American Band- 9/30/16

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coornelius
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Re: American Band- 9/30/16

Post by coornelius »

their new bio is fierce:

http://thefillmore.com/event/drive-by-truckers-2/
Drive-By Truckers have always been outspoken, telling a distinctly American story via craft, character, and concept, all backed by sonic ambition and social conscience. Founded in 1996 by singer/songwriter/guitarists Mike Cooley and Patterson Hood, the band have long held a progressive fire in their belly but with AMERICAN BAND, they have made the most explicitly political album in their extraordinary canon. A powerful and legitimately provocative work, hard edged and finely honed, the album is the sound of a truly American Band – a Southern American band – speaking on matters that matter. DBT made the choice to direct the Way We Live Now head on, employing realism rather than subtext or symbolism to purge its makers’ own anger, discontent, and frustration with societal disintegration and the urban/rural divide that has partitioned the country for close to a half-century. Master songwriters both, Hood and Cooley wisely avoid overt polemics to explore such pressing issues as race, income inequality, the NRA, deregulation, police brutality, Islamophobia, and the plague of suicides and opioid abuse. As a result, songs like “What It Means” and the tub-thumping “Kinky Hypocrites” are intensely human music from a rock ‘n’ roll band yearning for community and collective action. Fueled by a just spirit of moral indignation and righteous rage, AMERICAN BAND is protest music fit for the stadiums, designed to raise issues and ire as the nation careens towards its most momentous election in a generation.

“I don’t want there to be any doubt as to which side of this discussion we fall on,” Hood says. “I don’t want there to be any misunderstanding of where we stand. If you don’t like it, you can leave. It’s okay. We’re not trying to be everybody’s favorite band, we’re going to be who we are and do what we do and anyone who’s with us, we’d love to have them join in.”

Mike Cooley is somewhat more direct. “I wanted this to be a no bones about it, in your face political album,” he says. “I wanted to piss off the assholes.”

AMERICAN BAND’s considerable force can in part be credited to the sheer musical strength of the current Drive-By Truckers line-up, with Hood and Cooley joined by bassist Matt Patton, keyboardist/multi-instrumentalist Jay Gonzalez, and drummer Brad Morgan – together, the longest-lasting iteration in the band’s two-decade history. AMERICAN BAND follows ENGLISH OCEANS and 2015’s IT’S GREAT TO BE ALIVE!, marking the first time DBT have made three consecutive LPs with the same hard-traveling crew.

“This is the longest period of stability in our band’s history,” says Hood. “I think we finally hit the magic formula. It’s made everything more fun than it’s ever been, making records and playing shows.”

Drive-By Truckers might have maintained constancy but Hood embraced change by moving his family to Portland, OR in July 2015, a physical shift which he says “opened the floodgates” to a batch of deeply felt, strikingly emotional new songs. Having recorded the bulk of their canon in Athens, GA, the band was also eager to reinvent their own surroundings. Memphis was considered but when DBT’s November 2015 tour wrapped in Nashville, the band decided to spend a few days at the legendary Sound Emporium getting a head start on the new record.

Never ones to screw around in the studio, DBT cranked out nine new songs in just three 14-hour shifts, as ever with producer/engineer David Barbe at the helm. Coming in directly from the road put a head of steam behind the band, allowing them to lay it all out live on the floor, tracking songs like “Once They Banned Imagine” in little more than a single take.

“We realized we had most of the record,” Hood says, “so we went back after the holidays for four more days, but ended up finishing it in three. We tend to usually take about two weeks to make a record so this was really quick.”“That was a lot of fun,” the Alabama-based Cooley says, “and a shorter drive for me.”

Speed was of the essence, as DBT was determined to get their record out at the height of the 2016 election season. By their very nature, Drive-By Truckers has always been an inherently political act, “but this is the first time it’s been out there on the surface,” Cooley says, “No bones about it.”

“I’ve always considered our band to be political,” Hood says. “I’ve studied and followed politics since I was a small kid. I got in trouble in third grade for a paper I wrote about Watergate – the teacher sent a note home to my parents saying I was voicing opinions about our president that she didn’t appreciate. That’s the one time I got in trouble at school where my parents sided with me.”

