Pages tagged “Drive-By Truckers”

As Bonnaroo gets more and more indie and less and less grassroots, America's favorite destination for some good ole-fashioned camping out and jamming late into the night may soon be Masontown, W.V.'s All Good Music Festival.

Set against the gorgeous backdrop of Marvin's Mountaintop, the festival is currently the East Coast's longest-running camping event. Now in its 11th year, the annual All Good Festival has a strong lineup that just keeps getting better.

Recent additions to the already-stellar roster include Drive-By Truckers, Sam Bush, Benevento-Russo Duo, The Bridge, Lee Boys and the Ryan Montbleau Band.

Early-Bird tickets for the July 13-15 festival are onsale now for just $89, so head on over to the official website to view the complete lineup and to order your tickets.

Related links:
All Good Festival’s homepage
Drive-By Truckers’ homepage
Paste’s feature on Drive-By Truckers
Benevento-Russo Duo’s homepage

Jason Isbell, one-third of the songwriting/guitar onslaught leading the Rock known as the Drive-By Truckers, is no longer with the band, according to a posting on DriveByTruckers.com.

The announcement, by co-frontman Patterson Hood on April 6, says the “amicable” split “is the result of a period of personal and artistic growth from all sides which has left us with differing dreams and goals.”

In a posting on his MySpace page, Isbell said, to the point, “I am not in the Drive-By Truckers anymore. Go figure. I wish them luck. I will not answer questions about it.” In a more elaborate post the next day, he said he was “excited about the new opportunities I’ve been given” and asked fans to continue to support the Truckers.

Isbell is in the midst of a solo tour and will release his first solo album, Sirens of the Ditch, on June 10 on New West Records, also record label to the Truckers. Hood says the Truckers will continue in present form—minus Isbell, of course—but adding constant collaborator John Neff full-time on pedal steel and guitar and will enter the studio to record their eighth album on the “very day” of the band’s 12th anniversary.

Related links:
Drive-By Truckers’ site
Jason Isbell on MySpace
New West Records’ site

Leaving The South: The Truckers strive to broaden their music’s regional context beyond the Dirty South

Patterson Hood sums up Drive-By Truckers’ new album, A Blessing and a Curse, in one line of the closing track: “To love is to feel pain, there just ain’t no way around it.” The song, “A World of Hurt,” actually expresses deep hope. It’s one of the Truckers’ trademark spoken-word narratives wherein Hood, in his sing-song Alabama drawl, has an intimate conversation with his listeners over a haze of loud, shimmering guitar rock. In this one, he comes to terms with the pain and loss that have driven his life and music; the pain and loss that drive some to suicide and push others into adulthood. It’s the pain of love, pure and simple. Hood ultimately decides real love is worth the agony we suffer getting to it.

He and his songwriting bandmates Mike Cooley and Jason Isbell have been baring their Southern souls in the Truckers’ dirty-ass rock ’n’ roll for some time now. But unlike the pretentious gloom-and-doom of goth or emo, their downcast twang rock hasn’t grown tiresome or embarrassing. The band’s most celebrated disc, Southern Rock Opera, used the narrative thread of a tragic plane crash involving the Truckers’ childhood anti-heroes, Lynyrd Skynyrd, as a metaphor for the South and a jumping-off point for their own collective coming-of-age during a particularly thorny period of Southern history—the post-desegregation 1970s, in which young people were faced with issues of race and class at every turn. The band followed that ambitious behemoth with the even stronger—and much tighter—Decoration Day, a set of tales, told from different perspectives, about living, loving and dying in the beautiful South. If Southern Rock Opera was a novel, Decoration Day was a collection of taut short stories. Then came The Dirty South, another brilliant turn, this time with short stories focusing on the blood, sweat and tears of Southern characters living on the fringes of society: a poker-playing daddy, a rockabilly star, a glorified vigilante. “Welcome to the Mythological South,” Hood wrote in the liner notes. “Welcome to the Dirty South.”

