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They champion the lifestyles of truckers, play driving country with a healthy dose of Southern rock and are making fans of Joe and Jane Six Pack across the country.

They just happen to be from Canada.

To hear The Road Hammers play, that might come as something of a surprise -- at least to those of south of the Medicine Line. For the Hammers themselves, however, blue collar country-rock is the same both north and south of the 49th Parallel.

"Yeah, sometimes people hear we're from Canada and look at us like we're from another planet," guitarist/vocalist Clayton Bellamy told The Daily Times this week. "I think Southern rock, though, is just a derivative of blue-collar rock 'n' roll -- that's all it is. And there are a lot of blue-collar people in Canada.

"We were all poor, middle class kids. I grew up in a farming community of 5,000 people in Northern Alberta, and you're just a product of your environment. I don't think you necessarily have to be Southern to play that type of rock 'n' roll. It's just something that you live."

The Road Hammers -- who perform at 4:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 11 at the Foothills Fall Festival in downtown Maryville -- have been playing their fiery brand of blue-collar country-rock since 2004, when Canadian country star Jason McCoy put the group together as part of CMT Canada's "Making the Band" show.

McCoy saw Bellamy performing at a Cowboy Stampede beer tent and immediately recognized how Bellamy's rock 'n' roll heart could be the yang to McCoy's country yin.

With bassist Chris Byrne and drummer Corbett Frasz on board, the band released its self-titled album a year later, and its bounty of trucker songs -- Jerry Reed's "Eastbound and Down," Del Reeves' "Girl on the Billboard" and Little Feat's "Willin'," among others -- swept the band to the top of the Canadian country charts with four Top 10 singles.

"Musicians live the life of a trucker, and we wanted to pay homage to that with this first record and to the writers of that ilk of music," Bellamy said. "We're out there on the road as much as they are, eating at the same truck stops and running the same highways. My dad was a trucker for 10 years, so they're kind of like family."

American debut

The band was nominated for six Canadian Country Music Awards in 2005, won for Best Group or Duo and also nabbed the Country Recording of the Year Award at the Junos (the Canadian equivalent of the Grammys). A year later, they repeated the CCMA success, winning both Video of the Year and Group or Duo of the Year.

In 2007, the band signed with an American label -- Montage Music Group -- and earlier this year, the band's second album and American debut was released. "Blood, Sweat and Steel" was effectively an American version of the band's first album, and for good reason -- the boys wanted to share the effervescence of that first batch of songs with American country-rock fans.

"Everybody in this band wears their influences on their sleeves," Bellamy said. "I grew up loving Skynyrd and the Black Crowes, and at the same time loving songwriters who had substance, like Springsteen, Guy Clark and Steve Earle. With those two elements together, we can't be anybody else but who we are."

While the album's debut single, "I Don't Know When to Quit," achieved modest chart success (it peaked at No. 51 on Billboard's country singles chart), one of the band's biggest hits for its live crowds has been "I'm a Road Hammer."

According to Bellamy, the song has become the band's anthem, and it's not unusual for crowd sing-alongs to sweep over those in attendance at a Road Hammers concert.