Clouds Over California

If that's the way it's gonna be Then I'll fuckin go it alone!

I think this line is the key to the meaning of this song if any. Ironically, the last line is the one missing line.

As a metalhead, vocalist and lyric writer, I can say that not all songs are necessarily "about" anything specific. Most decent writers will compromise a coherent meaning in favor of syllable structure or even rhyme. It's more important that you feel something, even if the actual words themselves aren't grammatically correct, or aren't clearly conveying an idea. Sometimes words just come and just fit right with the music. Sometimes they come out in the wrong order, or sometimes they are utter nonsense, but they just work with the song. Lyrics don't HAVE to be about anything. In fact, on Live's second album "Secret Samadhi", Ed Kowalczyk says while writing lyrics for the album, he focused on finding words that sound good together, have the right syllables and fit the song, with no specific meaning or idea behind them.

That said, sometimes songs ARE about something, and it seems most artists are more eager to dicuss a song's true meaning in this case. Otherwise, you'd be hard pressed to find anything, in any interview, that could be definitive of a song's meaning. I've searched around quite a bit and can't find anything other than Dez mentioning people ask him about the meaning of Clouds Over California, in the context of how some songs are clearly about something, and some are less clear. But he doesn't actually go into the meaning. I've heard he said it's about marijuana legalization but that's not the DevilDriver I know. I know vocalists sometimes fuck with the audience about what the songs are about. Tool is famous for that. Maynard will straight up lie (tongue in cheek) about what a song is about. Even the titles of their songs are deliberately misleading: 'Prison Sex' or 'Hooker with a Penis' are song titles meant to confuse people with no sense of humor.

Dez, like most lyricists, write about some things more often than others. In every DevilDriver album, you will find at least one song that is clearly about how some people are total fucking liars, cheats, abusers, etc. A lot of his lyrical content is about the behavior of people in his life in the context of people not being who they say they are or being hypocrites, or fakes. The latest album "Trust No One" is clearly about that and many of the interviews leading up to it have Dez talking about all the betrayal and friends turning out to be enemies, and how he had to cut a bunch of people off that were bringning him down/fucking him over.

So Clouds Over California may be about something, but more than likely, it's not and even if is, it probably made more sense when Dez was writing it, because of what was going on in his life at the time.

Those are arguably the best-written songs, as opposed to the ones written with a formula, or trying to make a statement.

Ask Jonothan Davis what "rum-buh-bah-doh, rum-bum-beep-bop" means.