“SOUTHERN ROCK OPERA was a pretty political record,” Cooley says. “But we hadn’t had our first black president yet. We hadn’t sat in the bleachers and watched the backlash, which, as acquainted as we are with racism, went beyond what anyone imagined it would be.”

Political matters reared their head on 2014’s ENGLISH OCEANS, most explicitly on Cooley’s “Made Up English Oceans,” detailing the life and crimes of late Republican black ops master Lee Atwater. Hood further sharpened his own skills by penning an op-ed for the New York Times condemning the Confederate Flag and its vile role in Southern culture.“That was a major learning experience,” he says. “Working with an editor, how to streamline what I’m trying to say, how to find the most powerful part and get rid of some of the excess. It was really grueling but I was eager to take it on and learn as much as I could from it.”

Hood delivered a finished draft to the Old Gray Lady and within moments, wrote the ferocious “Darkened Flags On The Cusp Of Dawn” on a borrowed guitar – his own gear in a moving van on its way to his family’s new home in Portland. The song, like so much of the album, is a direct response to 2014’s police shootings of unarmed African-Americans, a moment both Hood and Cooley see as the catalyst for their blunt new approach. Long haunted by the police shooting of a mentally ill neighbor in his former hometown of Athens, GA, Hood wrote “What It Means” in the heat of Ferguson, Staten Island, and the subsequent emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement.

“It was all in my head and just kind of bubbling at the surface,” Hood says. “I think we knew early on that was the direction this record was going to go in.”Hood’s friend and collaborator for more than half their lives, Cooley was a on similar trip, reading, writing, and pondering the very same issues that rend the country in two.“We have conversations about all this stuff,” he says, “but not necessarily in terms of planning an album or anything. Then we go home, he writes a song, I write a song, and they’re both basically about the same thing.”“We tend to come to the same conclusions separately but together,” Hood says. “We don’t really discuss it until we have a bunch of songs. We’ve always been astounded at how much common ground our songs have, record after record. SOUTHERN ROCK OPERA is the only time we discussed a game plan for what we were going to write, the only time. It’s kind of uncanny. Truly a beautiful thing.”

Further creative inspiration came from a pair of American milestone pieces of art, Ta-Nehisi Coates’ National Book Award-winning Between The World and Me and Kendrick Lamar’s TO PIMP A BUTTERFLY, “in my opinion, the greatest musical work of our current time,” says Hood.“It’s an inspiring album and one that made me question myself,” he says. “I’m a white guy from the South, do I have the right to be singing about this stuff? What can I do? The only conclusion I could come up with was maybe white guys, with Southern accents, who look like rednecks, need to say Black Lives Matter too. It’s a start, a tiny start, but a step in the right direction is better than no step at all.”

“I couldn’t not do it,” says Cooley. “I’ve got to speak about this stuff, somehow or another. And I’m going to speak about it from a middle aged Southern white working class evangelical background male point of view.”Much like Lamar’s GRAMMY® Award-winning song cycle, AMERICAN BAND serves as a stark, tightly focused snapshot of today’s America, an exemplary illustration of rock ‘n’ roll as a vehicle for social commentary and clear-eyed reportage. “Guns of Umpqua” captures Hood’s reaction to the 2015 shooting at Roseburg, OR’s Umpqua Community College while Cooley’s breakneck “Ramon Casiano” is a topical folk rocker telling the little known tale of former National Rife Association leader Harlon Carter and the murder of 15-year-old Ramon Casiano. Known as “Mr. NRA,” Carter transformed the organization from its original role as a sportsmen and conservationist group into what Cooley correctly declares “a right wing, white supremacist gun cult.” A Southern-rooted band opening their album with such a song makes for a singularly powerful statement, the NRA’s monolithic control of the debate demanding opposing artists to be as overt and vocal on the issue as possible.“The NRA needs to be turned into a political turd in a swimming pool,” Cooley says, “so all these fuckers will start paddling away.“What I’m trying to do is point straight to the white supremacist core of gun culture,” Cooley concludes. “That’s what it is and that’s where its roots are. When gun culture thinks about all the threats they need to be armed against, what color are they?”

