Copperhead Road (song)

Copperhead Road is a popular song by Steve Earle, the title track from the album of the same name.

Sung in first person, the singer (John Lee Pettimore III) comes from a family of moonshiners. According to family legend, the grandfather only came into town twice a year, always purchasing the needed items for moonshine (100 pounds of yeast and copper line), and reportedly an revenuer attempted to take the grandfather into custody, only to never be seen or heard from again. The father handled deliveries (using a surplus Dodge police vehicle purchased at a Masonic Lodge auction, with a rebuilt engine), only to die in a car crash on the eponymous road, while "heading down to Knoxville with the weekly load" (the reference is to another song about moonshine running, The Ballad of Thunder Road).

On his 18th birthday, the singer (believing he will be drafted early, as all the "white trash" seems to be) decides to volunteer for the United States Army. He serves two tours of duty (24 months total) in Vietnam and comes home with a new business plan: he will grow marijuana. Though suffering from PTSD (exacerbated whenever the Drug Enforcement Administration decides to do aerial surveillance), having learned from "Charlie" (the Viet Cong), he warns others "you better stay away from Copperhead Road".