RELIVE THE BLUE OX

WITH

DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS

We welcomed Drive-By Truckers to our lineup in 2017 and they put on a great show. It happened to be the bands 21st anniversary as a band, and their show did not disappoint. They played just over half of their recent American Band release along with old favorites.

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.

Like what you saw at Blue Ox? Support the band at their official store.

Saturday, June 10, 2017

SETLIST

Ramon Casiano

Darkened Flags on the Cusp of Dawn

Surrender Under Protest

Sinkhole

Shit Shots Count

Lookout Mountain

Gravity’s Gone

Margo and Harold

Filthy and Fried

Ever South

Uncle Frank

What It Means

Love Like This

Hell No, I Ain’t Happy

VIDEO BY JAMGRASS TV