Of course the personal can also be politic, represented here by Hood’s deeply felt “Baggage.” Penned the night of Robin Williams’ death, the song sees Hood examining his own demons and long bout with depression, “the worst I’ve had as an older adult,” he says. “I was kind of blindsided by it. There had always been a tangible thing that I could point to as to what was wrong, but this time I was grasping for something and not quite finding it.”AMERICAN BAND is surprisingly optimistic thanks to Hood’s “absolutely” improved mental health as well as Drive-By Truckers’ passion for the issues behind the material. The band intend to hit the road harder than ever in support of AMERICAN BAND, bringing their songs to the people as they have always done, only this time with the country’s very future at stake. Fortunately for America, Drive-By Truckers are, as a Great Man once said, fired up, ready to go.

“I feel like Cooley and I both nailed what were going for on every song on this record,” Hood says. “I don’t think there’s a wasted line or word on this record. There’s nothing I would change, that’s for sure. I think we got this one right.”“I’m sure there will be people saying ‘I wish they’d keep the politics out of it,’” Cooley says, “but one of the characteristics among the people and institutions we are taking to task in these songs is their self-appointed status as the exclusive authority on what American is. What is American enough and who the real Americans are. Putting AMERICAN BAND right out front is our way of reclaiming the right to define our American identity on our own terms, and show that it’s out of love of country that we draw our inspiration.”

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Smitty
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Re: American Band- 9/30/16

Post by Smitty »

When the sun don't shineI'll be better when the sun don't shineI like it better when the sun don't shineWhen it's cold outsideI'll grab a sweater when it's cold outsideBe close together when it's cold outsideI get happy when it's cold outsideI like it better when the sun don't shineI'd much rather watch the clouds go byWatch the moon peek into my roomA little rain to make the roses bloom I like it better when the sun don't shineAnd I don't have to watch you say goodbyeWe can stand behind the clouds on highA little rain to protect my prideGonna love you till the big one comes and shakes my bones and washes me out to sea Have a blast till the markets crash and smoking ash is left of these beautiful trees Next morning it'll be so lonely they'll have to send someone around to pick up the pieces of me Pick up the pieces of meWhen the sun don't shine I'll be betterWhen the sun don't shine I like it betterWhen the sun don't shine, clouds forming in this state of mindIt's always storming in this state of mine I like it better when the sun don't shine
Last edited by Smitty on Tue Jun 21, 2016 5:23 pm, edited 2 times in total.
E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.

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roland
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Re: American Band- 9/30/16

Post by roland »

Markalanbishop wrote:I always swear I won't do it again, but I just pre-ordered from the Truckers' website anyway. Couldn't resist the bundle and red vinyl. I'm weak.
The red vinyl sucked me in.

Markalanbishop
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Re: American Band- 9/30/16

Post by Markalanbishop »

coornelius wrote:their new bio is fierce:

http://thefillmore.com/event/drive-by-truckers-2/
Drive-By Truckers have always been outspoken, telling a distinctly American story via craft, character, and concept, all backed by sonic ambition and social conscience. Founded in 1996 by singer/songwriter/guitarists Mike Cooley and Patterson Hood, the band have long held a progressive fire in their belly but with AMERICAN BAND, they have made the most explicitly political album in their extraordinary canon. A powerful and legitimately provocative work, hard edged and finely honed, the album is the sound of a truly American Band – a Southern American band – speaking on matters that matter. DBT made the choice to direct the Way We Live Now head on, employing realism rather than subtext or symbolism to purge its makers’ own anger, discontent, and frustration with societal disintegration and the urban/rural divide that has partitioned the country for close to a half-century. Master songwriters both, Hood and Cooley wisely avoid overt polemics to explore such pressing issues as race, income inequality, the NRA, deregulation, police brutality, Islamophobia, and the plague of suicides and opioid abuse. As a result, songs like “What It Means” and the tub-thumping “Kinky Hypocrites” are intensely human music from a rock ‘n’ roll band yearning for community and collective action. Fueled by a just spirit of moral indignation and righteous rage, AMERICAN BAND is protest music fit for the stadiums, designed to raise issues and ire as the nation careens towards its most momentous election in a generation.