On A Blessing and a Curse, the band seems to be saying, “Welcome to our own private Hell.” The difference between this collection and previous ones is that, in the lyrics, the Truckers appear to be trying to bust out of the Southern typecast they’ve built around themselves. But without the regional context, their prickly stories of hard times and lost love feel less grounded, less defined. The opener, “Feb 14,” spews invective against Valentine’s Day and comes off like The Replacements doing Dinosaur Jr. (without the guitar heroics); the song could’ve been written by any scruffy post-punk band. Same with the generic “Easy on Yourself” and the Stones-inspired “Aftermath USA,” a balls-out, cartoonish rocker about waking up from a blackout to the repercussions of too much partying. Without the character sketches we’re used to getting from this band, the references to blood and crystal meth don’t resonate like they would’ve on, say, The Dirty South.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of solid, DBT-worthy songs here. Take “Gravity’s Gone,” in which Cooley—in the clipped vocal style of Texas garage-rock legend Roky Erickson—sings about spiraling out of control: “So I’ll meet you at the bottom if there really is one, they always told me when you hit it you’ll know it / But I’ve been falling so long it’s like gravity’s gone and I’m just floating.” At its best, Blessing soars from the sweet delirium of Isbell’s hopeful “Daylight,” to the melancholia of Hood’s “Goodbye,” a six-minute-long slow-burner that rides a bed of funky keyboards, drums and guitar, and wobbles around the singer’s reminiscences of a friendship that fell apart. It’s Hood’s reflections on relationships that pull the album together into a semi-cohesive meditation on love, both lost and found. His exasperated cry on the title track perfectly encapsulates both the highs and lows of this uniquely human emotion: “It’s a blessing and a curse, wish it didn’t hurt so much, wish it didn’t hurt so much.”

Of the two acoustic-based songs—Hood’s “Little Bonnie” and Cooley’s “Space City”—the latter, in particular, packs an emotional wallop. Sung from the perspective of Cooley’s grandfather after the death of his wife, one bittersweet couplet finds the old man reflecting on the pain he put her through: “Sometimes the words I used were as hard as my fist / She had the strength of a man and the heart of a child, I guess.” But it’s grandpa’s acceptance of his own mortality that reveals how important the longing for love and the strength of a romantic bond really is. “Somewhere,” he ponders, “she’s wondering what’s taking me so long.”

Too often, the Truckers are described casually as a Southern-rock band, which is too bad, because they’re more than just Skynyrd funneled through R.E.M. But it’s true that when DBT wraps its songs around a familiar Southern theme, its work jumps from being good, solid rock ’n’ roll to being great American music as deep as a country well and ancient as an old-time Appalachian love song or murder ballad. Blessing is merely good, solid rock.

(Above [L-R]: Jason Isbell, Don Chambers, Patterson Hood. Photo by Justin Larose.)

Thanks to Turner South for putting on a show about real music. What a great thing this is, because for older people and other people who don’t or can’t get out to clubs—all they have is crap like American Idol, and they’re completely unaware of all the great music out there. It’s a shame no one is telling them, and it’s an insult to all the thousands of great bands playing in clubs all over this country. – Patterson Hood (paraphrased)

I have to say, it was pretty funny to see all the hipster local-music heroes, journalists, scenesters, club owners and townies who can usually waltz straight into the 40 Watt Club like they super-cool-damn-well own the place have to wait 30 minutes in a long line outside in the mist before they could enter. But there’s not much you can do when all 200 people are on the list.

So why the fuss? What drew indie-rock acolytes and grizzled rock-show pros alike from their vinyl-lined tombs? I mean, the Silver Jews show is still a month away—what gives? I’ll tell you what. New traveling Turner South show Music Road, hosted by Southern pop rocker Edwin McCain, didn’t waste much time finding its way to Athens. This live-music program hits various hotspot venues around the South, showcasing the region’s finest—if not most high-profile—musicians and songwriters, and tonight’s lineup sets the bar Olympic-finalist high with Vic Chesnutt, Elf Power, Drive-By Truckers and Phosphorescent, plus local favorites Don Chambers & Goat, Chesnutt’s niece Liz Durrett and members of Hope For A Golden Summer.

Around 7 p.m. the doors finally open for the first set and in march the rows of Converse. It’s unusually quiet tonight inside the 40 Watt (a hush, I realize later, that was all too short-lived). Several camera operators roam freely and there are three swiveling TV-camera platforms set up around the room, as well as some tables and chairs up front. Since when did the quintessential, no-frills rock club get all Bluebird Café on us? Since a few hours ago, but it’d be back to normal by the more energetic second set.

Meanwhile, idiosyncratic songwriter Vic Chesnutt sits onstage in his wheelchair, waiting patiently with Elf Power, his backing band for the evening. Wendy Musick of up-and-coming rock outfit Southern Bitch is working monitors, because, hey, this is Athens—of course your friends in other local bands are running sound.

