From a ridge in the Ohio River Valley, on a front porch where Kentucky’s visible through the winter’s bare trees, Joe Truck Stop conspires over a smoking blend of Bluegrass, Honky Tonk, Western Swing, and whatever else finds itself inhaled and manifested by way of a wood box and steel wire…Years of digesting so much of the Country Blues lexicon and traveling the country learning the numerous styles of fiddlers, writers, and travelers alike has led to the original music that comes by way of Joe’s Truck Stop.

The songs are stories of living on the road, love, temptation, heartbreak, family, banjo pickin’ tobacco spittin’ women, gas station sushi, and much more…

We’ve released a handful of self recorded demos and three studio albums, the Free Showers EP (2014), American Dreams (2018), and, Yonderings, released in April 2022, currently receiving positive praise from numerous outlets and publications.

We’ve shared bills with: Wayne Hancock, Mandolin Orange, Kelsey Waldon, JP Harris & the Tough Choices, Foghorn Stringband, Dawg Yawp, Husky Burnette, Filthy Still, Joseph Huber, the Urban Pioneers, Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, the Sweetback Sisters, the Ten Foot Polecats, Sasquatch and the Sickabillies, Josh Morningstar, Jake & the Burtones and many other acts. We’ve played at numerous festivals, including Muddy Roots, Whispering Beard Folk Festival, John Hartford Memorial Festival, the Muddy Roots Spring Weekend, and many more.

We’ve performed live on television and radio, and have appreciated world wide radio play from terrestrial stations in the states to European podcasts and online radio shows.

Joe Macheret (Cincinnati, OH), bandleader and member of Cincinnati stringband, The Tillers, has also lent his instrumental skills on stage and in the studio to JD Wilkes and the Legendary Shack Shakers, the Urban Pioneers, Buffalo Wabs and the Price HIll Hustle, Bill Kirchen, Redd Volkaert, Justin Wells, Chelsea Ford and the Trouble, Maria Carrelli, Lenny Lashley, and many other musicians and bands. Joe’s other side project alongside (Buffalo Wabs & the PHH’s) Scott Risner, Truckstop Waterfall, gained attention after going on tour with Tyler Childers in 2017. Through Joe’s Truck Stop’s touring effort and Joe’s work as a sideman with several touring bands, Joe’s Truck Stop has a following that spreads throughout the United States, as well as numerous other countries.

“Todd Day Wait is a Missouri native with an easy-going, good humored nature that will have you singing along faster than you know the words. We originally met while I was on a trip to New Orleans, and reconnected at Santa’s Pub in Nashville one Sunday evening. We talked of this and that, drank cheap beers and had a good time. He even mowed my lawn the next day. That’s Todd’s secret you see; he’s a good guy.” – GemsOnVHS

Robbie Fulks is a singer, recording artist, instrumentalist, composer, and songwriter. His most recent release, 2017’s Upland Stories, earned year’s-best recognition from NPR and Rolling Stone among many others, as well as two Grammy® nominations, for folk album and American roots song (“Alabama At Night”).

Fulks was born in York, Pennsylvania, and grew up in a half-dozen small towns in southeast Pennsylvania, the North Carolina Piedmont, and the Blue Ridge area of Virginia. He learned guitar from his dad, banjo from Earl Scruggs and John Hartford records, and fiddle (long since laid down in disgrace) on his own. He attended Columbia College in New York City in 1980 and dropped out in 1982 to focus on the Greenwich Village songwriter scene and other ill-advised pursuits.

In 1983 he moved to Chicago and joined Greg Cahill’s Special Consensus Bluegrass Band. He taught music at Old Town School of Folk Music from 1984 to 1996, and worked as a staff songwriter on Music Row in Nashville from 1993 to 1998. His early solo work — Country Love Songs (1996) and South Mouth (1997) — helped define the “alternative country” movement of the 1990s. His music from the last several years hews mainly to acoustic instrumentation; it returns him in part to his earlier bluegrass days, and extends the boundaries of that tradition with old-time rambles and sparely orchestrated reflections on love, the slings of time, and the troubles of common people.

Radio: multiple appearances on WSM’s “Grand Ole Opry”; PRI’s “Whadd’ya Know”; NPR’s “Fresh Air,” “Mountain Stage,” and “World Cafe”; and the syndicated “Acoustic Cafe” and “Laura Ingraham Show.” TV: PBS’s Austin City Limits; NBC’s Today, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Later with Carson Daly, and 30 Rock. From 2004 to 2008 he hosted an hourlong performance/interview program for XM satellite radio, “Robbie’s Secret Country.” Artists who have covered his songs include Sam Bush, Kelly Hogan, Andrew Bird, Mollie O’Brien, Rosie Flores, John Cowan, and Old 97s.

Robbie’s writing on music and life have appeared in GQ, Blender, the Chicago Reader, DaCapo Press’s Best Music Writing anthologies for 2001 and 2004,  Amplified: Fiction from Leading Alt-Country, Indie Rock, Blues and Folk Musicians, and A Guitar and A Pen: Stories by Country Music’s Greatest Songwriters. As an instrumentalist, he has accompanied the Irish fiddle master Liz Carroll, the distinguished jazz violinist Jenny Scheinman, and the New Orleans pianist Dr. John. As a producer his credits include Touch My Heart: A Tribute to Johnny Paycheck (Sugar Hill, 2004) and Big Thinkin’ by Dallas Wayne (Hightone, 2000). Theatrical credits include “Woody Guthrie’s American Song” and Harry Chapin’s “Cottonpatch Gospel.”  He served twice as judge for the Winfield National Flatpicking Guitar competition. He tours yearlong with various configurations.

Besides country and bluegrass music, Robbie is fiercely fond of Charles Mingus, P.G. Wodehouse, quantum mechanics, his wife Donna, comedy in almost all forms, cooking, swimming laps, the past, Arthur Schopenhauer, Universal horror movies, his grandson and even his sons, coastal towns in the off-season, and rye whiskey, though in nothing like that order.