“I don’t want there to be any doubt as to which side of this discussion we fall on,” Hood says. “I don’t want there to be any misunderstanding of where we stand. If you don’t like it, you can leave. It’s okay. We’re not trying to be everybody’s favorite band, we’re going to be who we are and do what we do and anyone who’s with us, we’d love to have them join in.”

Mike Cooley is somewhat more direct. “I wanted this to be a no bones about it, in your face political album,” he says. “I wanted to piss off the assholes.”

AMERICAN BAND’s considerable force can in part be credited to the sheer musical strength of the current Drive-By Truckers line-up, with Hood and Cooley joined by bassist Matt Patton, keyboardist/multi-instrumentalist Jay Gonzalez, and drummer Brad Morgan – together, the longest-lasting iteration in the band’s two-decade history. AMERICAN BAND follows ENGLISH OCEANS and 2015’s IT’S GREAT TO BE ALIVE!, marking the first time DBT have made three consecutive LPs with the same hard-traveling crew.

“This is the longest period of stability in our band’s history,” says Hood. “I think we finally hit the magic formula. It’s made everything more fun than it’s ever been, making records and playing shows.”

Drive-By Truckers might have maintained constancy but Hood embraced change by moving his family to Portland, OR in July 2015, a physical shift which he says “opened the floodgates” to a batch of deeply felt, strikingly emotional new songs. Having recorded the bulk of their canon in Athens, GA, the band was also eager to reinvent their own surroundings. Memphis was considered but when DBT’s November 2015 tour wrapped in Nashville, the band decided to spend a few days at the legendary Sound Emporium getting a head start on the new record.

Never ones to screw around in the studio, DBT cranked out nine new songs in just three 14-hour shifts, as ever with producer/engineer David Barbe at the helm. Coming in directly from the road put a head of steam behind the band, allowing them to lay it all out live on the floor, tracking songs like “Once They Banned Imagine” in little more than a single take.

“We realized we had most of the record,” Hood says, “so we went back after the holidays for four more days, but ended up finishing it in three. We tend to usually take about two weeks to make a record so this was really quick.”“That was a lot of fun,” the Alabama-based Cooley says, “and a shorter drive for me.”

Speed was of the essence, as DBT was determined to get their record out at the height of the 2016 election season. By their very nature, Drive-By Truckers has always been an inherently political act, “but this is the first time it’s been out there on the surface,” Cooley says, “No bones about it.”

“I’ve always considered our band to be political,” Hood says. “I’ve studied and followed politics since I was a small kid. I got in trouble in third grade for a paper I wrote about Watergate – the teacher sent a note home to my parents saying I was voicing opinions about our president that she didn’t appreciate. That’s the one time I got in trouble at school where my parents sided with me.”

“SOUTHERN ROCK OPERA was a pretty political record,” Cooley says. “But we hadn’t had our first black president yet. We hadn’t sat in the bleachers and watched the backlash, which, as acquainted as we are with racism, went beyond what anyone imagined it would be.”

Political matters reared their head on 2014’s ENGLISH OCEANS, most explicitly on Cooley’s “Made Up English Oceans,” detailing the life and crimes of late Republican black ops master Lee Atwater. Hood further sharpened his own skills by penning an op-ed for the New York Times condemning the Confederate Flag and its vile role in Southern culture.“That was a major learning experience,” he says. “Working with an editor, how to streamline what I’m trying to say, how to find the most powerful part and get rid of some of the excess. It was really grueling but I was eager to take it on and learn as much as I could from it.”

Hood delivered a finished draft to the Old Gray Lady and within moments, wrote the ferocious “Darkened Flags On The Cusp Of Dawn” on a borrowed guitar – his own gear in a moving van on its way to his family’s new home in Portland. The song, like so much of the album, is a direct response to 2014’s police shootings of unarmed African-Americans, a moment both Hood and Cooley see as the catalyst for their blunt new approach. Long haunted by the police shooting of a mentally ill neighbor in his former hometown of Athens, GA, Hood wrote “What It Means” in the heat of Ferguson, Staten Island, and the subsequent emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement.