Chesnutt gets the cue and, ‘Here we go ladies and gentleman, we’re gonna play some songs now,” he says nonchalantly. “This song’s called ‘Distortion’—it’s a philosophical diatribe, straight out of my mouth.” And the musical adventure begins, with a hypnotic beat, some gypsy violin and lyrics that could burn a hole in your psyche.

After a few songs, McCain—who admits he’s still a little weirded out being referred to as a “host”—walks onstage to pump the crowd and plug the show. Vic and Elf Power do one more amazing tune, and vacate the stage for the next act. It’s clear that—if they haven’t already in secret—these two musical camps need to pitch their tents in the same studio and make a record together, like Chesnutt did with Widespread Panic on the Brute albums.

After a speedy set change, Phosphorescent’s Matthew Houck breaks the chatter as he warms up, his lonesome warble and acoustic guitar subtly expanding through the room—ripples set off by a stone skipped across some metaphorical pond he’s about to invoke. His songs are gorgeous, dreamy, imperfect, jutting off the space-time continuum straight from some old Bonnie “Prince” Billy record and into Houck’s own wonderfully bizarre parallel dimension. Tonight he seems conscious of the cameras; more self-conscious than I’ve ever seen him onstage. But it’s a good thing. The songs are much tighter than usual, though not overly perfect in a way that might rob them of their frayed charm. Houck’s intense concentration brings a cohesiveness to this particular performance, making songs like “Not a Heel” (from Phosphorescent’s latest, Aw Come Aw Wry) better than ever.

Next, he’s joined by mesmerizing solo artist Liz Durrrett and sisters Page and Claire Campbell (from alt-folk outfit Hope For a Golden Summer), who provide some nice triple harmonies while Elf Power’s two-piece horn section fills in the holes like a pair of Stax session players on tour in Mexico who had a few downers slipped in their tequila, but still pulled through, miraculously, with a top-notch performance.

In the spirit of Athens’ communal musical history, tonight’s show is a collaborative effort. The musicians—most of whom play in two or three bands, sometimes more—float from ensemble to ensemble, backing each other up, sharing equipment and, most importantly, trying to help each other achieve their unique artistic visions. There’s no competition here—just good-hearted camaraderie and a deep love of music.

Following Phosphorescent, Elf Power returns in full to play some of its own material. Former Of Montreal bassist Derek Almstead lends a hand while these indie-rock mainstays—who’ve been at it for a decade now—plow through brand new songs from forthcoming album Back to the Web. The band rocks out with pounding toms and jangling Mid-East-tinged guitars spruced up by accordion, violin and cello. It’s good, but not quite as good as the epic set they played here last time around, opening for the briefly reunited Olivia Tremor Control.

After a while, Elf Power brings Chesnutt back out to wrap up the first round of filming. Drive-By Truckers frontman Patterson Hood stands up front next to a stack of amplifiers bobbing his head to “Rambunctious Cloud,” a song Chesnutt introduced as “a little slice of Athens.”

For the last tune before the break, Chesnutt calls on everyone who’s played thus far. The stage is awash in instruments and amplifiers, and there are 14 musicians scattered about, gleefully plinking and swooshing—after two false starts—through “Georgia On My Mind.” Nine singers singing, 3 electric guitars a-buzzing, two acoustics strumming, one bass a-bouncing, a sparkly set of jazz drums, plus violin and clarinet! (Just follow the bouncing ball, folks.)

But what seems like it’s about to be a dream come true rapidly devolves into a God-awful mess. Chesnutt, uses this grating robot-voice effect, the impromptu choir isn’t really cutting through the sonic sludge and everyone seems terribly lost. But it was a nice gesture, I suppose—all those Georgia musicians cranking through the Hoagy Carmichael-penned Official State Song—even if it didn’t quite work out.

At 10 p.m., after a long break and a tasty burger at Portland-style diner Clocked next door, I return to the 40 Watt just in time for Athens’ biggest success story of the last few years, the Drive-By Truckers, who have been slowly moving from big rock clubs to even larger concert halls. This band is stadium-bound; I’m convinced it’s inevitable. The only question is how long it’ll take, and if the band can avoid any tragic and/or stupid Behind the Music-style implosions. I’d like to think that, at this point, after years in the rock ’n’ roll trenches, with that loaded gun waiting in the closet back home, these guys have survived life’s myriad ass-whoopin’s long enough to have the wisdom to continue surviving. And I’d be a damn-dirty liar if I said I wasn’t cheering from the sidelines for a band like this to endure.

