We’re an American Band
was written by Grand Funk Railroads drummer Don Brewer.
The lyrics are about little things that were happening on the road
during the Phoenix album tour.
All of them are true, Brewer explained,
our manager kept saying,
why don’t you just write songs about what you do?
You’re out here on the road,
you’re going to this hotel,
you go to different places,
there’s people, you come into town.
So the thought came into my mind,
we’re coming to your town,
we’ll help you party it down.
That’s really what we were doing.
We were coming into town and we were the party.
We’re an American band!
We’re an American band! It wasn’t to wave the flag or anything,
it was just simply what we were.
It was a true description,
and it kind of rolled off my mind.
Up all night with Freddy King.
I’ve got to tell you, poker’s his thing.
Freddy King was the opening act for us,
the great blues guitar player from Texas.
It always struck me as funny
that he would make his band play poker with him every night.
We used to sit in on some of the poker games,
and that’s where that line came from.
His band, he’d pay them,
and then he’d go win all the money back
so they were broke and they’d have to keep playing for him.
It was a great deal.
Fools and ladies keep me.
Brewer finished by saying,
there was Always something special about this song.
From the time when I brought the song in
and we worked up an arrangement to it
and we got it recorded, the song just had a life of its own after that.
Nobody can just sit down and say,
I’m going to write a song like this,
and it’s going to be a major hit.
They just either have it or they don’t. And that one just had it.