Russell Dickerson Based ‘Blue Tacoma’ Off of a Romantic Coastal Roadtrip

Even for songwriters, there’s no better inspiration than real life. Russell Dickerson decided to live out the lyrics to his song, “Blue Tacoma,” before making the story into an album track.

Although an idea presented itself to Dickerson during a writing session one day, he felt as though the lyric only reached a certain potential that he wanted to drive even further. The theme of a Toyota Tacoma stuck with the singer, but he couldn’t land himself on where he wanted the song to go next.

“So [when] we wrote the song, it started out as like a more hypothetical idea. One of the co-writers, she and her boyfriend, her ex-boyfriend at the time, it was always their dream to do like road trip to California, up and down, you know. And he had a Tacoma. And so that was like, that was like basis of the song, and we wrote it and it was cool, it was good. That was a good song, but it wasn’t like amazing,” Dickerson explained of the single’s humble beginnings to Sounds Like Nashville during an interview.

Finally, a spark lit inside Dickerson that he needed to truly experience a journey alongside the love of his life to create the inspiration he sought after. Their travels took them to the West Coast for the adventure of a lifetime, driving on the Pacific Coast Highway from Los Angeles all the way to Big Sur, California. The outlook changed the singer in a way that radiated onto the page when he went back to Nashville to finish the last of what “Blue Tacoma” became.

“My wife and I actually got to spend a month out there just living and experiencing California, driving up and down the coast, so we came back, and actually rewrote the song and I had like…I kind of had some ideas that I started messing with, I was like, ‘There’s something about it,’ it was called ‘Heaven Right Here’ at the time,” Dickerson said. “And so I was like, ‘There’s something about this song, I just can’t just let it go.’ And so, we got back together and we just put all our ideas back into it, and I was like, ‘So literally so beautiful, that you have to pull over to like take it all in.’ That’s like where that second verse comes from, pull it over to the shoulder, to take it and pull you closer. All that stuff is real, and that’s why I think people get the feels when they hear that, because it’s a real experience, and I think we translate it…it’s pretty good. And, I think it went from an OK good song, to, ‘Dang, this is a special song.’”

The track means so much to Dickerson that he decided to follow up his No. 1 hit, “Yours,” with “Blue Tacoma” and hopes for it to see just the amount of passion from the fans as he felt writing the track.

“Blue Tacoma,” which is featured on Dickerson’s debut album, will hit radio later in March.