much more. The theme of relationships, possibly never crossing the songwriters'

minds, overrides any intent they may have had of the song becoming a

sentimental favorite of lonely drivers on the interstates dreaming of the day when

they, like Charlie, can climb out of the cab a final time.

“18 Wheels and a Dozen Roses” could have been just another song “on the all-night radio” of which Kathy

Mattea sings, but thanks to her voice, the song became arguably the most popular

female-recorded trucking song in history and undoubtedly among the best trucking

songs of the past 40 years.

Until next time, try listening to a few of your country classic favorites while

blocking images of the music video from your conscious. You may find out what

you thought was merely a good story set to music turns to a diamond in the rough,

if only in your own mind.