When My Face Looks Like a Roadmap: the United States of DBT Songs

If you count up all the place names referenced in Drive-By Truckers songs, you can musically travel to 22 states.

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I haven’t felt this good in the days after an election since 2012. The midterms still don’t make me proud to be from Florida, but that disappointment is easily soothed by the good news, including Georgia staying blue, electing the first-ever Black woman governor, and re-electing the senator who will probably end up our first Jewish president, plus a whole bunch of other firsts. It’s enough to make me feel almost patriotic.

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Drive-By Truckers have written some outstanding songs about politics: “What It Means,” “The Buford Stick,” “Grievance Merchants,” “Kinky Hypocrite,” “Made Up English Oceans,” and many, many more. But they’ve written even more songs — some might argue, every song — about America. They’re an American band. Some years, they’ve spent more time driving around the country than most people do in their lifetimes.

I haven’t logged DBT-level miles, but I have driven across the country twice, once in 2001 and again a few years later. After graduating from college, my then-boyfriend and I drove from Chicago to Los Angeles, roughly following the path of Route 66.

Sightseeing-wise, that trip was the coolest. We stopped at the Four Corners and the Grand Canyon and “the Largest Cross in the Western Hemisphere,” and we drove down highway 666 as lightning flashed across the desert sky. But we also fought a lot, and I had stitches in my finger that really wanted to come out, so that trip gets mixed reviews.

The second time, I traveled with my mom, who was better company. We drove from Pensacola to San Francisco, which basically requires driving on I-10 until it ends, then turning right. Driving the length of Interstate 10 is absolutely mind-numbing. You pass quickly through Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, and then you’re in Texas for what feels like a week. On that road trip, I received the best-ever voicemail from my dad, who called to tell me that the Sam’s Club in Flagstaff had a great deal on pine nuts and Courvoisier.

If you count up all the place names referenced in Drive-By Truckers songs, you can musically travel to 22 states, plus way more if you count the references to cross-country highways I-10 and I-90. Alabama gets the most mentions, obviously, followed closely by Tennessee.

Just like I’ve done before with DBT daddy songs, songs about cigarettes, songs that sound like a dive bar, and the best DBT songs about work, today I’m counting down the 37 best Drive-By Truckers lyrics about places in America. I also made a playlist: the United States of Drive-By Truckers songs.

37.

Will you be here waiting for me here in Santa Fe?
With arms and obligations and tears along the way

— From "Santa Fe"

36.

It's a good thing that her dancing shoes don't run on gasoline
She could dry up Texas in one night the way she feels that beat

— From "Lisa's Birthday"

35.

We’re all standing in the shadows of our noblest intentions of something more
than being shot in a classroom in Oregon

— From "Guns of Umpqua"

34.

We prayed to what would have us, every doubting John Thomas
Spreading through the Appalachia ever south
Spread through Appalachia ever south

— From "Ever South"

33.

I’m flying to New York City at five-thirty in the morning
Sleep-walking south of Houston all alone
I’ll just catch myself a different buzz and look up at the bright lights
And revel in the darkness of my songs

— From "Sea Island Lonely"

32.

Tending bar in LA after dark must be like mining cartoon gold
Rocks that won't cooperate and tools that drive you crazy must get old

— "Cartoon Gold"

31.

In the end it's a silhouette framed by the sun
And just The Monument Valley when the evening comes

— From "The Monument Valley

30.

If I throw myself off Lookout Mountain
No more pain my soul to bear
No more worries about paying taxes
What to eat, what to wear

— From "Lookout Mountain"

29.

Uncle Frank lived in a cabin down on Cedar Creek,
Bought fifteen acres when he got back home from overseas.
Fifteen rocky acres, figured no one else would want,
'till all that backed up water had to have some place to go.

— From "Uncle Frank"

28.

I left my car parked at the airport
And I flew to Kansas City in the rain
I know enough to know I’m standing here soaked
And the weatherman’s to blame

— From "Armageddon’s Back in Town"

27.

Driving up I-55, Mississippi zooming by
Salvation in the cool November air

— From "Rosemary With a Bible and a Gun"

26.

Out I-90 we might see you pass
We got coal and methane gas
We got jobs where the work is hard
And stores to max out your credit cards

— From "21st Century USA"

25.

You awoke in a jail cell, alone and so lonely
Seven years in Michigan

– From "The Deeper In"

24.

