Pulling back the (bus) curtain.
’90s country superstar Clay Walker is currently on his 2025 Drive Me Smooth tour. And if you know the backstory behind the name of that tour, you know just how hilarious it is that he chose that for the name.
If you don’t remember, or missed it at the time, a now-infamous recording was released back in 2023 in which Walker could be heard going on a profanity-laced tirade at his bus driver:
“I’m coming over here and I’m going to tell you something. I can whip your a** with one hand tied behind my back. Don’t say a ****ing word.
Tomorrow, call your boss and get me an experienced ****ing driver out here because you are not that. And I’ve been trying to raise you up last night and you’re telling me I’m eating into your drive time mother****er.
You told me you’d be here at 10 ****ing PM. You were not here you lying c***.
So when I come out of that bathroom, get your a** ready to drive and drive me smooth mother****er, or you’re gonna regret it.”
As the clip ends, Walker also berates the driver for not cleaning the bus:
“You know what? If you really wanted to try and be part of this organization you’d have found a ****ing washing machine. You told him you cleaned this bus till 4…”
Yeah, not a great look.
At the time, Walker confirmed that the video was authentic but said that it had happened over a year prior, and that he and the bus driver had reconciled and remained friends.
It’s normally not something that an artist would really want to draw attention to, but Clay apparently has no problem leaning into it with the name of his new tour. And during a recent appearance on The JR the Handler Podcast, a member of Clay’s team at the time opened up on what really went down that night.
Boyd Causey, who now serves as tour manager for Chase Matthew, was the tour manager for Walker at the time. And it sounds like the blowup was a long time in the making.
Causey says that the bus driver was a brand new driver who had been sent over by a bus company after their tour bus had broken down after just the first show of a long west coast run. And it also happened to be his first gig driving a tour bus:
“This driver, this is his first tour bus driving job ever. He was a 26-year old driving a dump truck that a small independent bus company that I found this bus from put him on… Very inexperienced driver, he was a good kid, it’s just…”
Yeah, sounds like a recipe for disaster, especially for an artist who, as Causey mentions, has a reputation for not being the easiest for drivers to work for.
Well they get a few shows with this driver under their belt before they have a day off. The bus driver is staying in a hotel, Causey rents a boat, some of them go golfing, they get dinner reservations, and the tour manager lets them know that the bus will be picking everybody up from the restaurant at 10 PM.
Sounds easy enough.
But apparently this bus driver already had a reputation among the group for not being on time, with Causey recalling that he had already had to go to his hotel room twice to wake him up and get him to the bus on time. And unfortunately, it happened again:
“I get in my bunk, and I wake up, I know the bus is supposed to be moving about 9:30 or so to get to the restaurant to pick everybody up. I set my alarm for 9:30, bus ain’t moving. Can’t get the driver on the phone. Can’t get him on the phone.”
Well by this point he knows where the driver’s hotel room is, so he goes to wake him up and get on the move while letting the rest of the team know that they’re going to be late.
They finally make it to the restaurant to get everybody together and for the driver to eat. And then Causey goes back to bed – but in the meantime, the driver texted Clay Walker to tell him to hurry up because he was cutting into his driving time…after the driver himself was already an hour late.
And well, the rest is now infamous history.
Causey says he didn’t hear the altercation at the time, but that the next day the co-driver who filmed it showed him the video:
“I said, ‘Don’t send it to me.’ Because I already knew what happened because my lead driver told me. I was flying him in already, he was out dealing with the bus engine… he called and told me what was up.”
Well apparently the co-driver who filmed it sent the video to a bunch of his fellow bus drivers, which is how the video eventually got out. But as you can imagine, the bus drivers didn’t last much longer with the team:
“I had to send both of them guys home that day. I put ’em on a plane and I had two more drivers out there that night.”
Seems like it was probably for the best. And after hearing the side of the story from a member of Clay’s camp, you can’t really blame him for being so upset.
At least the drivers on his new tour will be sure to “drive him smooth.”
If you want to hear the full interview with Causey, it’s well worth the listen. JR the Handler is a longtime veteran of the music industry, and currently serves as tour manager for Justin Moore, and he’s forgotten more about country music and the behind-the-scenes of the music industry than most people will ever know in their lifetime. Pretty cool that he’s doing a podcast now and sharing some of those behind-the-scenes stories and industry knowledge, so if you’re interested in that make sure to check out the previous episodes of his podcast too.
