“Stand tall, turn your three guitars up real loud, and do what you do”: The Redneck Liberation Theology of the Drive-By Truckers

Abstract

The relatively new genre of alternative country music often offers a similar theological perspective to that of its predecessor, traditional country. Both generally respond to the redneck condition–the plight of the rural working classes in the American South–by focussing on the immanent and material rather than the transcendent and spiritual. This paper will address alternative country’s concern for the here-and-now as it occurs in the lyrics of one prominent band, the Drive-By Truckers. I will suggest that the Truckers subscribe to what David Fillingim has called “redneck liberation theology,” a belief that the end to human suffering is due in the present world rather than in the promise of a distant heaven. The Drive-By Truckers ultimately find God and the organized church lacking in their ability to bring about human redemption, and, consequently, look to music as a surrogate “religion” that provides necessary, if provisional, spiritual answers.