What Is the Meaning of The song Copperhead road?

Answer 1

It tells the story of a family of bootleggers.

The guy's grandpa ran moonshine and was killed by a revenuer (from the line he never come back from Copperhead Road).

His father ran whiskey in a big block Dodge that was an old sherrif car that was donated to the ledge to be auctioned off for charity. They repainted it and souped it up to be faster and lghter. On the way to Knoxville to take some whiskey the father and uncle are killed in a wreck. The smell of whiskey burnin' on Copperhead Road means that they found their whiskey brewery and burned it.

The singer is going to be drafted for the Vietnam War so he volunteers for the army and serves on 2 tour of duties. He comes back from the war and grows MJ instead of whiskey and breaks the cycle of his granddaddy and daddy dying.

He's learned how to booty trap and hide his weed stash from the DEA so he says you better stay away from copperhead road.

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Another perspective...

Is a very sad song about moonshining and their families, the first clue that this is not an illustrious lifestyle abound as he mentions his name as the same as his dad's and granddad's, then goes on to say that they all looked down on them...

As for the revenue man heading up Copperhead road, we don't know what happened other than he never came back, that could apply to either granddad or the revenue man but the message here is stay away.

It also delves into the shiners souped up rides, usually all V-8's with overhauled engines, and this is off-topic but it's where Nascar has its roots.

When the Sheriff came around it was bad news due to the fact mom was crying but it could well have been the still blew up, moonshine stills blowing up was not uncommon and while it likely did kill the old man there is no telling whether the law was involved other than they brought the news home... The smell of whiskey burning is common around distilleries due to the heat involved in the cooking what we're smelling are the vapors and if the still had blown there would have been vapors all in the air.

The song discusses death, we just don't know whose.

He came home from Vietnam and planted South American seed down Copperhead road, once again we're left to figure out what exactly that means but he also says it one more time, stay away.