Song #79: Steve Earle - "Copperhead Road" (1988)
Copperhead Road
"It's before my time, but I've been told, he never came back from Copperhead Road."
If
you've been consistently following this blog series, then you know one
of my fondest childhood memories was making CD's with my uncle in his
bedroom from songs we'd download off the internet. Most of the time, I'd
bring a list of songs I'd want him to find, but on occasion, he'd give
me songs he wanted me to listen to. One of them was Steve Earle's
"Copperhead Road;" just the name made me shiver. It sounded like one of
the locations in a horror movie where cars break down and people are
murdered and raped. Needless to say, however, I was intrigued.
My
uncle downloaded it and through it on one of my CD's. The next day,
after spending a night at his house, I hopped in the car with my mom and
told her to play the CD. A few tracks in and there was "Copperhead
Road," one of the most unique and powerful songs I had heard in my eight
years of life. The song sounded like a mix of heavy metal and country
music, with hints of bluegrass and neotraditional country, creating a
song about dark subject matter and ambiguities. I really didn't
understand much when I was a kid, despite listening to the song over and
over again on car trips. I was mesmerized by the song's dark tone,
Earle's deep, ominous lyrics, and the looming sense of trouble the song
seemed to bear so casually.
The
song concerns John Lee Pettimore III, who reflects on his father and
grandfather, who were active moonshiners and bootleggers in rural
Tennessee. John Lee's grandfather was known for making moonshine on a
backwoods route named "Copperhead Road," where he would only go into
town when he needed to buy supplies to make his moonshine. On the other
hand, John Lee's father would haul the moonshine his father made to
Knoxville every week, but was killed in a car accident during one of his
weekly runs.
John
Lee volunteers for the army on his eighteenth birthday, which results
in him doing two tours of duty in Vietnam. To honor his father and
grandfather's legacy, he grows marijuana on Copperhead Road from seeds
he obtained in Colombia and Mexico, and uses tips from the Viet Cong to
not get caught by persistent and heavily-armed DEA agents.
The
song is a masterclass of visualization and poetry, illustrating the
environment of the dirty south right down to wear you could almost feel
the humidity, "smell the whiskey burning," smell the ethanol, and feel
the hot sun on you. Earle's deep voice, as I stated, also provides the
song with a rare tone of confidence, and just by the way he says and
voices certain lines, you almost feel as if our own narrator has had a
whirlwind of experience himself in this field. "Copperhead Road" stands
as one of my favorite country/rock songs of all time.
Give "Copperhead Road" a listen, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6H_elGU6Dk
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