ABC/Image Group LA Russell Dickerson‘s latest top-five hit, “Blue Tacoma,” extols the joys of taking to the open road in a Toyota truck.
When he first wrote the song, the “Yours” hitmaker admits the story took most of its inspiration from one of his collaborators.
“It started out more hypothetical,” Russell explains. “One of the co-writers was dating someone at the time and that was like their dream, [to] like drive up and down — he had a Tacoma.”
That all changed, however, once Russell and his wife Kailey spent some time in the Golden State.
“Actually, my wife and I got to live in California for a month,” he recalls. “And we drove from L.A. to Santa Barbara up to Big Sur, up and down [State Route] 1.”
So Russell went back to the drawing board to re-work “Blue Tacoma.”
“We came back with that inspiration,” he tells ABC Radio. “I was like, ‘We’ve got to re-write this song a little bit,’ you know. And so once we did re-write it, I think that’s when it kinda clicked. And everybody who heard it was like, ‘Alright. Now this is a big one.'”
Of course, those instincts proved to be right, and Russell and Kailey even got to recreate their trips down the Pacific Coast Highway in the “Blue Tacoma” music video.
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