The Truckers, joined by former member/pedal-steel wizard John Neff, take the 40 watt stage unassumingly. They’re dressed up all purty and stylish-like for the cameras, which is new for them—coming off a bit like Keith Richards meets Paul Westerberg at Dreamland Barbecue. But the reason this works is because the look is pretty much the dead-on clothing equivalent of the music from the band’s new record, A Blessing And A Curse. (Out on New West this April.)

“We’re actually gonna tune up, since this is gonna be on TV,” deadpans guitarist Mike Cooley. The set starts intensely as the Replacements-indebted post-punk-sledgehammer downstroking of “Wednesday” washes over the crowd. Is this still the same band that recorded all those Redneck Underground country gems like “Demonic Possession” and “Nine Bullets,” the same band that cut neo-Southern-rock staples like “Sink Hole,” “Zip City” and “Outfit”? Well, no, there have been a few personnel changes along the way. But—even compared to the last album (2004’s The Dirty South), which debuted the band’s first lineup that held steady for more than one record—this new material is a pretty major stylistic shift.

As much as I’ve dug the Truckers’ past albums, I’m still digesting their latest and, after two or three listens, I honestly am not sure what to think about it yet… wall-to-wall guitars (yet less riffs and more power chords), buried vocals, more punk and less country, some early-’80s-college-rock-sounding production, but with a more radio-friendly (yet not exactly glossy) vibe than past releases. The only song I can think of that foreshadowed this new direction is guitarist Jason Isbell’s “The Day John Henry Died” from The Dirty South, and the only real links back to the band’s previous work are A Blessing and A Cruse’s few Stonesy rockers. One thing’s for sure, though: the Truckers are challenging their listeners, and whether it turns out a misstep or a giant leap, the music is evolving—the hallmark of any lasting, creative band.

After a few new tracks, Hood starts to tell a story introducing band staple, “The Living Bubba,” about Gregory Dean Smalley, a pivotal member of Atlanta’s Redneck Underground scene, who influenced Hood considerably before dying of AIDS a decade ago. But the crowd, now used to—and unfazed by—all the TV cameras, won’t stop chattering. It’s a shame, because Smalley’s story is one worth telling, and it would’ve been a good thing for it to reach a much larger, if regional, TV audience. The crowd noise breaks Hood’s concentration, and he’s forced to abandon the speech he’s passionately delivered hundreds of times, all before he has a chance to get to the point. I suppose it’s some consolation that the song, itself, was powerful as ever. [To read more about Greg Smalley click here.]

The Truckers make way for friend and local songwriter Don Chambers, who slides into a darkly impressive solo banjo tune. The vibe is a little like 16 Horsepower in its mix of Gospel and Gothicism, but with most of the hell-fire-and-brimstone creepiness replaced by a more irreverent, yet less-intense approach. Two of Chambers' bandmates from Goat join in on bass and acoustic guitar for a few numbers that get the crowd stomping and clapping. The short set ends with Hood, Isbell and Truckers drummer Brad Morgan aiding and abetting on what Chambers refers to as his theme song—the raucous singalong rocker, “GOAT.” (“I Swear I won’t never let ’em get my goat,” they all scream on the chorus.)

To close out the night, the rest of the Truckers come back for “World of Hurt,” a mostly spoken-word, open letter of a song—to anyone desperate enough to consider ending his or her own life. It’s probably the most genuine anti-suicide song I’ve heard, made more affecting by Hood’s passionate delivery. You can glean from the lyrics that he’s been to the brink himself a few times. When he shouts the line, “It’s great to be alive,” delivered with the perfect measure of determination and sadness, I look around the room—some people are screaming the words back triumphantly, but some people are actually in tears.

I don’t think Hood has any grand illusions about the message he’s delivering; music is powerful but it’s not always a cure-all. Still, the song is a lifeline. It won’t save everybody, but it’s moving and it’s real enough to maybe make someone stick around for another day. And the longer you stick around, the more chance you have of breaking through, of turning your life around.

The world of rock ’n’ roll can be seedy, selfish and self-obsessed—and the Truckers ain’t squeaky clean—but with songs like this, the band is, in its own way, railing against the darkness. And let’s not forget Isbell’s challenge to hold yourself to high standards (“Easy On Yourself”), or his inclusion of his Dad’s advice to stay away from heroin in "Outfit" (“Have fun and Stay clear of the needle”), or Cooley’s admission of weakness in “Space City” (“If I could have one wish right now, I’d be half as tough as I pretend I am”), or Hood’s non-preachy plea for safe sex during “The Living Bubba” (“Wear a rubber and be careful who you screw!”) and his passionate rants about getting involved in local politics, where you can really make a difference, and in support of Nuci’s Space, a non-profit in Athens that offers affordable counseling and healthcare for musicians.