“It was all in my head and just kind of bubbling at the surface,” Hood says. “I think we knew early on that was the direction this record was going to go in.”Hood’s friend and collaborator for more than half their lives, Cooley was a on similar trip, reading, writing, and pondering the very same issues that rend the country in two.“We have conversations about all this stuff,” he says, “but not necessarily in terms of planning an album or anything. Then we go home, he writes a song, I write a song, and they’re both basically about the same thing.”“We tend to come to the same conclusions separately but together,” Hood says. “We don’t really discuss it until we have a bunch of songs. We’ve always been astounded at how much common ground our songs have, record after record. SOUTHERN ROCK OPERA is the only time we discussed a game plan for what we were going to write, the only time. It’s kind of uncanny. Truly a beautiful thing.”

Further creative inspiration came from a pair of American milestone pieces of art, Ta-Nehisi Coates’ National Book Award-winning Between The World and Me and Kendrick Lamar’s TO PIMP A BUTTERFLY, “in my opinion, the greatest musical work of our current time,” says Hood.“It’s an inspiring album and one that made me question myself,” he says. “I’m a white guy from the South, do I have the right to be singing about this stuff? What can I do? The only conclusion I could come up with was maybe white guys, with Southern accents, who look like rednecks, need to say Black Lives Matter too. It’s a start, a tiny start, but a step in the right direction is better than no step at all.”

“I couldn’t not do it,” says Cooley. “I’ve got to speak about this stuff, somehow or another. And I’m going to speak about it from a middle aged Southern white working class evangelical background male point of view.”Much like Lamar’s GRAMMY® Award-winning song cycle, AMERICAN BAND serves as a stark, tightly focused snapshot of today’s America, an exemplary illustration of rock ‘n’ roll as a vehicle for social commentary and clear-eyed reportage. “Guns of Umpqua” captures Hood’s reaction to the 2015 shooting at Roseburg, OR’s Umpqua Community College while Cooley’s breakneck “Ramon Casiano” is a topical folk rocker telling the little known tale of former National Rife Association leader Harlon Carter and the murder of 15-year-old Ramon Casiano. Known as “Mr. NRA,” Carter transformed the organization from its original role as a sportsmen and conservationist group into what Cooley correctly declares “a right wing, white supremacist gun cult.” A Southern-rooted band opening their album with such a song makes for a singularly powerful statement, the NRA’s monolithic control of the debate demanding opposing artists to be as overt and vocal on the issue as possible.“The NRA needs to be turned into a political turd in a swimming pool,” Cooley says, “so all these fuckers will start paddling away.“What I’m trying to do is point straight to the white supremacist core of gun culture,” Cooley concludes. “That’s what it is and that’s where its roots are. When gun culture thinks about all the threats they need to be armed against, what color are they?”

Of course the personal can also be politic, represented here by Hood’s deeply felt “Baggage.” Penned the night of Robin Williams’ death, the song sees Hood examining his own demons and long bout with depression, “the worst I’ve had as an older adult,” he says. “I was kind of blindsided by it. There had always been a tangible thing that I could point to as to what was wrong, but this time I was grasping for something and not quite finding it.”AMERICAN BAND is surprisingly optimistic thanks to Hood’s “absolutely” improved mental health as well as Drive-By Truckers’ passion for the issues behind the material. The band intend to hit the road harder than ever in support of AMERICAN BAND, bringing their songs to the people as they have always done, only this time with the country’s very future at stake. Fortunately for America, Drive-By Truckers are, as a Great Man once said, fired up, ready to go.

“I feel like Cooley and I both nailed what were going for on every song on this record,” Hood says. “I don’t think there’s a wasted line or word on this record. There’s nothing I would change, that’s for sure. I think we got this one right.”“I’m sure there will be people saying ‘I wish they’d keep the politics out of it,’” Cooley says, “but one of the characteristics among the people and institutions we are taking to task in these songs is their self-appointed status as the exclusive authority on what American is. What is American enough and who the real Americans are. Putting AMERICAN BAND right out front is our way of reclaiming the right to define our American identity on our own terms, and show that it’s out of love of country that we draw our inspiration.”
Oh fuck yes.
Kick out the jams motherfuckers.

alquina
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Re: American Band- 9/30/16

Post by alquina »

I think I've heard them all but 3? Love the cover, it's perfect for this record. I can't wait to hear it in all it's glory!

