Like a hammered-down 18-wheeler barreling down across the border, Canada's Road Hammers are an unstoppable musical force, bound and determined to deliver the toughest, coolest, real-est country music to come down that southbound pike in a long, long time. Conceived by Canadian country star Jason McCoy and forged under the unforgiving reality-TV lights, the Road Hammers took on a life of its own from the very beginning.

"It was an unplanned pregnancy, and it was an experiment on camera," McCoy says with a laugh. "But we're all real happy with the baby. The thing with the TV series was this; if it flies, you've got a successful band to launch off of this thing, and if it flops, well, everybody likes to see somebody fall."

Needless to say, the Road Hammers flew, a lot higher than anyone, even the band members themselves, ever expected. Those band members — guitarist/vocalist Clayton Bellamy and the world class, kickass rhythm section of bassist/vocalist Chris Byrne and drummer Corbett Frasz — may have come together on camera, but onstage and in the studio the Road Hammers quickly formed the kind of greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts bond that every musican dreams of.