Ace Hightower, Texas Trucker Tunesmith
This entry was originally posted with more links on Country Fried Rock.
There’s not much to do in Lubbock, Texas, if you can’t drive yet and you want to stay out of trouble, except play the guitar. So, the bored teenage Ace Hightower started writing songs. He wasn’t much of a singer at the time, but wrote prolifically. His singing was so off-key that his sister gave him voice lessons as a gift one year! He still practices with the Seth Riggs technique–the same method that many award-winning singers use to protect their voices and expand their vocal ranges, but most of them are not 100% deaf in one ear, but that’s another story…
It’s a good thing that Hightower isn’t a feline, because his nine lives might be up. From surviving a car wreck at age three when hit by a drunk driver (which led to a coma, potential brain injury, and the cause of his deafness in one ear), to being accidentally shot by a friend and losing a kidney and some intestines, to being gored by a bull in a rodeo with a nicked jugular and collapsed lung…reads like a James Frey “memoir”! Right now, Hightower is just looking to be in the right place at the right time for once with his music.
He’s proud to be a Texan, but the dirt gets old. When he was a trucker, Hightower would pass snowstorms in truckstops by playing the guitar, but now that he’s got a land-locked job to support his family, the desire to hit the road and tour with his music is pulling at him. Hightower’s lyrics reference familiar American themes: divorced families in his autobiographical “A Broken Home,” high taxes in “Wrong End of the Deal,” thanking our troops in “I Want to Thank You,” lauding his hot wife in “Baby’s Lookin’ Muy Bueno.” Hightower’s music is so accessible to country music audiences, that it seems like you ought to already know him.