‘Long Haul’ Paul Marhoefer to open 2026 MATS concert Friday, March 27
When Long Haul Paul Marhoefer takes the Freedom Hall stage at the Mid-America Trucking Show (MATS) in Louisville, Kentucky, this Friday night, a circuitous musical journey that began 39 years ago will be complete.
For Marhoefer, the longest “haul” of his career in trucking started out through an inspiration he discovered at a Shepherdsville, Kentucky, truck stop. Now, some four decades later, Friday’s walk to the MATS stage will connect a circle for Paul that — while it bent and stretched at times over these years — will remain unbroken.
Reflecting upon the honor of serving as the opening act on a bill — which also features Mark Ware playing ahead of Friday’s headliner Frank Foster — Marhoefer can trace those first steps that eventually brought him to the MATS Big Show back to his encounter with a truck stop chaplain in Shepherdsville.
It was 1987 and Marhoefer was an over-the-road veteran who had developed his love and talent for music in his teen years and early 20s. He knew his way around a guitar, and he had even begun some early song writing.
At the Truckers World Truck Stop in Shepherdsville that day, Paul began to hear tunes from mixed tape of Hank Williams gospel songs echoing from the public address system connected to the chapel on the grounds. The music called to Marhoefer, and he made his way to the chapel.
“It was through the tiny PA of a makeshift Truck Stop Chapel that I heard Hank Williams for the first time. I was just absolutely arrested by just the raw truth telling and the simplicity of his lyrics as well as their profundity,” Marhoefer recalled. “I walked up to that speaker and was just engrossed. I didn’t even know who that was. I’d never heard Hank Williams before.
“But I knew everything I ever wanted to be or everything I ever wanted to do was in that song,” he added. “Then I looked up from the speaker — and the old preacher was standing there smiling at me.”
When the preacher took the time to hand Paul the mixed tape of the Hank Williams gospel tunes, which also included some gospel selections performed by the Stanley Brothers, it was obvious that an instant kinship had been formed. The preacher then invited Paul to join a group that had gathered in the chapel to sing some hymns.
Thanks to Harriet Pope, a family friend from Marhoefer’s youth, he was well versed in the traditions of gospel music. Pope had a wide collection of gospel records that Marhoefer would borrow — featuring music that stayed with him throughout his adult life. That early musical experience eventually inspired Marhoefer to record his own gospel album, “Flood Waters & Fires,” in 2024, making special mention of Harriet in the liner notes.
At the Shepherdsville truck stop back in 1987, Marhoefer’s knowledge of hymns and gospel traditions opened the road that would eventually lead to the opportunity to become Long Haul Paul.
“I knew some of those old hymns that they were singing when the preacher invited me in,” Marhoefer remembered. “I was just so engrossed in the entire experience. Then, in the middle of the service, the preacher takes his guitar, and he lays it to my chest and goes, ‘Sing us one, brother.’”
After a moment of thought, Marhoefer began to sing “Amazing Grace.” He looked around the chapel into the faces a working-class group as they listened to the hymn.
By the time he was approaching the third verse, Marhoefer says, he had become overcome by the moment. He stopped playing and he stopped singing.
As much as he valued the opportunity to share music with what had become an audience, he knew there was a truth that was necessary to music. Marhoefer also valued the concept that musical truth was essential for connecting with an audience. So, from that moment in Shepherdsville, his journey — which combined his passion for music and his love of the open road — began in earnest.
Long road to a first recording
It would be seven years before Long Haul Paul made his first attempt to record an album.
His initial recording captured a live 1994 performance in a folk club, but what would become the “Lost Tapes” album, which was released earlier this month, essentially sat in a drawer for some 30 years. The opportunity to apply digital remastering to those recordings breathed new life into the “Lost Tapes” project that now serves a performance time capsule because of what Marhoefer experienced in April of 2001.
When I visited with Marhoefer, it was nearly 25 years to the day when, while driving a truck, he was forced out of his lane and had a rear-end collision with the trailer on another big rig. Suffering a broken neck in the accident, he went through a surgery and recovery process that allowed him to return to the road — but the injuries from the accident changed the structure of his vocal cords.
“When you listen to the ‘Lost Tapes’ album, the voice you’re going to hear on those songs is a voice that is almost unrecognizable to the way I sing now,” Marhoefer said. “When I think back, there’s no Long Haul Paul without that truck stop chaplain, and there’s no Long Haul Paul without this horrific wreck.
“Now, while I don’t recommend to anyone that they try to reboot a late-life singing career by burying their big rig in the backside of a 53-foot trailer, I will tell you that it has somehow worked out for me,” he continued.
Instead of giving up on his dreams of sharing stories from his miles over the road through his music, Marhoefer leveraged his seasoned voice of a balladeer that emerged from the accident, continuing to write songs while taking his acoustic guitar on the road with him.
His family knew how much music meant to him, and his daughter, Audrey, took the bold step of buying her father studio time at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.
Introduction to Fame Studios
Marhoefer knew that Fame was no ordinary studio. Founded in 1959 by the legendary Rick Hall, Fame Studios has produced a long list of hits and memorable performances by a host of artists, including Areatha Franklin, Gregg Allman, Duane Allman, Wilson Pickett, Etta James and Jason Isbell. It further inspired more studios to spring up in the area, bringing the likes of the Rolling Stones, Bob Seger, Lynyrd Skynyrd and many others to record in the region.
Recalling his daughter’s gift, Marhoefer notes that Audrey fortunately purchased the studio time at Fame prior to the release of the very popular “Muscle Shoals” documentary — and the cost of the session was just $250 for the day. But before Marhoefer and Audrey went to Fame for his recording session in May of 2016, they went to a local restaurant and struck up a conversation that became a life-changing moment for Long Haul Paul.
