Big Al Weekley

The Man "Behind the Scenes" 
Talented Songwriter and Great Friend........
I Would Like You to Meet

Cliff Abbott – Songwriter

Writing has always come easy for Cliff. Back in high school in Downers Grove, Illinois, creative writing was one of his favorite subjects. He also wrote and published the newsletter for his church’s teen group. The story writing continued and years later his short story, “Trisha and the Trucker” was published in the December, 1994 issue of Trucker’s News magazine, earning third place in the Mark Twain Essay Contest.

Somewhere along the line, Cliff began writing music. The songs were mostly country, inspired by the legends he listened to on the radio as a youth. “I was the only kid in school with a Flatt & Scruggs Greatest Hits 8-Track in my car,” he proudly admits. Johnny Cash, Bobby Bare, and Tom T. Hall were the songwriting performers that he learned from. Especially Tom T. Hall, from whom Cliff learned that a song doesn’t have to be complex to be successful. “It can be a simple story, as most of Hall’s creations are,” says Cliff. “But,” he adds, “it has to touch something within the listener. If you make somebody laugh, or cry, they don’t much care if all the words rhyme.”

Making a living came first, however, and Abbott took care of his family the way many have chosen. He learned to drive a truck and hit the road. Through 13 years of driving, Cliff hauled mostly trash, dry bulk products, and petroleum products. After a move to Georgia in 1994, he begin hauling jet fuel from Atlanta to the Tennessee Air National Guard bases in Knoxville and Nashville. He still fondly remembers those years as his favorite in trucking. Along the way he purchased two trucks and even obtained his own operating authority for a brief stint as owner of a one-truck flatbed company.

All the while, the writing continued. Many songs went into a drawer or a box. Some were thrown away, while others were eventually lost. Feeling a need to spend more time with his family and desiring to spend time developing his strong Christian faith, Cliff came off the highway to take jobs as a Truck Driving School Instructor and then Orientation Instructor for Roehl Transport. Although he swore he would never leave the South, Roehl soon transferred him to company headquarters in Wisconsin where he eventually became their Communication Specialist. The new position allowed Abbott to utilize his writing skills. He contributed to the company’s Driver Reference Guide along with many other safety and driver development projects. He also put together something new to the trucking industry – a company-produced audio newsletter called “The Roehl News Network.”

This bi-monthly audio production presented company and industry news in a talk-show format, with Abbott as the primary “personality.” He wrote scripts for different contacts within the company, conducted interviews, and edited and produced the final product. While in mid-production for the first edition, Cliff realized that the audio-newsletter must have entertainment value to hold the listener’s interest. That’s when he began to search for interview subjects; a search that led him to Big Al Weekley.

Aside from the friendship that blossomed between Cliff and Big Al, there were two other results of that initial contact. Big Al arranged for Cliff’s first celebrity interview, with the legendary King of Trucking Music, Dave Dudley. It turned out to be one of Dudley’s final interviews prior to his death in 2003. In subsequent editions, Cliff conducted interviews with Bill Fries (voice of C.W. McCall), John Conlee, Mark Chestnutt, Ray Price, Gloria Gaynor, Ray Stevens, and a host of other music personalities, including Big Al himself.

The second result of Cliff’s contact with Big Al was an introduction to Kevin Prater, of the James King Band. Through Big Al’s encouragement, Cliff began to submit some of his musical works to Kevin to have demo recordings made. He continued to write, and the excellent recordings by Prater provided Cliff with high quality demos to send out to recording artists and others. Encouragement from well-known Bluegrass songwriter and friend Pete Goble convinced him to keep trying.

Abbott also had a problem to overcome. Despite his writing ability, at the age of 46 he did not play an instrument and could not – or would not – sing in public. Realizing that he must learn to perform his own material, Cliff bought a bass guitar and turned to a very modern tool to learn to play it – the Internet. Within weeks, he was playing along with his own songs that Kevin had recorded. He invested in an upright bass and landed a job playing with a popular Wisconsin band, Maggie Mae and Country Plus. Fellow band members coaxed him into singing, and he eventually teamed up with friend Jerry Masephol to form the Gospel Bluegrass duo, “Sons of the One.”

Cliff finally began to realize songwriting success. Cliff and Jerry recorded seven of Cliff’s songs that became popular at Gospel Bluegrass festivals throughout the region. Roehl Transport licensed a song for use in their advertising. Maggie Mae recorded two of his songs on one album and a third on the next. And Big Al Weekley recorded one song, along with three Cliff and Big Al co-wrote, on his “Always in it for the Long Haul” album. Newcomer Jenon Janelli placed another cut on her album, “Nebraska.” His songs have been played on numerous radio stations and on RFD TV’s “Midwest Country” show as well as on Internet Radio around the world.

These days, Cliff and his lovely wife Thresa are back in their beloved South. He’s still serving the trucking industry as Director of Driver Development for Southern Cal Transport; and still writing songs. With his catalog of ready music, he’s poised for bigger and better things. You might catch him performing at a Wisconsin Gospel Bluegrass festival, an Alabama jam session, or the Annual Hillbilly Days celebration in Pikeville, Kentucky. More likely, you’ll hear his music coming through the open window of an 18-wheeler, somewhere on the open road.