Joey Beam was a retired new car dealer who opened a custom motorcycle parts and apparel business, Vindictive Wayz, which his lovely wife Samantha successfully runs today. The bike building off-shoot, Godfather Baggers, does the custom grunt work. Located at the same street address in Rutherfordton, North Carolina, both actually work together in some sort of separate, but equal way until they unleash something like this custom Road King featured here. And, the bike belongs to Wayne and Wendy Phelps of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Oh, so that’s where the name of the bike, Tennessee Taildragger, came from and it was built by two separate businesses working together at the same address ─ I get it all now.

 

   With that out of the way, it’s time to get to the meat of the matter, this build that began with a 2002 Harley-Davidson Road King Classic that had the usual apes, pipes and paint on an otherwise pretty damn stock FLHRCI. Fodder for fodder. After ripping it apart down to the last molecule, the bare frame had some pretty wild work ahead of it to fit a big-ass 30-inch SMT High Stakes wheel. Basically doubling the wheel diameter will do that. The forks were raked out and fitted with air assist to match the rear suspension. “How low can you go?” does not just apply to the limbo anymore and that’s why Godfather made sure there was an MRI electric center stand to keep it above ground. Hey, who wants to grind fresh paint on gravel just to drop it the wee bittest lower?

 

    Joey and Samantha rolled through the Who’s Who of high-end aftermarket products they carry with pieces and parts picked and modified until you see the lovely concoction before you. You name a name and it’s probably on here somewhere. Certain pieces really stand out to me like the bars that I’m still trying to figure out. They’re wide at the base and they have some purposely awkward bends. That’s probably a good thing. If you just love and adore everything on first sight, that can mean it’s just too damn familiar or you just have no imagination. I’m going with the former on that one. Or, crazy things like the always shocking bad ass Dirty Bird Concepts Up Yours exhaust. Not only do they look aggressively hot rod crazy (that’s in a good way) and sound the same way, I just love the name Sinister gave it. Imagine a guy coming over to your Sinister-equipped bike and asking, “What kind of exhaust is that?” and you say “Up Yours!” Let the fist fight begin my friends.

 

  One thing Joey Beam has going for him is knowing who to turn to when he does need outside help like with paint. Time and time again, Joey’s created baggers with one unbelievable paint scheme after another and his go-to-guy is a man who I think sleeps in his paint booth. That consistently prolific guy would be the talented Brian Morgan of BKP Art in Easley, South Carolina. On Tennessee Taildragger, Brian went with some out of this world as we know it design that runs all over the bike like a story I’ll never understand, but then that’s what makes it so weirdly, eerily creepy that you wonder what was going through his mind. Hopefully it’s not inhaling too much paint vapor, but if it was there’re a few painters I know of that might take a lesson from him. Oh I’m fooling around here, Brian just does great work on each and every bike I’ve seen he’s painted. Believe me, there are a lot.

 

   When all is said and done, Wayne and Wendy Phelps have gotten a tail-dragging Road King that’s sure to stop the Murfreesboro locals dead in their tracks when he and that big ass front wheel come rolling by. Yeah, it doesn’t get much better than this.

 

  For more info on Godfather Baggers check out http://godfatherbaggers.com/  or Vindictive Wayz at http://vindictivewayz.com/ or you can find them on Facebook.