Best known for his string of trucking songs, Red Simpson was raised in Bakersfield, California, the youngest of a dozen children. At age 14, he wrote his first song -- about chickens -- and sang it to his family's fowl. During the Korean War, he served aboard a naval hospital ship, the Repose, where he found relief by forming the Repose Ramblers, who played any instruments they could scrounge up. He bought better ones in Japan and began to practice in earnest, and became a professional musician in California after his discharge. Simpson was working at the Wagon Wheel in Lamont when Fuzzy Owens saw him and arranged for Simpson to work at his Clover Club as a piano player. He then got a job replacing Buck Owens at the Blackboard Club on weekends. Simpson was influenced by Owens, Merle Haggard and Bill Woods, who asked Red if he would write a song about driving trucks. (By the time Simpson handed him four truck songs, however, Woods had stopped recording.) Simpson began writing songs with Buck Owens in 1962, including the Top Ten hit "Gonna Have Love." In 1965, Capitol's Ken Nelson was looking for someone to record some songs about trucking. His first choice was Haggard, who wasn't interested, but Simpson readily agreed. His first, Tommy Collins's "Roll, Truck, Roll," became a Top 40 country hit and Simpson recorded an album of the same name. That year he offered up two more trucking songs, both of which made it to the Top 50 or beyond. As a songwriter, he scored his first number one hit with "Sam's Place," recorded by Buck Owens. After th3at, Simpson decided to become a full-time writer. He returned to performing in 1971 with his Top Five hit "I'm a Truck," which had been written by postman Bob Staunton. In 1972, he debuted on the Grand Ole Opry and had two more "truck" hits for Capitol. In 1976, Simpson signed to Warner Brothers and released "Truck Driver's Heaven." The following year, he teamed up with Lorraine Walden for a series of duets that included "Truck Driver Man and Wife." In 1979, Simpson appeared for the last time on the charts with "The Flying Saucer Man and the Truck Driver." Haggard recorded his song "Lucky Old Colorado" in 1988; later that year Simpson was diagnosed with skin cancer and underwent surgery, but he fully recovered and continued his writing and performing career. Jonny Whiteside of the LA Weekly says...... Bakersfield singer-songwriter Red Simpson may be best known for his string of trucking hits, but Simpson has always had far more going on than could comfortably fit within the limited confines of that novelty genre. A master of the ballad--from “You Don’t Have Very Far To Go,” (a hit for Merle Haggard, that Simpson penned when Hag was working in Red’s band) to classics like the Buck Owens-covered “Heart of Glass” and the penetrating lament “Close Up the Honky Tonks”--Red is a peerless craftsman, and the arrival of aptly titled set “The Bard of Bakersfield,” his first full length album in decades, re-establishes him as one of California country music finest practitioners. The songs have all been shaped by Simpson’s own experiences there and whether he’s celebrating a sudsy jam session at a local tavern (“Ethel’s Corral,”) examining the bittersweet realities of every day life (”My Hometown Ain’t My Hometown Anymore,” “Bag Lady of Bakersfield”) or revealing his own fatalistic whimsy (“Do I Need A Hit To Get Into Hillbilly Heaven?”), Simpson’s superb writing and commanding, soulful vocals capture the essence of the city that shaped and influenced not only his own life and music, but also that of colleagues Buck Owens and Merle Haggard. It’s an extraordinary musical portrait spotlighting the personal side of a city that contributed so much to the development of modern country music, and coming as it does from one of the town’s most powerful forces, “The Bard of Bakersfield” is both an authoritative artistic statement and a brilliantly entertaining collection of never before heard songs. Country Critic Steve Manseau writes....... Bakersfield's country music scene has produced its share of favorite sons. Some are well-known, guys with names like Buck and Merle and Dwight, stars whose talent and fame loomed so large that the town’s hot and dusty environs could no longer contain them. With formidable reputations and bankrolls to match, they and their music became national