The Band - The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

[kerrywins]

What is this song about?
Talk about a complete song....

Robbie Robertson
"Tennessee Williams just appealed to me, the flavour of writing, the titles of the things, Sweet Bird of Youth, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof - this catches my attention, partially because I had gone to the South from Canada, really ying and yang, really a big extreme, so it hit me much harder than somebody who had gone from Washington, DC down to South Carolina - I went from Toronto to the Mississippi Delta, and … I liked the way people talked, I liked the way they moved. I liked being in a place that had rhythm in the air. I thought 'No wonder they invented rock 'n' roll here. Everything sounds like music. … and I got to come into this world, a cold outsider - cold literally from Canada … and because I didn't take it for granted, it made me write something like The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down .These old men would say , 'Yeah, but never mind Robbie. One of these days the South is going to rise again.' I didn't take it as a joke. I thought it was really touching, that these people lived this world from the standpoint of a rocking chair."

[underpants]

1. It's about a farmer named Caine

or Cane
or Kane

and what he saw.

[On the Road]

2. Robbie Robertson's Songs are Like Steven Foster's

he liked to tell stories and create a sense of culture, time, and place while creating some vivid characters. As he said in your quotation, he became steeped in Americana, especially about the South. More recently, he's done some of the same things with material from his Native American roots.

The individual song is a cry of defeat and a complaint against being ruined by what the narrator saw as unfair treatment by the North. And a statement of strength and survival.

I don't think of it so much in terms of the issues in the American Civil War such as slavery as the universal experience of people who live through war.

[XNASA]

3. I agree with much of what you say, ribofunk.

The song really has more to do with the way that life unfairly treats some people that it does with the issue of slavery.

Virgil Caine is portrayed as a poor farmer, someone who probably had no slaves but chose to 'make a rebel stand' alongside his brethren. A victim of circumstance who payed dearly.

I've always found it ironic that a Canadian wrote the song.

[On the Road]

4. I Didn't Think of That, but You're Right

Virgil Cain certainly wasn't a slaveholder.

There's also a difference in time -- Robertson was not only a Canadian, but wrote over a century later. It's still one of the best depictions of ordinary people in that time and place. Right up there with "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "My Old Kentucky Home" (which was about a slaveholder.

The sense of plaintive reflection is all over RR's lyrics. One of my favortie songs of his is "The Hobo Jungle," about a very different time and place, but also with a very similar feeling.

Most of RR's song have this wonderful texture, complexity, and sense of local color even if they're not very specific. (When was "Rag, Mama, Rag" set, for example?) Too bad nobody's come along since to pick up the mantle. Who else writes popular songs about the French and American Indian War?