Among those lining up to sing the praises of Laura Cantrell--who also happens to have a popular radio show on famed free-form station WFMU--are Mojo's Sid Griffin, USA Today, Rolling Stone's David Fricke, CMJ and--most importantly--Earpollution. While performing in the UK, she has been supported by members of Belle & Sebastian and Teenage Fanclub.

Some other artists who have seen their music bear the Diesel Only stamp include Ween, with their appropriately yellow-colored vinyl single, "Piss Up a Rope"; SWAG, a super-group of sorts featuring members of Cheap Trick and The Mavericks; and Bakersfield legend Red Simpson.

The driving force (pardon the pun) behind Diesel Only is owner-operator Jeremy Tepper. Tepper, a fixture on the New York City roots rock scene, is a founding member of rig rockers The World Famous Blue Jays, whose music you might have heard throughout the Michael Moore film The Big One. He is also a former magazine editor and, incidentally, Laura Cantrell's husband. Tepper was able to take some time away from the all the buzz and activity in Brooklyn to talk to Earpollution about the history of his label, Laura Cantrell's album, and what the future holds for Diesel Only.

Jeremy Tepper: The original Diesel Only scene from the early '90s was really a holdover from the late '80s scene here in New York. It was based in clubs like Nightingales, the Levy, Ludlow Street Café. So at that time we were putting out singles by a lot of different bands and they were playing all over town. Sometimes on any given night there'd be three Diesel Only bands--you could see three different bands at three different clubs. It was pretty neat.

Yeah, I actually recall that, those were my college years.

Tepper: Oh really, where'd you go?

New York University.

Tepper: Oh, far out. Me too.

I just remember that, on any given night, you could go out see bands like Five Chinese Brothers or the Blue Chieftains or [Jeremy's band] the World Famous Blue Jays.

Tepper: Did you get out a lot? To see those bands?

I did, I mean it was such an influx of music. One night you could see Galaxie 500 at CBGB's.

Tepper: New York, man.

Yeah, and then there was Nirvana in the early '90s. There was pretty much everything. It was a great time to be in school in New York.

Tepper: Yeah it was funny, because we did start to get a lot of press attention at the time--'91, '92. The first [rig rock] compilation came out in '92 and actually, prior to the compilation coming out, we had an article in Spin magazine and we were all excited like, "Oh we're the next big thing, this rig rock, we've got all these great bands, just like Sub Pop." And it was the issue that had Nirvana on the cover and it was like, "Forget it." Nobody wanted to hear anything about anything but grunge for the rest of the year.

When did you first start to get into this kind of music?

Tepper: Well, I don't know. The Blue Jays were formed in '83. I got exposed to country music when I was growing up. There was a record called Highball and Hits. It was a two LP collection of truck-driving songs, and I must have picked that up sometime around my first year of college, '81. I would say that record was a big influence and really turned me on to truck driving music. Now I've got maybe a couple-hundred truck driving records (laughs). You know, I DJ and I play all truck driving records...

Yeah, "DJ Rig Rocker," right?

Tepper: That's me. So every Wednesday I do this truck driving thing.

Let's talk about the Rig Rock Deluxe compilation for a second. That got a lot of acclaim [winning the 1997 National Association of Independent Record Distributors' "Indie Award" for "Americana Album of the Year"] and there's a great range and diversity of artists. You've got newer artists like Son Volt on there. Were you primarily responsible for choosing them?

Were there any artists on your wish-list that you weren't able to get?

Tepper: Yeah, Dave Dudley [the father of truck driving music and writer of "Six Days on the Road"] was right on top of that. We were in touch with him and it was possible and he had a track he wanted us to use. It just didn't work out. It's too bad.

That's really too bad. Speaking of the tracks, did you determine who did which songs?

Tepper: Yes and no. We pretty much gave all the artists the freedom to pick their own songs. Originally the album was going to be all covers of truck driving songs, but there were two things that really changed the course of the record: One was Buck Owens coming up with a new song, the first new song that he had recorded in like twenty years.

(Laughs) Wow, that will change the direction an album!

Tepper: Yeah, and Marty Stuart was also like, "Man, I've got this song I want to do. Tony Brown won't let me record it on my album for MCA." And so we had those two songs. Then we opened it up and the Yayhoos had a great track and then we had the Bottle Rockets track, which was actually an outtake from one of their albums. Then we put Jim Lauderdale and Del Reeves together and Jim came up with that song idea and Del Reeves and I came up with a couple of lyrics and that's how that was written.

Was it your idea to have Son Volt do the Del Reeves song ["Looking at the World Through a Windshield"]?

Tepper: No. That happened when Son Volt played the Mercury Lounge before their album came out--the first album, Trace--and obviously there was a lot of buzz at that time about both of those guys [Jay Farrar and his former Uncle Tupelo bandmate, Wilco's Jeff Tweedy]. And ["Looking at the World Through a Windshield"] was the song they were doing as their encore. I knew Jay and I just went up to him and talked to him after the show and stayed in touch with him.

Serendipity.

Tepper: That was, yeah, I would say so. It came right at the right time.

Tepper: (Laughs) Yeah. There was a lot of inactivity. Between Rig Rock Truck Stop ('94) and Rig Rock Deluxe we pretty much quit doing singles, other than a few things. We're actually going to be putting a discography up on the website soon, because a lot of people have never seen the complete discography and have no idea. But we did a single for the Shaver album, Tramp on Your Street. We did a single from the Nick Lowe album The Impossible Bird, and a single from the Ween country album [12 Golden Country Greats], "Piss Up a Rope." But what basically happened was that I had another business that I started: a trade magazine for jukebox operators, and that was taking up most of my time.

Was that Street Beat?

Tepper: Uh huh. And that was taking up most of my time in the '90s, so Diesel Only was kind of an afterthought most of the time. But I'm no longer doing the magazine--sold the magazine--I'm totally out of the trade publishing business. Actually, for the first time now I'm concentrating on Diesel Only full-time and Laura Cantrell and the website.

Speaking of the web, it seems like when you came back with Rig Rock Deluxe it sort of coincided with the whole emergence of the worldwide web as a great market place.

Tepper: I wouldn't say it was the web that much because the web was kind of late to evolve. But it definitely came at the same time as things like the No Depression message board at AOL and the Internet as a means of communications rather than the web as it is now, which to me is way stronger. And it's just going to continue to get more and more powerful and prevalent. It's just phenomenal--especially the digital music and music downloads. So that's something that I'm really, really excited about.