Seriously dude, you've never heard of Steve Earle or Copperhead Road? I'm an Asian and have been living my whole life in the Far East and I've been listening to Copperhead Road for more than 20 years. BTW, your Nightwish reactions brought me to your channel. Keep Rockin' & keep 'em coming man, great reactions. \m/ \m/ \m/ Check out these lesser known hidden gems: Kentucky Headhunters - Dumas Walker The Four Horsemen - Rocking Is Ma Business Blackfoot - Highway Song
this is solid on my playlist. I come from the era before music videos, and i gotta tell you, it makes you really pay attention when you're taking it all in through your ears.
Our sweet Yankee, here in the South this song is how some live. If you ever come to NC let us know, we'll have us a quart or 2. Truly enjoy your reactions!
Copperhead road. Real place. Johnson county Tennessee. This is basically an amalgam of the entire region. There are to this day places and roads you don’t go down unless you live there. They actually had to change the name of the road because people kept stealing the road signs
Heard this song when it came out in the late '80's and immediately bought the album (which is great by the way), and at the time I was around 19 years old and listening to Black Sabbath, Hawkwind, AC/DC, Iron Maiden etc. This was actually a hit in many countries around the world including the UK. Greetings from sunny England :)
Steve Earl, singer, song writer, based out of Nashville. Had a heroin addiction that surely had an affect on his career but he's alive & still making music😎
Bon Scott played bagpipes in ACDC's, "it's a long way to the top if you wanna rock and roll". The video where they're on a truck going through downtown.
As you can tell, this song is about moonshining. When he is singing about Copperhead Road he is singing about a road of that name in Johnson county TN. The reason for the bagpipes is because Appalachia was settled by a lot of Scots/Irish immigrants. It is a nod to that heritage. The song is about moonshining but the darkest part was when he said: "I learned a thing or two from Charlie". By that he means the booby traps of the Vietcong in the jungles of Vietnam. He is saying you come into my area and you just might regret it when a trap takes you out. And there is not helicopter or any technology in the world that can tell a government agent that he is about to step on a rope that will throw him into a wall of wooden spikes. Also, bit of trivia here... this is how Nascar got started. During prohibition, the moonshiners would buy big cars with big block V8s in them and then strip the engines down and reassemble them to get even more power and they would custom build their own suspension so that they had cars that were faster then the cops and could outrun them. But then when prohibition ended those moonshiners had fleets of really fast cars itting there so they started to race them and charge people to see them race. The OG Nascar drivers like Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt Sr. learned to drive from guys who were moonshiners.
Steve Earle is a great singer, writer, musician and can tell a story like no other. I love this song! You can pick any one of his songs and not be disappointed. Great reaction...and I'll hit subscribe now!
It may have been it keyboard synthesizer but the sound what's meant to imitate the bagpipe to reflect his family heritage. Steve Earle is from the back roads of Tennessee where his Granddaddy and daddy ran moonshine and he grew pot. Understandable the climate between Missouri and Tennessee is similar and there's been plenty grown/ growing in our neck of the woods as well.
I've loved this song for years! Not my genre, but it's cool musically and has good lyrics! His grandfather and father both ran moonshine out of Copperhead Road, and now he has returned from Vietnam and has updated the family business by running pot, and he has "learned some tricks from Charlie" in Vietnam about how to avoid the DEA, and their "choppers in the air".
Steve Earle is from Texas, Copperhead Road is in the Clinch Mountains of Eastern Tennessee. Apparently Steve has family roots among the Scots-Irish of the Appalachians. If you like the original, check out the cover that Off Kilter did with actual bagpipes, not an electric organ.
Another cool band with pipes in some of their songs would be Nightwish. Troy plays pipes, whistles, and flutey type things. Though he plays the Uillean pipes instead of the more common Great Highland pipes so it's a bit of a different sound.
Copperhead Road is in Marion Valley, Tennessee about 40 miles North West of Knoxville. it's a damn good place to stay away from if you don't know folks who live out there. there's still a bunch of Shiners and Pot growers out in the Valley and they don't appreciate outsiders tromping around in the woods. If they don't get ya the booby traps will.😁
Great review, but what astounds me more than anything else is that you could be as old as you are and never heard this song before, let alone never heard of Steve Earle.
The one line no reactor ever mentions- maybe because they're too young. "I wake up screaming like I'm back over there"... dude had PTSD. Don't trigger him.
Running moonshine in East Tennessee is what this song is about...fun fact is the idea of the drink Mountain Dew came from moonshine and was designed in Tennessee.. another not so fun fact is there's certain places u do not play around in those backroads in East Tennessee WV and all around those areas...they do not play games and have their own style of justice
I stopped in to check out your channel because this has become one of my favorite songs. Liked it back when the album came out but about 10 years ago revisited it and REALLY liked it. Good reaction, I might check some of your others out.
Steve's a cool ass dude. spent a month with his son in 1996 and didn't even realize who his dad was till he came to visit on a weekend. very cool guy. dude's got some stories to tell too. his son Justin was musically talented as well. not sure what happened with after that month, but was a very memorable experience. found out a few days ago that Justin died from and accidental overdose August 2020.
Steve Earl has been around for a while, you need to check out a few of his other songs. You should also check out his son Justin towis Justin Townes Earl, who unfortunately died last year of a drug overdose. He was as as a politic writer as his father is.
Knoxville area, Johnson County I think. Did you catch that the revenue man never came back from Copperhead Rd? Umm, yes true that, you'd better not poke your head in with appalachians.
This was a BIG hit when it came out. Steve developed a heroin addiction that stopped his career. Last I knew he was sober and still making music. Very talented singer/songwriter. And I see others have said the same thing.
Steve Earle is fantastic live. Saw him three or four times up in Toronto. He was very much against the Vietnam War... he said: "The anti-war movement was a very personal thing for me. I didn't finish high school, so I wasn't a candidate for a student deferment. I was fucking going." He managed not to be sent because the Selective Draft ended the year he turned 18. That being said, on the same album as "Copperhead Road", he sang "Johnny Come Lately" about WWII and Vietnam and the experience of coming home. He recorded a rendition with The Pogues - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-BMALsal-Vck.html
This is a great song. Hopefully sometime soon Tom will react to Jason Isbell. Decoration Day, Cover Me Up, Elephant, Something More Than Free, If We Were Vampires...Jason has so many great songs.
This is sort of in the same vein his name is Colter Wall a nice story-teller song, with an unexpected twist... Original 16 Brewery Sessions - Colter Wall - "The Devil Wears a Suit and Tie" ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-4l4gdhPqh3E.html
It never got much airplay on their radio stations, it was to "country" for the rock stations and to "rock" for the country stations of the time. Now it would fit on most country stations playlist...
I have been listening to Steve Earle for for 25 years maybe more. I love these reaction videos, because everybody thinks those are bagpipes at the beginning of the song. They sound like bagpipes but they're not.
Never heard of Steve Earle or copperhead road. but watched because only song in country playlist and that is just so sad. Country fan, but not till mid 90's, so missed this southern rock IMHO video-song. Could we please have more country like Tim McGraw, George Straight , Carrie Underwood, Brad Paisley, Kenny Chesney, Martina McBride, Shania Twain. Any of their songs will do. Just beef up that country playlist,Thanks. BTW I thought bagpipes too. Great song!
They were talking about the skirling bagpipe sound in the intro, not the mandolin undergirding the bulk of the first half of the song as well a part of outro which finished on the synth bagpipes
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