Songs/movies/media about rubbertramping

Batsy

Batsy

New member
I’ve noticed that a lot of songs about traveling (especially folk punk ones) are specifically about train hopping, but it’s harder to find songs about rubber tramping. I’ve also been having a hard time finding other media as well about the rubber tramping lifestyle specifically.

I’d like to start a thread where people share different songs, documentaries, films, books, etc. that are about traveling on a set of wheels. We don’t need to be too strict, like a movie about a long road trip for example would be welcome.
 
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Jim White – If Jesus Drove a Motor Home
 
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I’ve also noticed that when it comes to songs. Ghost mice has a few songs where they mention rubber tramping but that’s about it other than a song or two from days n daze. If anything artists will mention hitchhiking
 
Here are some that come to mind:

Songs:
  • Love’s Pilot - Tejon Street Corner Thieves
  • East Bound and Down
  • Garden Grove - Sublime (sort of, mentions taking a trip in a van)
  • Albany - Ghost Mice
  • Free Pizza For Life - Ghost Mice

Documentaries:
  • Rubber Tramps
  • American Nomads (includes many methods of travel)
  • The Reality of #VanLife (funny documentary about a man faking his way to internet fame as “van life influencer” by staging various posts and creating the illusion of living a luxurious life in a van that he doesn’t actually own. Those of you who have lived in a van for a while and know how over-romanticized this lifestyle is on social media will get a good kick out of this.)
  • This cool 30-minute video where a guy interviews boondockers around Quartzsite.
Movies:
  • Sex Drive (funny movie about a crew of teens going on a long road trip to get laid)
TV Shows:
  • All of the Scooby Doo series (The Mystery Mobile was probably many people’s first travel van they ever saw in their lifetime, despite it being from a cartoon and just a non-converted passenger van.)
 
If you are including trucking songs like East Bound and Down there are many more going back decades. They're usually a bit "burly man misses his wife", though.

Here's one which is a bit less trucker-forward and theoretically could apply to any road traveler.

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Willie Nelson - On The Road Again

I think it was featured in the Oscar-winning movie Nomadland, which is also about the life of a rubbertramp.

If the topic is road movies a couple that stuck with me from my teen years were The Living End and Another Day In Paradise. They're not happy or optimistic movies and I'm not sure I would enjoy them if I watched them today, but they meant something to me back when I was younger and angrier.

Personally I always saw the TV show Supernatural as a traveler's show. They're just a couple of bros who drive around to every no name town in rural America staying in seedy motels and busting ghosts. Every episode a new town. Things changed in later seasons, but the early seasons really capture the feel of road tripping in America imo, even if it is all filmed in BC.
 
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