Welcome to Mundane Mayhem

The comedown from a Drive-By Truckers concert hits hard. But as I left my 47th DBT show in July, I realized how I could keep that high going: by launching a newsletter about my favorite band and their incredible fans.

I have been a DBT fan for more than 20 years and a journalist for even longer. Just weeks before that July show, I was laid off from my media job, the latest casualty of an industry in crisis. Cloaked in the warmth of live music, I decided to devote my creative energy — and skills I’ve honed over 20+ years — to create a joyful, righteous destination for DBT fans. Welcome to Mundane Mayhem.

Drive-By Truckers first hooked me with their music — three guitars that hit like adrenaline and live shows that felt like a depraved church service. In their lyrics, I heard my own heartbreaks and bad decisions, found analogues to their stories in my family’s lore, and delighted in their wordplay and history lessons.

I grew up in Pensacola, FL, about 20 minutes from the Alabama state line. Like many people of my generation, when I first left the South, I was eager to escape my accent and the stereotypes that accompanied it. But as I've gotten older, I've realized how much where I come from defines who I am. Being from the South has lost its shame, and so has my devotion to a band with a sorta embarrassing name. DBT helped me embrace my identity as an anti-racist person from the South. Turns out, there’s a lot of us, and we aren’t just fans, we’re a community.

AI is wreaking havoc on creative professions and the communities they’ve cultivated. The idea of building a loyal audience was decimated when billionaire-owned tech companies took control of all distribution, earned a bunch of money off publishers, then changed their algorithms and took it all away. Big tech convinced us that all content should be free, but — as with the music industry before it — it's the creators who are left to suffer. Thankfully, reader-supported publishing models are offering a new path.

So I’m staking my livelihood on what makes me feel alive. Given the current state of the world and the media industry, this newsletter feels like a whispered rebellion — hence the name Mundane Mayhem (which I lifted from my current favorite Cooley song, “Filthy and Fried.”) I welcome you into my little bubble; please use it as a weekly respite from the chaos, ugliness, and hate.

About Nancy Einhart

I was born in Alabama and raised in Pensacola by my long-divorced mom and dad, who hail from Mississippi and Louisiana, respectively. I got my start in journalism at age 18, writing obituaries for the Pensacola News Journal. Over the years, I’ve worked as a music writer, an editor at a business magazine, and the head of content for a major lifestyle publisher. I live in Brooklyn with my husband and our rescue dog, Mabel, and I enjoy summertime, vinyl, and dive bars. While I love music, I am not a musician. (The French horn, no matter what anyone says, is a terrible first instrument to learn.)

I've been a Drive-By Truckers fan since 2003 and have had the pleasure of attending 47 shows. I’ve never been to HeAthens Homecoming (next year🤞🏻), but I sure saw Ozzy Osbourne. You can often find me at DBT shows with my mom, standing on the Cooley side. It’s fucking great to be alive.

What to Expect From Mundane Mayhem

First of all, thank you for subscribing and joining me on this endeavor. Each week, paid subscribers will receive a fresh piece of content in their inbox, exploring the songs, stories, themes, and humans who make Drive-By Truckers so great.

Like the music of DBT, this newsletter will explore themes of joy, humor, anger, loss, and bad decisions, interwoven with my own family’s fucked-up Southern gothic tales. Once a month, I'll interview a fellow fan — first up, the incomparable Courtney Francesca — so please holler at me if you’re interested in being featured:

If you find Mundane Mayhem compelling, I hope you will become a paid subscriber; everyone gets a 30-day free trial. If not, you'll still have access to occasional free posts. If you do choose to pay $4 a month, you'll get every new post, plus access to the full archive. In addition, you can interact with a community of DBT fans, who we all know are excellent hangs.

A note on Ghost: Although Substack is more of a household name, I chose to build my newsletter on Ghost. Not only is Ghost a nonprofit and open-source alternative, but Substack has also an unaddressed white supremacy problem that I can't ignore and would prefer not to profit from.

A note on music streaming: Although I will embed Spotify or Bandcamp players into my posts when I'm discussing certain songs, I urge anyone who can afford it to please purchase Drive-By Truckers music on Bandcamp, on vinyl, or in whatever analog or digital format you prefer.

Thank you to the wonderful people who helped me launch this site: my mom and favorite fellow DBT fan, Nan; my husband, Josh; Mandy, the best editor in the business; and my valuable advisor Tommy.