Camping, Guns and Anxiety: Drive-By Truckers share their charged views on World Cafe

Southern rockers Drive-By Truckers made a recently stop to World Cafe Live to record an extra-special World Cafe session, performing a perfectly politically charged set recorded on Election Day.

Electing to play selections from their 2016 release American Band, these Georgie-based boys blasted through four songs expressing views on the overall political state of this country. “I didn’t set out to write any of this stuff. It was kind of just what was eating at me” vocalist Patterson Hood says, as topics of gun violence ring in tunes like “Ramon Casiano” and “Guns Of Umpqua.”

Although politics have been intertwined throughout the band’s discography, the disconnect between the band’s progressive views and the south’s more conservative opinions strikes a chord for small-town leftists, as the band’s lyrics pose as an outlet for bandmates Hood and co-vocalist Mike Cooley’s perspectives and subsequent anger. While our country tries to mend whatever has been broken, Drive-By Trucks throw another political opinion into the ring, in a time where communicating our issues is the best step in working towards a more consolidated union.

Listen to the session below via NPR, and watch the band perform “What It Means” on the World Cafe Live stage courtesy of our friends at VuHaus.