Show him the view from McGee Town Hill
Let him stand in my shoes and see how it feels
To lose the last thing on earth that's real
I'd rather lose my legs and arms

— From "Sinkhole"

23.

Maybe it's the twenty-six mile drive from Zip City to Colbert Heights
Keeps my mind clean
Gets me through the night

— From "Zip City"

22.

They got married in Dollywood
By a Porter Wagoner lookalike

— From "18 Wheels of Love"

21.

Take a left on the interstate
In the middle of this sultry state
I can't wait to see your face
In Birmingham

— From "Birmingham"

20.

In a van full of stink, we set out upon the plains
To the Black Hills and Rockies and Cascades
We had never been out west, at least not further out than Texas
As our lives spread out before us like a page

— From "The Driver"

19.

I remember him saying that Chicago was a hell right here on earth
And twenty five years later I was saying the same thing about Memphis

— From "One of These Days"

18.

Memphis was sinking into the Mississippi.
We were doing our best just to ride it down.
Till the night G.G. Allin came to town.

— From "The Night G.G. Allin Came to Town"

17.

Let me tell y'all a story
So far fetched it must be true
Bout a bunch of fatherless boys from Florida
And a boy who was man enough for two.

— From "Life in the Factory"

16.

The night the practice room caught fire
There were rumors of a dragon headed straight for Muscle Shoals
"Stoner tries to save an amplifier"
And it's like the dragon's side of the story is never told

— From "Self-Destructive Zones"

15.

I drove a big ole Cadillac, bought a new one anytime I pleased
And I put more lawmen in the ground than Alabama put cottonseed

— From "Cottonseed"

14.

Dumb, white and angry with their cup half filled
Running over people down in Charlottesville

— From "The Perilous Night"

13.

Once we hit Louisiana, baby, I don't care
Got a brand new airplane waiting for us there
Give this piece of shit back to Aerosmith.
Wake me up when we get there.

— From "Greenville to Baton Rouge"

12.

Church blew up in Birmingham
Four little black girls killed for no goddamn good reason
All this hate and violence can't come to no good end
A stain on the good name.

— From "Ronnie and Neil"

11.

Good ideas always start with a full glass
And just breathing here can make a girl's nose bleed
Dreams here live and die just like a stray dog
On a dirt road somewhere in Tennessee
— From "Pulaski"

10.

Don't piss off the Boys from Alabama
You know they won't let it slide
They might find your body in the Tennessee River
Or they might not find you at all

— From "Boys From Alabama"

9.

I got friends in Nashville, or at least they're folks I know
Nashville is where you go to see if what they said is so

— From "Carl Perkins' Cadillac"

8.

If I died in Colbert County, would it make the evening news?
They too busy blowin' rockets, puttin' people on the moon

— From "Puttin' People on the Moon"

7.

A bloody nose, empty pockets, a rented car with a trunk full of guns
Checkout time is sundown in Las Vegas,
But it only rises once

— From "Checkout Time in Vegas"

6.

Back in the '30s when the dust bowl dried
And the woods in Alabama didn't see no light
My Daddy played poker by a hard wood fire
Squeezing all his luck from a hot copper wire

— From "Where the Devil Don't Stay"

5.

In some town in Missouri but it could be anywhere
It could be right here on Ruth Street, in fact it’s happened here
And it happened where you’re sitting, wherever that might be
It happened last weekend and it will happen again next week

— From "What It Means"

4.

It's Decoration Day
And I've got a family in Mobile Bay
And they've never seen my Daddy's grave.
But that don't bother me, it ain't marked anyway.

— From "Decoration Day"

3.

Mean old highway
Stuck to the ground in Mississippi
It's the one'll set me free
It's the same one that I see
Being ripped up off the ground and wrapped around me
Don't let it fool you this highway's mean

— From "72 (This Highway's Mean)"

2.

Mean and strong like liquor.
Mean and strong like fear.
Strong like the people from South Alabama and mean like the people from here.

— From "Never Gonna Change"

And number one . . .

If the recently departed make the sunsets
To say farewell to the ones they leave behind
There were technicolor hues to see our sadness through
As the sun over Athens said goodbye

— From "Grand Canyon"

Give a listen to my playlist and let me know what songs and lyrics you think deserve a spot on this list and which ones don't.

As always, 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.