Patterson Hood Announces Murdering Oscar, Tour

Photo by Adam Smith

Co-founder of Drive-By Truckers and quintessential Southern rocker Patterson Hood has announced the upcoming release of his second solo album. Murdering Oscar will hit the shelves on June 23, less than a week on the heels of Hood's tour kick-off with the Screwtopians.

Although this isn't the first album Hood has recorded sans Truckers, it will mark the first time he records with his father, David Hood, bassist of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section who has played with artists like Aretha Franklin, Willie Nelson, Bob Seeger, Paul Simon, Etta James and many more. Joining the album will also be a handful of Hood's DBTs bandmates.

The album, says Hood, has been 15 years in the making; he began writing a collection of songs when he first moved to Athens, Ga., in 1994. "I had a shitty job and knew only two other people in town. I was alive with the fresh opportunities posed by moving to a town with an actual music scene and clubs to conquer," he says on his website. "I wrote an album's worth of songs and called it Murdering Oscar (and other love songs)."

Lacking the money to produce or release it, Hood ended up recording the songs onto cassette tapes in his roommate's bedroom ("It had better acoustics than my room") and handing them out for free. But soon after the formation of the Drive-By Truckers and the beginnings of writing Southern Rock Opera, the songs were shelved up until the birth of Hood's daughter, when he decided to revisit the collection.

True to Hood's local roots, he'll kick off the tour in good ol' Nashville and end it by headlining in Athens, Ga., at AthFest. You can order advance tickets on April 21 here.

June

18 - Nashville, Tenn. @ Grimey's

18 - Nashville, Tenn. @ Mercy Lounge

19 - Louisville, Ky. @ Headliner's

20 - Chicago, Ill. @ The Metro

22 - Philadelphia, Pa. @ World Cafe Live

23 - Brooklyn, N.Y. @ Music Hall of Williamsburg

24 - New York, N.Y. @ Bowery Ballroom

25 - Washington, D.C. @ The Black Cat

27 - Athens, Ga. @ AthFest