Drive-By Truckers is a band that began in in the U.S. South with fun, rocking music with crude and humorous titles and lyrics. By the mid-2000s, however, their focus began to get into some deep issues, including unpacking this history of racism in the South. As a white band they have been taking on the distorted, destructive visions of white supremacy. They’ve also attacked spirituality married with violence as in the title of their song “Rosemary with a Bible and a Gun.”
Patterson Hood, one of the co-founders of Drive-By Truckers, lives in Portland, Oregon. In this supposed liberal city a white supremacist shot up a train, killing the best friend of their children’s baby-sitter. They feel the damage of the violence in our society. Their song “Thoughts and Prayers” features the March for Our Lives that grew out of school shootings. They nail the hypocrisy of offering “thoughts and prayers” while continuing to boost and profit from gun sales and gun culture, or as the band puts it, “Deliver us from evil thoughts and prayers.”
Click here for a National Public Radio story on the band with an interview of Patterson Hood.
They take on the Trump Administration’s family separation policy at the U.S./Mexico border in their searing “Babies in Cages”:
To visit the Drive-By Truckers’ website, click here.