What “Acadian Driftwood” means

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If “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” was Robbie Robertson's great American history song, “Acadian Driftwood” is its Canadian counterpart — a sweeping, fiddle-laced ballad about one of the saddest chapters in his own country's past. Critics often rank it among the very best things The Band ever recorded.

The history behind it

The song tells of the Expulsion of the Acadians — the deportation of French settlers from Acadia (today's Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and beyond) by the British in the mid-1700s, during the wars for control of North America. Families were uprooted and scattered across the continent; many drifted south, their descendants becoming the Cajuns of Louisiana. Robertson drew on Longfellow's 1847 poem Evangeline, and took a little poetic licence with the exact dates — but the human truth of exile and loss is exact.

Three voices, one people

Fittingly for a song about a scattered community, Richard Manuel, Levon Helm and Rick Danko trade the verses and join together on the choruses — the clearest showcase on any record of the group's three-headed vocal blend. Garth Hudson adds accordion and a chanter, and the great Byron Berline overdubbed the keening fiddle that gives it its Celtic-Acadian ache.

A fan favourite

AllMusic's Rob Bowman called it “one of Robertson's finest compositions, equal to anything else the Band ever recorded.” The group performed it at The Last Waltz (with Joni Mitchell and Neil Young helping out from offstage), though that performance was cut from Scorsese's film and only surfaced on the later box set.