Markalanbishop
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Re: American Band- 9/30/16

Post by Markalanbishop »

I know this is said about every album, but wouldn't it be nice if this were their "breakthrough" record in terms of reaching a wider audience? Given the unique political, social, and economic position we find ourselves in, and having the best lineup and best chemistry ever, they could be the right band at the right time in American music. Prediction: the West Coast is going to break them!

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one

:D
Kick out the jams motherfuckers.

ford911
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Re: American Band- 9/30/16

Post by ford911 »

Thanks for posting that. This is the most excited I've been for a DBT record since TDS.

crowes74
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Re: American Band- 9/30/16

Post by crowes74 »

I'd love to see the fellas get their due, but I don't see a political record putting them to the next level.
Without a new audience they will still be able to play the same mid sized theater, that's perfect for them. (Or maybe that's just me being selfish cause I like seeing them in small/mid sized joints)

Can't wait to hear the record, only heard the Ferguson song when Patterson played st.louis a couple Christmas ago.
English oceans seemed back on track to me, hope they keep on rollin'. Had to break down and do the preorder, $67 was a bit pricey but what you gonna do? Support our boys.

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jimmyjack
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Re: American Band- 9/30/16

Post by jimmyjack »

Pre-ordered. Love the cover art. Cautiously optimistic about the record. Cautious because nothing dates music like politics. But can't wait to hear it. This is one of the only bands left whose records I actually look forward to.

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Re: American Band- 9/30/16

Post by Clams »

Anyone know who wrote that new bio?
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Zip City
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Re: American Band- 9/30/16

Post by Zip City »

The "keep your politics to yourself and play some fucking music!"'crowd are going to hate this record


Good
And I knew when I woke up Rock N Roll would be here forever

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jimmyjack
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Re: American Band- 9/30/16

Post by jimmyjack »

Zip City wrote:The "keep your politics to yourself and play some fucking music!"'crowd are going to hate this record


Good
I'm not among this crowd. In fact, I think DBT 1) have proven over time that they are one of the few bands who can deal with social issues in a tasteful, tactful, and artful way that doesn't alienate anyone, and 2) are at least, to some degree, not merely preaching the the choir (one of my major criticisms when ivory tower 'indie' bands with 100% liberal fanbases morally postulate and become sjw caricatures), as we've all stood beside fratboys at the Rock Show hollering for (and grossly misunderstanding) "The Southern Thing." I think if a few good ol' boys get enlightened, all the better. If the Confederate flag-wavers get off the bus and leave a little room for less aggro, more forward thinking fans, all the better again.

But my concern isn't the politics, it's the (hinted at) specificity. I don't want to hear DBT singing about Trump any more than I want to hear Phil Ochs singing about Nixon. That practice of 'naming names,' as it were, can really date a record IMO. (But then again, there's "Ohio," and "By The Time I Get To Arizona," and "Sunday Bloody Sunday," and probably dozens of other exceptions that prove the rule).

Like a lot of folks here (but--again--not all), I'm probably simpatico with 85-95% of DBT's political ideology (as represented in song, that is; can't speak for them personally). That doesn't mean I need to hear a song about white supremacist elements in the NRA more than coupla times.

Anyway, these are small concerns voiced to a nerdy demographic, and I wouldn't even voice them to a casual fan. I only mention it here because, well, we tend to nerd out here, and speculate, and analyze, and debate. To a casual fan, I'D SAY "HOLY SHIT DUDE, NEW TRUCKERS ALBUM, SEPTEMBER 30TH, YALL, LET'S DO THIS!" :D

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Tequila Cowboy
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Re: American Band- 9/30/16

Post by Tequila Cowboy »

jimmyjack wrote:
Zip City wrote:The "keep your politics to yourself and play some fucking music!"'crowd are going to hate this record


Good
I'm not among this crowd. In fact, I think DBT 1) have proven over time that they are one of the few bands who can deal with social issues in a tasteful, tactful, and artful way that doesn't alienate anyone, and 2) are at least, to some degree, not merely preaching the the choir (one of my major criticisms when ivory tower 'indie' bands with 100% liberal fanbases morally postulate and become sjw caricatures), as we've all stood beside fratboys at the Rock Show hollering for (and grossly misunderstanding) "The Southern Thing." I think if a few good ol' boys get enlightened, all the better. If the Confederate flag-wavers get off the bus and leave a little room for less aggro, more forward thinking fans, all the better again.

