#75 Keith Heyward | Jordan Davis’s Bus Driver on Breaking Into Touring With No Connections
Keith Heyward was coming back into the United States over the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit when a border officer walked onto the bus and asked a question no driver wants to hear: “Is there a Jordan Davis on the bus?” The officers took Jordan inside. It turned out there was another Jordan Davis, from Indiana, with a warrant out for his arrest. Jordan got back on the bus and said he’d never been arrested in his life.
Almost every story Keith tells in this episode comes from the last two years. In early 2024, he had no connections in the touring world. Within months, he was the lead driver on Jordan Davis’s tour, driving the star car for Celebrity Coaches. He sat down with Nikki Sanz to talk about how he got there, what the job really involves, and what he’d tell anyone trying to follow him.
The Freight Doesn’t Talk Back
Keith’s uncle was a career truck driver and a master sergeant, and he kept a CB radio in his van. Keith used to get on it and play around until truckers told him to get off the radio. Between that, Smokey and the Bandit, and long Greyhound rides with his mother from the Chicago area to Savannah, Georgia, he was hooked on big vehicles early. He looked at bus drivers the way other kids looked at pilots.
After finishing his degree at the University of Illinois, he called the number on a J.B. Hunt truck driving school ad and reported two weeks later. About six months into trucking, he found a local mom-and-pop charter company in the phone book and asked if they needed a driver. They told him to come in the next day. He wasn’t licensed to drive a bus yet, so the owner trained him until he was. For the next 30 years, he kept a foot in both worlds.
When Nikki asked what separates the two, his first answer was simple: “The freight doesn’t talk back to you.”
Over-the-road trucking, he says, means living in the truck and moving from one industrial area to the next. He gives truckers their props for the sacrifice, but he calls it a lonely life. Passenger work is cleaner. Seated coach drivers are often home every night, drive nice equipment, and wear uniforms. When the team or school group goes to the museum or stops to eat, the driver goes too.
Building a Bus Company Through a Pandemic
In 2019, Keith and his wife launched their own charter bus company with one bus. They added a second that October. Then March 2020 happened.
They fought through it with lines of credit. Keith bought a semi truck, leased it onto Landstar, and drove over the road to keep the house and the bus company afloat. While he was gone, his wife took over the quotes and kept the business running. When he got home, he worked on the buses and checked on the drivers. They eventually grew to five buses.
That’s also when Keith started vlogging. When he went looking for information on getting into trucking, everything he found was outdated, so he documented his own process to give people fresh information. It grew legs on its own.
By the time the industry recovered, it had turned cutthroat, and Keith had had enough. He decided to shut the company down and sell everything.
Breaking In With No Connections
Keith had always thought you needed to know somebody to drive entertainer coaches, and he didn’t know anybody. The closest he’d come was meeting R&B singer Gerald Levert on his bus at a truck stop in Kentucky around 2002.
The opening came from his church in Munster, Indiana, where Keith plays bass and drums. The church’s drummer was a touring musician who also drove trucks for tours, and he’d asked Keith more than once if he’d ever thought about driving tour buses. When Keith decided to close his company, the timing finally lined up. The drummer gave him a name and a number, and that driver gave him five or six companies to call.
Keith started applying in January 2024, which he didn’t know was the slow season. Nobody was hiring. He kept at it, calling one company every week to check on his application. On one of those calls, he was told to email the person who could make the decision and explain his background. Owning a bus company helped. That email led to a call, and the call led to an orientation and driving test in Nashville on February 28.
He came to Nashville a day early, mapped out a route, and visited the other companies he’d applied to in person. By the end of the trip, he had multiple offers.
What a Co-Drive Is
Keith’s first work in the entertainer world was co-driving. Bus drivers are DOT regulated and limited to 10 hours of driving, with a total of 70 hours a week. On the East Coast, that works out to about 600 miles. When a run is longer than that, a second driver comes in to keep the seated driver legal, and the off-duty driver sleeps in a bunk on the bus.
Some co-drivers get flown across the country for one run. Keith once flew from Chicago to Salt Lake City, slept in the bunk while the seated driver went to Vegas, and drove from Vegas to Phoenix.
His first co-drive also taught him what bus call means. The bus parked up at a Walmart around 8:00 p.m. The slides came out, the crew showed up, microwaved dinner, took showers, watched a game, and slowly disappeared into their bunks. Bus call was midnight.
