When Jason Priestley began directing the second season of CMT Canada's The Road Hammers, a documentary that follows the country band, he thought he would be watching some Canadian boys make it big in the U.S.

Jason Priestley has been directing since leaving Beverley Hills 90210 and took on The Road Hammers TV documentary in its second season.
(Phil McCarten/Associated Press)

That is what he had hoped to do with Barenaked in America, the rockumentary about the Barenaked Ladies in the U.S. that Priestley directed in 1999, right after his starring stint on Beverley Hills 90210.

But as the season comes to an end, he finds his documentary series telling a very different story — of a band "beaten down" by a confusing and contradictory country music industry.

"When this opportunity came to me, I looked at it as the opportunity to shoot the movie I didn't get to shoot with Barenaked Ladies," Priestley said in an interview with CBC Radio's Q cultural affairs program.

The Ladies had made their mark on the U.S. market between the time Priestley pitched his idea and the time that shooting began, so he never got to document their rise to fame.

But the Road Hammers, who have hit the top of the country music charts in Canada with two Canadian Country Music Awards and a Juno, presented him with a different story.

"Here are the Road Hammers, guys that already have a record deal," Priestley said. "I've been following them around for eight months and they've been going nowhere."

The Road Hammers, from left, Clayton Bellamy, Jason McCoy and Chris Byrne, perform at the Canadian Country Music Awards in September 2006.
(Canadian Press)

Road Hammers frontman Jason McCoy actually approached Vancouver-born Priestley, who had just finished directing a movie in Calgary, to direct the documentary series after seeing Barenaked in America.

He and his band — Clayton Bellamy on guitar, Chris Byrne on bass and Corbette Frasz on drums — are still knocking on doors, hoping for anyone in the Nashville music machine to notice them.

"See Corbette, the drummer, he's sitting there [saying], 'Here we are — we sign a record deal. I thought by now I'd be driving a Lamborghini. Instead, I'm living in rented house in rural Tennessee, trying to scrape together enough money to buy food,'" Priestley said.

Priestley admitted the country music business is a mystery to him.

"I'm amazed that anyone makes it in the music business," he said.

The final episode of The Road Hammers airs Tuesday on CMT and Priestley is not saying how it all ends.