When the Sun Don't Shine

Album: American Band (2016)
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Songfacts®:

  • Truckers co-frontman Patterson Hood moved to the cooler milieu of Portland, Oregon, after living in Alabama for 30 years and Athens, Georgia for another 21. He explained to Uncut magazine that this song is not only about the more equable place Hood now resides in, bur is also about the region's cooler weather.

    "It rains a lot up there, and for about seven months of the year it's grey, so people would say, 'Oh, you're going to hate that!', and I'd be, like, ' No, I'm OK with that - what I hate is 100 degree summers! With 99 per cent humidity!' It's a bit more personal than the rest of the songs on the record, though it all fits together.

    That song and Ever South are different sides of the same coin: one's about the place I left, and what I took with me, the other's about where we moved to."

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