But my concern isn't the politics, it's the (hinted at) specificity. I don't want to hear DBT singing about Trump any more than I want to hear Phil Ochs singing about Nixon. That practice of 'naming names,' as it were, can really date a record IMO. (But then again, there's "Ohio," and "By The Time I Get To Arizona," and "Sunday Bloody Sunday," and probably dozens of other exceptions that prove the rule).

Like a lot of folks here (but--again--not all), I'm probably simpatico with 85-95% of DBT's political ideology (as represented in song, that is; can't speak for them personally). That doesn't mean I need to hear a song about white supremacist elements in the NRA more than coupla times.

Anyway, these are small concerns voiced to a nerdy demographic, and I wouldn't even voice them to a casual fan. I only mention it here because, well, we tend to nerd out here, and speculate, and analyze, and debate. To a casual fan, I'D SAY "HOLY SHIT DUDE, NEW TRUCKERS ALBUM, SEPTEMBER 30TH, YALL, LET'S DO THIS!" :D
I agree with you that sometimes political songs don't hold up over time but after hearing many of these songs live I think they're more general in political terms as opposed to specific. Yes, What it Means was inspired by a specific event but in the storytelling around it and a few lyric changes Patterson has made it more about the general issue of racial equality. Surrender Under Protest is equally timeless having it's genesis in the end of the Civil War with a legacy that's still relevant. I really love that they felt that they had something to say and are saying it directly, not that they were exactly flinching from their beliefs before this.
We call him Scooby Do, but Scooby doesn’t do. Scooby, is not involved

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Re: American Band- 9/30/16

Post by brett27295 »

Public Service Announcement issued at 12:50 PM EST

Stay off all Facebook Drive-By Truckers posts (both the official page and fan groups) about the new album "American Band" and under no circumstances should you READ THE COMMENTS. If you happen to read the comments prepare to get sucked down a rabbit hole so deep that you may never escape.
Turn you demons into walls of goddamned noise and sound.

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Re: American Band- 9/30/16

Post by heartbreaker1976 »

Yeah...the facebook pages are full of dumbasses apparently. My favorite "What, no Isbell???"

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Tequila Cowboy
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Re: American Band- 9/30/16

Post by Tequila Cowboy »

brett27295 wrote:Public Service Announcement issued at 12:50 PM EST

Stay off all Facebook Drive-By Truckers posts (both the official page and fan groups) about the new album "American Band" and under no circumstances should you READ THE COMMENTS. If you happen to read the comments prepare to get sucked down a rabbit hole so deep that you may never escape.
Yes, apparently the fact that DBT is a left leaning political band has come as quite a shock.
We call him Scooby Do, but Scooby doesn’t do. Scooby, is not involved

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Re: American Band- 9/30/16

Post by Smitty »

brett27295 wrote:Public Service Announcement issued at 12:50 PM EST

Stay off all Facebook Drive-By Truckers posts (both the official page and fan groups) about the new album "American Band" and under no circumstances should you READ THE COMMENTS. If you happen to read the comments prepare to get sucked down a rabbit hole so deep that you may never escape.
Sometimes I can't help myself.
#shitstirrer
E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.

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jimmyjack
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Re: American Band- 9/30/16

Post by jimmyjack »

And as long as we're getting political, my unsolicited $0.02: I am not eager, at the moment, to hear a song inspired by Ta-Nehisi Coates, who, despite being a gifted and powerful writer, was definitely complicit in discrediting and derailing the campaign of Bernie Sanders (who he's, err, voting for now), a man who might have actually helped enact some of the changes Patterson and co are so eager to see.

Sorry, couldn't bite my tongue on that one.

