THEMES OF THE ROAD:
Diversions Profile » Lisa Godino
Roll on, truck driving woman
Folk songwriter and F&M Transportation
driver Lisa Godino crafts tunes for the road
by TODD DILLS
F
&M Transportation driver
Lisa Godino started writing
poems and songs when just a
girl growing up near her home in
Harmony, N.J. “I was always singing in the closet,” she says. “I didn’t
realize I could sing in a band.”
She worked various jobs until, on
a landscaping job at age 25, she met
a man who drove local with his rig.
“We started talking,” Godino says,
“and he said, ‘You can do this. If
you want, you can even own your
own truck.’”
While she never did become an
owner-operator, that encounter led
to Godino securing her first driving job. She joined F&M hauling a
tanker locally that, more often than
not, was loaded with milk.
“I was a farm pickup driver,” she
says. “It was the best experience
anyone could ask for!” It was work
that required a versatile approach,
with “tons of backing up, down
and around all kinds of driveways,
barns, junk … I had back-road
driving, interstate driving and the
icing on the cake was New York
City every day: the best experience
for this rookie!”
To boot, all that was in a 1982
R model Mack “that beat you to
death,” she says. “No AC, no airride suspension. My back and neck
took a beating.”
She had other driving jobs
through the years, with Bulkmatic
and other carriers, before finally returning to F&M. By then, though,
the freedom and responsibility of
driving had steered her down other
paths as well — she’d long made
good on the promise of her singing
voice. She joined her first band
in her early 30s, gigging in the off
time, then “picked up the guitar
when I was 38,” she says. Today,
she has a couple records under her
belt, both involving her longtime
partner and accomplished banjo
and guitar player Chuck Winch.
The couple was heavily involved
in Civil War history and re-enactments in years past, and their “No
Glory Here Today” (2001) and “No
Longer Gray or Blue” (recorded
under the name “Plum Run” and
released in 2007) discs tracked
in Civil War historical themes.
More recently, however, Godino’s
recorded several trucking-themed
tracks you can find on http://www.
plumrunmusic.com — among the
tunes are “Roll On, Truck Drivin’
Girl,” “Long Way Home” and
“Superman.” The combination of
a classic American folk style and
sensibility with themes of the road
hasn’t sounded quite so good in a
long time.
“I’m a folk artist just trying to
make a little noise anywhere I
can,” Godino says. With “50 hours
a week’s worth of trucking, it’s
difficult to find the time, but I
keep trying to write as much as I
possibly can.”
Scan the QR code to check out a
video for Lisa Godino’s “Roll On, Truck
Driving Girl,” or find it and others via
http://www.youtube.com/lisagodino1.
28 | TRUCKERS NEWS | MAY 2012