Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Wess Floyd and The Daisycutters – all are synonymous with American rock ‘n’ roll, but you just might not have heard the last one yet.

Wess Floyd and The Daisycutters is a band about friendship.

It began with Wess, his brother Blount and guitarist Andrew Nelson, who played with them on occasion. Eventually, drummer Chris Johnson and bassist Nathan Roland joined the band, and it seemed that all the pieces of the puzzle fit together perfectly.

“We usually only fight when we’re traveling on the road,” Nelson said.

Even then, it’s not too long before they’re laughing as friends again.

“We can duke it out and then have a beer afterwards, and everything will be fine,” said Wess Floyd, the lead singer.

The idea for the name “Daisycutters” came to Floyd when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan.

“I’ve always liked bands that had names that you had an immediate reaction to, like Social Distortion or the Sex Pistols,” he said. “We wanted explosive American rock ‘n’ roll, so we might as well name ourselves after a bomb.”

While they want to represent all that is true about American rock, they consider themselves “Southern bar pop pioneers.” However, the name of the genre actually just started out as a joke.

“A lot of the music you hear in Nashville is super self-important, and we just wanted to make fun of ourselves,” Floyd said. “Everyone has just kind of looked at us as the drunkest band in town.”

Floyd emphasized that it doesn’t mean they’re not serious about what they do. They just don’t take themselves too seriously.

“We like to think of [our music] as something people can sing along to and forget about their nine-to-five,” he said.

The Daisycutters’ aim may be to make the crowd forget about its work week, but its shows are not for the faint of heart.

“We want the crowd to sweat with us just as much as we sweat and get into it,” Nelson said, “and we’ll do our best to try and get them to.”

Floyd said he always wants to get the audience to participate because that’s what he loved about all the rock ‘n’ roll shows he’s attended.

“You never go see a great rock ‘n’ roll show and say, ‘Man, that was a great show, I didn’t get involved at all in it,’” he said. “The best shows I’ve ever been to, I have always felt a part of what’s going on.”

Nelson also wants the crowd to join in, but he is hoping the songs have a deeper connection with the audience.

“My biggest goal of all is for us to walk off the stage and for somebody to approach Wess and say, ‘The lyrics really reminded me of a spot where I was having a bad time and that helped me out a lot,’” he said.

The Daisycutters have been together for about a year now, but the members didn’t actually hit the road until the release of their record, “Blood Sworn Enemies,” in April.

They’ve been mostly playing weekends, but Nelson said they want to do this full-time by 2009, and their specific goal is to play 200 shows next year.

Nelson, a University graduate, said he’s excited to come back to Athens.

“I love Athens. I think there is no other town like it anywhere in America,” he said.

With this being their fourth time playing in Athens, Floyd is anticipating the great response they usually get from the Athens crowd.

“It’s really encouraging coming from Nashville, where the music-going populace is extremely apathetic towards anything new,” he said. “I always look forward to playing in Athens.