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Re: American Band- 9/30/16

Post by alquina »

brett27295 wrote:Public Service Announcement issued at 12:50 PM EST

Stay off all Facebook Drive-By Truckers posts (both the official page and fan groups) about the new album "American Band" and under no circumstances should you READ THE COMMENTS. If you happen to read the comments prepare to get sucked down a rabbit hole so deep that you may never escape.
True story! The shit is getting deep!

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Re: American Band- 9/30/16

Post by John A Arkansawyer »

Tequila Cowboy wrote:
brett27295 wrote:Public Service Announcement issued at 12:50 PM EST

Stay off all Facebook Drive-By Truckers posts (both the official page and fan groups) about the new album "American Band" and under no circumstances should you READ THE COMMENTS. If you happen to read the comments prepare to get sucked down a rabbit hole so deep that you may never escape.
Yes, apparently the fact that DBT is a left leaning political band has come as quite a shock.
Bless some of their hearts.
The sooner we put those assholes in the grave&piss on the dirt above it, the better off we'll be

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Re: American Band- 9/30/16

Post by Duke Silver »

heartbreaker1976 wrote:Yeah...the facebook pages are full of dumbasses apparently. My favorite "What, no Isbell???"
I saw that too. I want to believe that guy is just trolling.
ain't no static on the gospel radio

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Re: American Band- 9/30/16

Post by porkulator »

allisonsdc wrote:
Iowan wrote:Probably about the Duggar kid.
Ha! I hope so.
Damn,I hope so too.Love seeing that whole freakshow get jabbed any way possible.
Living in fear's just another way of dying before your time.

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Smitty
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Re: American Band- 9/30/16

Post by Smitty »

I was hoping it was about Robert Bentley.
E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.

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Re: American Band- 9/30/16

Post by Rocky »

“I wanted to piss off the assholes.” :mrgreen:

Super pumped for the new record. The first song that debuted on NPR is really strong.
By the time you drop them I'll be gone
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Re: American Band- 9/30/16

Post by Markalanbishop »

brett27295 wrote:Public Service Announcement issued at 12:50 PM EST

Stay off all Facebook Drive-By Truckers posts (both the official page and fan groups) about the new album "American Band" and under no circumstances should you READ THE COMMENTS. If you happen to read the comments prepare to get sucked down a rabbit hole so deep that you may never escape.
Fuck you, Brett :D You made me read the comments. My favorite is something like they're not the same since Neff left and they got a new chick to play bass. As always, I blame Brett.
Kick out the jams motherfuckers.

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Re: American Band- 9/30/16

Post by Jonicont »

I can see Kinky Hypocrite being about whoever is in that day's news feed
Always go to the show

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Re: American Band- 9/30/16

Post by ramonz »

Jonicont wrote:I can see Kinky Hypocrite being about whoever is in that day's news feed
Funny you say that John. Just went for a jog and listened to the studio version of SUP probably 6 times. A few thoughts:

1) It seems like a song where Cooley could add verses when appropriate and surprise the shit out of us at shows.
2) I am guessing it will be covered live by a few bands that are DBT fans and maybe a bigger band (if they can get it on their radar) - it's that good.
3) I was listening on Spotify, and Zip City came on after it. Someone somewhere asked about Cooley's voice - same voice dude, just with more urgency in the delivery.
4) When it's heard between Zip City and Birmingham, it fits like a glove.
5) Love the guitar solos, wish they were longer.
6) It's a great fucking song.

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Re: American Band- 9/30/16

Post by Zip City »

It's sure as shit a better album title than "English Oceans"
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Re: American Band- 9/30/16

Post by Cole Younger »

Zip City wrote:The "keep your politics to yourself and play some fucking music!"'crowd are going to hate this record


Good
Or they may not.
A single shot rifle and a one eyed dog.

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Re: American Band- 9/30/16

Post by dime in the gutter »

jimmyjack wrote:And as long as we're getting political, my unsolicited $0.02: I am not eager, at the moment, to hear a song inspired by Ta-Nehisi Coates, who, despite being a gifted and powerful writer, was definitely complicit in discrediting and derailing the campaign of Bernie Sanders (who he's, err, voting for now), a man who might have actually helped enact some of the changes Patterson and co are so eager to see.
i thought they wrote about her on the last album.

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