Drive-By Truckers reached their 20th anniversary as a band this year, right amidst the most volatile election cycle in recent memory. For a Southern rock band, such tumultuous times could prove difficult to navigate, but for their 12th album, DBT chose to face the challenges head on. American Band, due out September 30th from ATO Records, promises to be their most advertently politically minded record to date, one 'steeped in this moment of history that we’re all trying to live through.” In a press release, the band’s Patterson Hood said the album is about how “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 Definitions based on some outdated ideology of prejudice and fear.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.'
