About

I grew up between bulkheads that never quite stopped smelling like coolant and old coffee. Our Class II freighter ran freight through the Solaris Federation — crane hubs, dry berths, jump windows that treated a kid's bedtime like a suggestion. Mom and I were the only women on that hull. Three brothers. A father who could swear in three dock dialects and still sing harmony. That was the whole census of home.

Every night, when the autopilot took the honest stretch and the cargo was finally quiet, we pulled chairs into the common and made a circle. Guitars. Coil-steel. Somebody on a crate with a brush kit that never saw a real stage. Mom carried the low notes. Dad kept time with a boot. I learned the corridor in those rooms before I learned a classroom — how a harmony sits against a hull vibration, how a song can make a long leg feel shorter without lying about the miles.

My brothers stayed with the pallets. Mom and Dad scraped every credit that wasn't holding the hull together and sent me to college. Rent doesn't care about your parents' pride, so I started playing clubs near campus. Small rooms first. Then rooms where people stood up without being asked. One night I walked out under arena lights with a resonator on my hip and finally caught up to the math. I had made it. I just hadn't been watching the scale.

The first thing I bought that mattered was my parents' ship — cleared the debts that had been chewing the haul down to break-even. When they died, the chair was mine. Captain. Same freighter. Same smell. I still run cargo when the crew needs it more than I need another encore. The tour and the manifests share a calendar on purpose. Same hands load the pallets in the afternoon and stand as band and stage crew at night.

People call what I do haul country. Diaspora kids say country like it's a costume. I call it true — coffee on a hot plate, years between the same two berths, a family circle that taught me the song before the corridor taught me the bill. You can find the album on Corridor Radio — KSPI Light — when the freights get quiet.

Find the music on Corridor Radio — KSPI 94.7. Between sets, notes land on the Haul Country Blog. Squawk: @maribelle_spoke.