Top 20 Traveling in the Truck Country Songs

Here’s the un-authoritative and absolutely subjective list of the best country songs to listen to while driving your truck (with the windows down, of course). Three things:

• The timeline for county songs considered starts in the 1950s and ends in the mid-90s. That’s about the time that country music headed off into frat-boy-country-pop-music-land and I stopped listening to country on corporation-owned radio stations.
• Songs must be traveling or place-based
• Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again” and John Denver’s “Take me Home, Country Roads” are not on the list because they’re awesome and should automatically be included on any list like this.

Here are the songs in alphabetical order by the name of the band or artist:

1. Alabama “Dixieland Delight”

2. Lynn Anderson “Rocky Top”

3. Glen Campbell “Gentle on My Mind”

4. Johnny Cash and June Carter “Jackson”

5. David Allen Coe “The Ride”

6. Waylon Jennings “Luckenbach, Texas”

7. George Jones “The Bird”

8. Roger Miller “King of the Road”

9. Ronnie Milsap “Smokey Mountain Rain”

10. Eddie Rabbitt “Drivin’ My Life Away”

11. Collin Raye “Little Rock”

12. Jerry Reed “East Bound and Down”

13. Shenandoah “Next to You, Next to Me”

14. Hank Snow “I’ve Been Everywhere”

15. Red Sovine “Phantom 309”

16. George Strait “Amarillo By Morning”

17. Keith Whitley “Miami, My Amy”

18. Dwight Yoakam “A Thousand Miles from Nowhere”

19. One bonus track: Connie Smith “Cincinnati, Ohio”

20. And another bonus track: Yola “Ride Out in the Country” (Yes, it breaks my temporal constraints – but it gives you a taste of the kind of country music you can only get by listening to independent radio stations like WNRN)

Honorable Mentions and Suggestions (please send them my way):

• Tom T. Hall That’s How I Got to Memphis
• Alison Krauss Steel Rails
• Steve Earle Guitar Town
• Willie Nelson City of New Orleans
• Ronnie Milsap Prisoner of the Highway

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Here’s the playlist on Spotify:

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If you enjoyed this list, here are some others:

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• Top 10 Star Trek Episodes
• Top 11 Quotes
• 10 Books that Doubled the Size of my Universe
• The 16 Best Pump You Up Songs (1980 – 1993)
• Generous Adjectives from A to Z
• Physical Fitness Test Database

Thanks. – shawn

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Photo by Drew Beamer on Unsplash