After learning that they had made the trek from Muncie, Indiana, to record at Fame, Marhoefer was invited to join an old-fashioned guitar pull that was happening in town that night. (A guitar pull brings together a collection of singer-songwriters who essentially go around the room sharing some of their latest works.)
The first guitar pull that Paul joined included Travis Wammack, a member of both the Alabama Music Hall of Fame and the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. Wammack was a regular at Fame Studios, having produced a number of artists, and he put together Little Richard’s touring band that the Rock And Roll Hall of Famer used in the early 1970s.
That 2016 guitar pull also put Marhoefer in the company of Funky Donnie Fritz, Kris Kristofferson’s keyboardist, and Fame Studios session drummer Roger Clark, whose collaborations include working with Hank Williams Jr. and the Steve Miller Band.
“It was a bona fide pantheon of accomplished players and great artists,” Marhoefer recalled of what became a jam session that night in 2016.
Surrounded by a who’s who of Muscle Shoals Musical Royalty, Marhoefer went with the flow. He says he had a sense that they would call on him for a song. Unlike the moment in 1987 when the truck stop preacher dropped the guitar in his lap, he was ready with his music and the truth he had discovered in creating songs from his lived experiences.
Wammack was quite impressed with what he saw from Marhoefer that evening, and he would go on to serve as a producer on Long Haul Paul’s debut album, “Bessemer to Birmingham.”
“We had a great engineer by the name of Gifford, and he did something really interesting,” remembered Marhoefer when thinking back to his first sessions at Fame. “Gifford wasn’t sure what he was going to do with me. He walked out and he took my headphones off and said, ‘Just play.’”
The result of those first recordings at Fame Studios produced a strong debut album for Long Haul Paul. Through the process of collaborating with Marhoefer, Wammack praised Long Haul Paul as, “a modern-day Bob Dylan.” The “Bessemer to Birmingham” album earned Marhoefer a record deal that distributed his music in truck stops nationwide.
Earning success while staying grounded in what matters most
While it certainly wasn’t overnight, the then 57-year-old Marhoefer finally found a measure of success. He had established an avenue for his music while also continuing to drive, delivering his runs safely and on time. This professional balancing act allowed Long Haul Paul to begin to make a name for himself on the truck show circuit, and the Marhoefer family got involved to help their man behind the wheel begin to build a following as Long Haul Paul.
From daughter Audrey building and maintaining the LongHaulPaulMusic.com website to Marhoefer wife, Denise, helping with the various business aspects of booking shows, recording promo videos and a host of other supportive efforts, including handling merch, Team Long Haul Paul has become a family business that they all keep in perspective.
“I feel very fortunate to have had great support through the years to be able to do what I’ve done,” Marhoefer said of the past decade that has seen the release of eight albums and the development of a loyal audience — all while he has been able to remain a valued professional driver with his company.
“Look, I went from being invisible to being seen, and that does hook you. But I also know that you can think too much about it, too,” said Marhoefer, whose latest album, “The After-Party Sessions,” is a collection of live recordings captured mostly at trucking events.
“It’s always great to be able to share your music with an audience,” he continued. “But I can tell you that, in my experience, nothing can put your feet back on the ground like a load of yogurt that you have to get to Utah in the dead of winter.”
Completing a circle that began four decades ago
According to Marhoefer, the actual distance between the long-vanished Truckers World Truck Stop in Shepherdsville and the stage inside Freedom Hall is less than 25 miles.
But the full-circle journey Marhoefer will be completing when he takes the stage to open Friday’s Spotlight Concert at MATS has been one featuring millions of miles and just as many memories, including the times he’s performed at events in the MATS parking lot and times when he’s played in the atrium and other locations within the Kentucky Expo Center at previous editions of MATS.
“This is definitely the biggest audience that I will have played before, and it’s a real honor,” said Long Haul Paul. “Believe me, I will definitely be keeping this in mind on Friday. I’m on this bill as the opener to the opener.”
For Marhoefer, the route he’s taken to the Freedom Hall stage is one filled with perspective, amazement and grace. It’s a circle that remains unbroken, featuring an on-ramp that he still traces back to a single moment in time nearly 40 years ago.
“Any time anything good has ever happened to me doing music, I always think about that evening with that chaplain at that old truck stop in Shepherdsville,” Marhoefer said. “I can’t go to Louisville without saying this: There’s probably no Long Haul Paul without that truck stop chaplain.
“So, as I look ahead to Friday, I believe I should dedicate this show to those truck stop chaplains laboring in their lonely outposts because, in that job, you never know who you might help,” he concluded.
All images courtesy of Long Haul Paul Marhoefer via Facebook.
Greg Thompson is an award-winning writer and producer who has worked in the trucking industry in a variety of roles since 1998. With more than a decade’s worth of experience as a journalist prior entering trucking, Greg is the founder and executive producer of PodWheels.com, a podcast network dedicated to spotlighting the trucking industry.
Since 2019, PodWheels has provided specialized coverage of the National Truck Driving and National Step Van Driving Championships.
In 2025, PodWheels’ NTDC Series earned the honor of being named the official podcast of the National Championships by the American Trucking Associations, which hosts the annual nationwide competition.
During 2025 alone, PodWheels produced some 100 episodes and provided over 50 hours of podcast content highlighting the competitors, organizers and volunteers involved with the Truck Driving Championships at both the state and national levels. PodWheels’ coverage of the NTDC, including state competitions and other features, is available through RoadToNTDC.com.