commodities. Red Simpson, one of the founding fathers of the Bakersfield music scene, was once a national commodity, too. A prolific songwriter, he penned a whole batch of tunes with Buck Owens, including the 1967 number one hit, “Sam’s Place.” His “Close Up the Honky Tonks” became a signature song for the Flying Burrito Brothers during the 1970’s, and artists like Roseanne Cash (“You Don’t Have Very Far To Go”), Merle Haggard (“Lucky Old Colorado”) and Wanda Jackson (“Acting Like My Old Self Again”) are among the many who have recorded Simpson songs. And then there’s the trucker music. Anyone who knows a bit about it will tell you that Red rides in the genre’s fast lane with Dave Dudley, Dick Curless and Red Sovine. Songs like " I'm a Truck" and "Highway Patrol" cemented his reputation. Heck, he even had a couple of albums in the top ten on the Billboard country charts. Nowadays, Red Simpson is a true Bakersfield favorite son, one who never left home. A resident of the town for nearly all of his sixty-plus years, he is firmly ensconced as a regional treasure, a true blue-collar songwriter with Kern County dust under his fingernails and an Oildale ache in his heart. And with "The Bard of Bakersfield," Red's first album in nearly twenty five years, he takes on the role of town poet laureate, providing 14 original songs (and one cover tune) that evoke the city's past and present as only a long-time, guitar pickin' denizen could. Red paints with a broad and egalitarian brush, so on his aural canvas the Mighty Merle Haggards and Buck Owenses find themselves sharing time with the city's barflies, bamboozlers and bag ladies. Songs like "Bakersfield," "Home in Bakersfield," "Buck's Crystal Palace" and "Bakersfield Awaits Me" (a trucker tune credited to Lee Morris) all play a bit like colorful snippets from the chamber of commerce guide book, shameless samples of boosterism that detail some of the town's particular delights. Even more fun are the tunes that look backwards to a simpler, more congenial time– the days before Bakersfield became a thriving metropolis– when Bill Woods was teaching Red how to play guitar ("Bill Woods") and you could see local hotshot country stars like Fuzzy Owens, Roy Nichols and Johnny Caballero on a local television show ("Cousin Herb's Trading Post"). Other songs express the resignation that comes with change. When Red sings "my home town ain't my home town anymore" (“My Home Town”), it doesn't matter what city he's singing about, we can all feel the sting of trying to return to something that has ceased to exist. "Do I Have to Have a Hit" is a gospel-flavored number that asks if those who haven't made the big time can still get into "hillbilly heaven." Red's plaintive bass delivery, helped along by Cody Bryant’s old-timey fiddle bowing, renders the song all the more poignant, especially in light of his career filled with ups and downs. The bottom line here is that "The Bard of Bakersfield" certainly catches Red on an up note. He’s showing no signs of slowing down; his voice is mellowing like a fine workingman’s whiskey and he can still turn a good country phrase. He is a keen observer of life, one that bears the weight of this world with equal parts hard-won experience and wry humor. Red's also surrounded himself with a circle of talented friends on this offering. He's backed up by L.A. music phenom Cody Bryant and his band (for the record that's Bryant on fiddle and guitars, Mike Rhinestone on pedal steel, Jimmy Lee Harris on bass and the Landon McCoy on drums), a quartet that gives the album a nice throwback, honky-tonk feel. Anyone who has seen Red play with these guys on his all too occasional, but supremely memorable gigs at Burbank's Viva Fresh Cantina will not be surprised that Simpson feels right at home with this band. Despite the specific locality in this album’s title, it turns out that “The Bard of Bakersfield” has profoundly universal appeal. Anyone who has strong feelings about a particular place in their life should be able to feel the mixture of resignation, nostalgia and good-natured humor evident in this collection. And if I get a vote, they ought to be reserving a spot in hillbilly heaven for old Red. But they’re gonna need to hold that reservation for awhile, because based on the strength of this work, it seems we won't be done with him anytime soon.