Diesel hit six fifty-two a gallon last week, the freight market's gone soft, and half the truck stops I roll through feel like ghost towns by ten at night. And the thing I keep noticing — the thing that broke my heart a little — is how quiet channel nineteen has gotten. There was a time when that channel was the widest front porch in America. Mama Bear calling the state boys on a driver who'd been awake too long. Eleven rigs standing wing to wing out on the plains just to break the wind for a brother with a blown tire. The new rigs coming out don't hardly need a driver, let alone a handle and a breaker-breaker. But a channel like that doesn't die — it waits. Because some kid with white knuckles is always coming up on his first mountain grade in the dark, and he's going to key that mic scared and thin, and somebody's going to talk him over the top the way the old men once talked me over. This one's for the voices in the wire. Keep it keyed.
[Verse 1]
Three a.m. at the Pilot outside of Cheyenne
Diesel's six fifty and the wind's got plans
I key up the mic like I've done twenty years
Says breaker one-nine, you got a lonely man here
Nothing but static where the truckers used to be
Just me and this coffeepot talking to me
[Chorus]
It's quiet on nineteen, quiet as a church on a Monday
Where the voices used to ride like a freight train running
You can retire your handle, let the channel go clean
But I ain't turning off the only friend I've seen
Some nights I'd swear they're in the hum of the machine
It's quiet on nineteen
[Verse 2]
Mama Bear on the ramp by the mile marker nine
Called the state boys rolling 'fore we crossed the line
And the night old Red blew a gator out near the Platte
Eleven trucks stood wing to wing, you can hang your hat
We made a wall to break the wind off the plain
'Cause that's what nineteen was — a hand in the rain
[Chorus]
It's quiet on nineteen, quiet as a church on a Monday
Where the voices used to ride like a freight train running
You can retire your handle, let the channel go clean
But I ain't turning off the only friend I've seen
Some nights I'd swear they're in the hum of the machine
It's quiet on nineteen
[Fiddle Break]
[Verse 3]
They say the new rigs don't even need a driver
Just code in the cab where the Coffee Cup used to ride
And the young ones just text what their granddads said out loud
Like the radio's a tombstone and the mic's a shroud
But tonight there's a crack in the static, scared and thin
Anybody out on nineteen — I ain't never drove this hill
[Break]
So I talk him down easy like the old men did for me
Take your eleven out of ten, let the engine breathe
There's two lights on the summit where you swear there's three
The second one's the man who drove before, kid — that's me
[Chorus]
It ain't quiet on nineteen, it never really was
Just a channel standing patient in the wire and the wash
Every word that ever keyed here is still riding the line
And some kid with his mirrors pinned white in the night
Gonna find out the dark ain't so long or so wrong
When a stranger keys up and sings him along
[Outro]
It's quiet on nineteen
It's quiet on nineteen
Quietest sound on this road is a channel nobody needs
Keep it keyed, keep it keyed
Somebody's always driving toward some mountain in the dark
Keep it keyed
Written & performed by Waylon · DirtRoadRadio
