• Track: Surrender Under Protest
• Artist: Drive-By Truckers
• Album: American Band
• Year: 2016

Lyrics:

From the comfort zone of history
On the lips of trusted loved ones
To the lonely, fragile minds of angry youths

No sooner was it over
Than the memory made it nobler
The selective means by which to point the view

Compelled, but not defeated
Surrender under protest if you must
Compelled, but not defeated

If it’s all you can remember
Then it’s been that way forever
And for six long generations, it’s been told

But among the fallen was tradition
That tradition was the mission
And that the wrongness of the sin was not the goal

And that the wrongness of the sin was not the goal

Compelled, but not defeated
Surrender under protest if you must
Compelled, but not defeated

Does the color really matter?
On the face you blame for failure
On the shamin’ for a battle’s losing cause

Compelled, but not defeated
Surrender under protest if you must
Compelled, but not defeated

If the victims and aggressors
Just remain each other’s others
And the instigators never fight their own

Compelled, but not defeated
Surrender under protest if you must
Compelled, but not defeated
Surrender under protest if you must
Surrender under protest if you must

The Drive-By Truckers formed in Athens, Georgia (home of R.E.M.) in 1996, though its two founding members, Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley, are from the Shoals region of Alabama. For a time, alt-country star, Jason Isbell, was a member of DBT. Though their roots—and thus, many of their fans—are southern, DBT’s lyrics and political leanings take a decidedly urban liberal slant, which has been a bone of contention for many.

Perhaps that is no more evident than on the band’s 2016 release, American Band, which is a bona fide protest album. Released in the wake of civilian and police clashes around the country, American Band takes an uncompromising look at the widening divide between white and black Americans, as well as rising tensions between civilians and police, and right and left. The album captures the rising tensions in a country that hasn’t seen this much civil unrest since the 1960s.

Whatever your political/social leanings—we here at the Dances with Bass studios are lefty centrists—we hope you can appreciate that DBT has chosen to address weighty topics rather just love, booze, and women. Agree or disagree, American Band’s incisive lyrics are relevant to the powder keg that is the U.S. landscape in 2018.

DBT has released 11 studio albums, 3 live albums, 2 best-of collections, and multiple EPs and singles. Rolling Stone magazine named American Band one of the best albums of 2016, and noted that the record is full of “blunt, pissed-off Trump-era anthems that already began to stir controversy months before its release.” Salon has referred to American Band as rock music’s best protest album in years, adding it is “to 2016 what American Idiot (Green Day’s 2004 record) represented for the Bush-era —a protest album that rages against the political machine.”

Video:

Here is a live recording of the track at Electric Lady Studios:

Here is the official video for Surrender Under Protest. Our local legal beagle insists we warn you that this video takes a harsh line on police misconduct, particularly the 2014 events in Ferguson, Missouri. We here at Dances with Bass Industries are ardent supporters of law enforcement, but we also support the Black Lives Matter movement and the need to fight racism and police misconduct. We see both sides of this issue, and we can be equally outraged by police misconduct and civilian misconduct. It’s time that we all realize that there is wrong on both sides and that we can and must do better. Thus endeth the sermon.

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