Copperhead Road (song)

"Copperhead Road" is a song written and recorded by American country music artist Steve Earle. It was released in 1988 as the first single and title track from his third studio album of the same name. The song reached number 10 on the U.S. Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, and was Earle's highest-peaking song to date on that chart in the United States. The song has sold 1.1 million digital copies in the United States as of September 2017.[3][4]

"Copperhead Road"
Single by Steve Earle
from the album Copperhead Road
Released1988
Recorded1988
Genre
Length4:29
LabelMCA
Songwriter(s)Steve Earle
Producer(s)Steve Earle
Tony Brown
Steve Earle singles chronology
"Sweet Little '66"
(1987)		 "Copperhead Road"
(1988)		 "Back to the Wall"
(1988)

Content

The song's narrator is named John Lee Pettimore III, whose father and grandfather were both active in moonshine making and bootlegging in rural Johnson County, Tennessee. Pettimore's grandfather visited town only rarely, in order to buy supplies for a still he had set up in a hollow along Copperhead Road. Pettimore's father hauled the moonshine to Knoxville each week in an old police cruiser he bought at a surplus auction. According to a family story, a Revenue Man once confronted John Sr. on Copperhead Road, intent on apprehending him for his moonshine activities, but never returned. John Jr. himself is killed in a fiery car crash on the same road while driving to Knoxville with a weekly shipment.

Pettimore enlists in the Army on his birthday, believing he will soon be drafted, and serves two tours of duty in Vietnam. Once he returns home, he decides to use the Copperhead Road land to grow marijuana, using seeds from Colombia and Mexico. He resolves not to be caught by the DEA using techniques learnt from the Viet Cong.

Copperhead Road was an actual road near Mountain City, Tennessee, in an area known to locals as "Big Dry Run" although it has since been renamed Copperhead Hollow Road, owing to theft of road signs bearing the song's name. The song also inspired a popular line dance, timed to the same beat, and has been used as the theme music for the Discovery Channel reality series Moonshiners.

Music video

The music video was directed by Tony Vanden Ende and premiered in early 1988.

Chart performance
Chart (1988) Peak
position
Australia (ARIA)[5] 23
Canada Top Singles (RPM)[6] 12
UK Singles (The Official Charts Company)[7] 45
US Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks 10

Other versions

In 1994 German rock band Torfrock recorded a German version of the song with the name "Kettenhemd" (engl. Mail (armour)) which is about Vikings. The band plays this song regularly in concerts.

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References
  1. "The 25 best country rock songs of all time". Classic Rock Magazine. August 5, 2016. Retrieved February 25, 2020.
  2. Morgan, Ike (May 4, 2016). "The 13 most outlaw country songs ever recorded". AL.com. Retrieved February 25, 2020.
  3. Bjorke, Matt (September 8, 2015). "Top 30 Digital Country Singles: September 8, 2015". RoughStock.
  4. David Huddle (1999). "The Low-Down High Art of Steve Earle's "Copperhead Road"". Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction. 1 (1): 11–16. doi:10.1353/fge.2013.0453. ISSN 1544-1733.
  5. "Australian-charts.com – Steve Earle – Copperhead Road". ARIA Top 50 Singles.
  6. Canada Top Singles peak RPM Magazine
  7. UK peak
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