SORRY STATE OF THE UNION
Southern rockers Drive-By Truckers fight fear on their timely protest album American Band
Few albums have been more timely than Drive-By Truckers’ American Band. This doesn’t please singerguitarist Patterson Hood.
Before the first crunching guitar chord rings out on the southern rockers’ 11th studio release, it’s already clear from the stark cover image of a half-mast flag that the title doesn’t herald a new-found jingoistic streak. American Band addresses the sorry state of the union in unsentimental, uncompromising terms, with songs about school massacres (Guns of Umpqua), the shooting of unarmed black teens (What It Means), and misguided Confederate flag wavers (Surrender Under Protest, Darkened Flags on the Cusp of Dawn).
The complex historical thread running through the galvanizing lead track, Ramon Casiano — about a 1931 murder involving the future head of the NRA, with parallels to the death of Trayvon Martin and debates over immigration — is emblematic of how Hood and cofrontman Mike Cooley avoid easy sloganeering. These are thoughtful protest songs born from patriotism, delivered with utmost conviction via Hood’s sandpaper soul, Cooley’s straight-talking candour and the band’s road-toughened twang. They’re also songs that Hood laments are even more relevant now than when they were conceived.
With Hood and Cooley both stockpiling topical material, the Athens, Ga.-bred group worked quickly and released American Band just more than a month before the U.S. election.
“I honestly thought we’d have an album that would be … I wouldn’t say dated by now, but I didn’t expect it to be as timely this year as it was back in the fall,” Hood said by phone. “I really would rather it have been a time capsule of that troubled time we were in last year.”
Speaking two days before Donald Trump’s inauguration, the affable singer pinpointed American Band’s theme as “people fearing ‘the other,’ whatever the other may be.” Now, in the wake of the president’s executive order targeting travellers from Muslim-majority countries — not to mention the Quebec City attack — the catharsis will surely be heightened when Drive-By Truckers counter that fear in concert.
Hood remembers the band “getting drunk and depressed” on election day, watching the results come in the night before their Philadelphia show. “I spent all that next day in a haze: ‘What is my job now? What do I do tonight? How do I address this?’ And we ended up having one of the two or three best shows of the year, because I think everybody in that room was feeling the same confusion and anger that we were.”
While Hood has argued the central divide in the U.S. is urban/ rural, not blue state/red state, much of the discussion surrounding American Band has involved a presumed tension between the Truckers’ proud southern roots and their progressive views. This isn’t the first time Hood, Cooley and company have broached politics and race — those topics were in mind back when they deconstructed their home region in the wildly ambitious 2001 breakthrough Southern Rock Opera — and there has never been any question as to where their views fall on the blueto-red spectrum. Still, American Band presents a concentrated dose of subject matter that a notable percentage of their audience might not want to take.
When there are walkouts, What It Means, which decries racially charged shootings in blunt terms, may be the most likely catalyst.
“As a parent, there are conversations I don’t have to have with my children that our bass player (Matt Patton), who has a mixedrace child, will have to have. He’s raising a mixed-race child in Mississippi, and he’s going to have to sit her down at some point and tell her things that I have the privilege of not having to explain to my kids for their own safety. And as long as that exists, as long as it’s like that, then I feel like people need to be speaking out against it. And white people need to be speaking out against it, too.”
Even when the anger is audible on American Band, Hood and Cooley maintain a level-headed tone. “I’ve always been a pretty rational person … a cynical optimist, if that makes any sense. I’m cynical about the immediate situation, but generally have been optimistic about the slightly distant future. And I’m having a really hard time with that right now, with Trump and everything.
“I’ve been writing since I was eight years old. I’ve been writing songs since 1973. And I’ve never found it as hard to write about what I’m feeling as it is right now.”
I’ve been writing songs since 1973. And I’ve never found it as hard to write about what I’m feeling as it is right now.