American Band

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.

American Band is an urgent and timely protest album, with the songwriting split almost evenly between Patterson Hood (vocals, guitar) and Cooley (vocals, guitar, banjo).

Hood says: "Drive-By Truckers are celebrating our 20th anniversary as a band in an election year where some people are trying to define what it is to be American. Definitions based on some outdated ideology of prejudice and fear. We are loudly proclaiming that those people don't speak for us. America is and always has been a land of immigrants and ideals. Ideals that we have often fallen short of achieving, but it's the striving that has given us whatever claims to greatness we have had. That's what America means to us and 'We're an American Band'."