“It was a four-hour process. That’s how it’s done.”
From Crew Bus to Lead Driver
Keith’s first tour started April 10, and he was driving the crew bus, an older bus he called his baby. About a month in, the lead driver resigned to go to another company. Keith told the leasing agent that if they were looking for a lead driver, he wouldn’t mind giving it a shot. She told him she’d already considered him.
In Jacksonville, he was invited into the production meeting with the tour manager. He promised there wouldn’t be any lag in the handoff, and they gave him the green light.
“Probably the luckiest entertainer driver known to man.”
Nikki pushed back on the luck. Nobody gets that seat unless the camp trusts them, and in entertainment, that trust is about leadership and the hang as much as driving.
Rolling Out the Red Carpet
To Keith, the difference between the star car and the crew bus isn’t the build of the bus. It’s the responsibility that comes with it. He describes Jordan Davis as one of the guys, “cool as a fan,” but he doesn’t want to treat him like he’s just one of the guys.
That means a fresh bottle of water and a blue towel waiting in the booth, checking if he needs anything before heading to the hotel, and getting as close as possible at airport pickups. It also means patience. Master Tour might say A to B, but plans change, and Keith once turned the bus three hours in a new direction toward Pebble Beach with no complaints.
“There’s more to just driving a star car. You got to make sure you roll that red carpet out.”
Bridges, Rumble Strips, and Border Crossings
Keith looks at every route a day or two before he drives it. He runs Google Maps alongside a trucker GPS that warns him about low bridges, and when he’s unsure about a clearance, he checks it in Street View. If he still isn’t sure, he takes another way. Hitting a low bridge can shave the roof airs, satellites, and antennas right off the top of a bus.
“Good drivers do their homework. There’s no guessing at this. Everything is intentional.”
Even with a plan, things happen. Leaving Boston one night, overnight construction closed on-ramp after on-ramp, and it took 45 minutes just to get out of the city. Then there are rumble strips. In parts of Illinois, they run between every lane. Keith says tour managers can tell the difference: if the bus jerks, you hit it by accident. If you ride it smoothly, that was intentional.
Crossing into Canada brings its own problems. On one run, Keith and the other drivers were taking three buses from North Dakota toward Winnipeg without the crew on board. Canadian officials held them at the border for four hours, believing the drivers might be taking jobs from Canadians. They were sent back. The crew flew into Minneapolis, Keith drove six hours each way to bring them back, and they were held for another four hours before the tour’s promoters stepped in.
“I’m a very patient guy, but they tested every patient bone in my body.”
Learning Smooth From Neville’s Early Videos
Before his first co-drive, Keith went looking for anything he could find about entertainer coach driving. There was almost nothing, except a few early videos from Neville Shende, before Neville built them into a course. One featured an interview with a couple of drivers from Pioneer Coach, and Keith listened to it with headphones on every night before bed.
Those videos taught him small things, like turning off the bus air before pulling into a truck stop to fuel. They also taught him that smooth had another level. He still owned his charter buses, so he practiced feathering the brakes and the gas pedal on his own coaches.
“I thought I was already a smooth driver. But there was another level to this thing.”
Why He Films It
Keith sat on entertainer content for almost two years because he didn’t want to disrespect an industry known for keeping things quiet. He was afraid the old-timers would tell him he couldn’t show any of it. Eventually, he decided the day-to-day was worth showing: pulling into a venue at 7:00 in the morning, grabbing catering, figuring out how to sleep at the hotel so you can do it again that night, and servicing a generator people don’t know the bus has.
He calls Jordan “my guy” on camera and respects the camp’s privacy, but Jordan doesn’t mind. He even put Keith in one of his own videos. Keith found out how far the channel reached when a 22-year-old lead guitar tech on the tour told him his dad watches every week.
Fast Is Rough, Slow Isn’t Smooth
When Nikki asked what he’d tell future drivers, Keith started with the people part. You’ll be around people you’ve seen on TV. Be normal. Be a team player.
Then he got to the craft:
“Fast is rough. But slow is not smooth. You have to find that happy medium. And you got to be intentional with everything you do behind that wheel.”
Slow down for the curves. Don’t pop off the brake. Don’t slam the gas. Cruise through a town full of red lights instead of racing between them. In his words, those details will make you a Hall of Famer in this business. And to anyone who doesn’t think they can get there: everybody can be coached, as long as they’re willing to be.
