Drive-By Truckers bringing firestorm to Fredericton

As Drive-By Truckers head to Fredericton to headline Saturday night at the 26th annual Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival, the relative quiet of the small Canadian city could be the calm before the storm for the southern U.S. band.

The group is about to release what is becoming its most controversial album in a 20-year career on Sept. 30, called American Band.

There's a flag on the cover, but this isn't jingoistic patriotism; it's really the exact opposite.

In the middle of the most divisive presidential campaign in decades, and at a time when race has once again dominated U.S. headlines, Drive-By Truckers are singing about racist murders, police shootings, the NRA, and people who still want to fly the Confederate flag.

Patterson Hood, from Alabama, has led the group along with Mike Cooley for its two decades, and knows they are going to get some noses out of joint when the album comes out.

"I think it already has a little bit, but that's all right," Hood said, on the line from his new home in Oregon. "It's good for everybody, get everybody stirred up a little bit."

Word started trickling out about the content back in June with the release of the first single, Surrender Under Protest, a Cooley composition which addresses the killing of nine African Americans in a Charleston, South Carolina church by white supremacist Dylann Roof, and the fight after to remove the Confederate flag from the Statehouse.

Backlash online

That's when the backlash began, according to Hood.

"There's certainly been people who have seen the posts online or heard a single, or whatever, that have felt compelled to say a lot about it, on Facebook or whatever, but that's just part of the time we're living in," he said. "We knew when we made it there were people who weren't going to like that. That's all right.

"We really try when we're making a record not to think too much about how it's going to be received, because you end up talking yourself out of something that maybe you shouldn't have."

The Truckers have always been known for stories about everyday Americans, but usually they don't take them from the headlines.

It wasn't a move the two songwriters in the group made on purpose, for an election year, it was just something they both felt in the air, independently, according to Hood.

It started with a song that was his reaction to the killing of Trayvon Martin and other African Americans.

"The first song I wrote for this was What It Means, and I wrote that close to two years ago," he said. "At the time I wrote it, probably wishful thinking, but I was hoping it would be dated and obsolete by the time we made another Trucker record ... a quaint snapshot of a troubled moment in time. But unfortunately so far that hasn't changed, and so far it's become more timely I think."

He didn't even have the song earmarked for the band's new album, thinking it might be better suited to an internet solo release.

"I've never been one to want to force anything on the band," said Hood, "but I played it for them and they all completely embraced it and made it our own. And it was obvious the first time we played it together as a band that it was going to be a Truckers song.

"Then Cooley's response was to play me his new song, which was Ramon Casiano. So he played me that, and it was 'Holy s—t, game on!"

Ramon Casiano is the story of the Hispanic youth who was shot and killed in 1931 in Laredo, Texas, by Harlon Carter, who went on to become the NRA's executive vice-president and the man who steered the organization from a hunter's organization to a political lobby group for gun owners' rights.

Stage fireworks

Given the topics, there are plenty of incendiary moments on the American Band album, and Hood said that has translated to the live show as well.

"We even got together and rehearsed, and anyone who has followed the history of our band knows that's not something that's happened real often at all," he laughed.

Hood's especially happy with a recent show at the famed Red Rocks venue in Colorado. "I think by all accounts it was one of the best shows we've ever played, so we're ready for ya!"

Drive-By Truckers play at the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival in Fredericton Saturday, Sept. 17 at the Moose Light Blues Tent, at 8:30 p.m.