For the Drive-By Tuckers, no matter what they sang on Decoration Day’s “Hell No I Ain’t Happy,” there’s not really “a lot of bad wood underneath the veneer”—there’s a heart as strong as oak.

(Above [L-R]: Patterson Hood, Jason Isbell and John Agnello in the control room at Chase Park Transduction. Background [L-R]: Assistant engineers Mark Brut, Billy Bennett and Ben Holst. Photo by Jeff Snowden.)

The Drive-By Truckers are finishing their seventh record, A Blessing and A Curse, at Mitch Easter’s studio, the Fidelitorium in North Carolina, and at Producer David Barbe’s studio, Chase Park Transduction, in Athens, Ga. The album’s planned release is April 2006 on New West.

Sweat-soaked live document from redneck rockers proves way Pabst due

You don’t have to hail from the South to be seduced by the Drive-By Truckers, though it doesn’t hurt. After all, this Alabama-bred band of brothers wears its Dixie-fried heritage like a badge of honor (or, more appropriately, a Purple Heart) that’s as unavoidable as the upside-the-head-whacking piece of hardwood referenced in lumbering, swaggering tune “The Buford Stick.” With its lawman-as-villain/outlaw-as-hero perspective, it’s prototypical Drive-By Truckers—one of the many songs from the band’s latest studio recording, The Dirty South, featured on this two-hour DVD culled from an August 2004 two-night stand at the 40 Watt club in the group’s surrogate hometown of Athens, Ga.

Actually, it’s not just lawmen, but virtually all authority figures who are viewed with a combination of fear and loathing in numerous DBT songs—in particular, those penned by Patterson Hood (the son of famed Muscle Shoals session bassist David Hood) who formed the band back in the mid ’90s with fellow guitarist/songwriter Mike Cooley. And whether it’s attacking greedy bankers in the bitter “Sinkhole” or decrying governmental priorities in the workingman’s blues “Puttin’ People On The Moon,” Hood’s compositions ripple with a combustibility articulated most strongly in “The Southern Thing,” the don’t-tread-on-me centerpiece of the group’s ambitious 2001 concept opus, Southern Rock Opera, that is likewise this DVD’s showstopper.

Were Hood the band’s only songwriter, all this attention to matters of pride and prejudice might overload listeners, but the strong presence of co-founder Cooley acts as a vital counterbalance. His Dirty South songs performed here, such as the race car themed-“Daddy’s Cup” and the Sun-dried “Carl Perkins’ Cadillac,” deal more with everyday life than the Big Picture— between them and the introspective contributions of DBT's third writer, chief lead guitarist Jason Isbell (represented in particular on this show by a brooding, intense version of “Decoration Day”), both the group’s subject matter and approach are considerably wider than the Redneck Underground-ed image they’ve acquired over the years.

With so much of this image also caught up in the Truckers’ reputation as a formidable concert band, this basically straightforward documentation of their live act (outside of a bit of backstage patter, it’s wall-to-wall performance footage) should be a welcome souvenir for longtime fans. It may also serve as a fitting introduction for those curious about what happened to the Southern rock tradition after it was impacted by both the punk and grunge movements: you can hear vestiges of the former on the Ramones-ish chord changes of “Careless,” and of the latter on the bristling “Lookout Mountain.” Ultimately, though, the Drive-By Truckers’ music, in all its rough-hewn, ragged glory, is about one basic value—honesty. And you can certainly appreciate that regardless of where you come from.

The new Drive-By Truckers album The Dirty South has infiltrated the Billboard Top 200 chart. Currently the album is at #198 and has also hit #5 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart, #14 on Top Independent Albums, and #16 on Top Internet Sellers.

TEN, NINE…

This is a story about rock ’n’ roll.

EIGHT…

It’s a story about rock ’n’ roll and a few boys—and, much later, a gal—from Northwest Alabama, who head out on the road—searching souls ramblin’ the highways of America, tearing up the countryside like a Tuscumbia twister…

SEVEN, SIX…

This is a story about rock ’n’ roll and a band called Drive-By Truckers, a bunch of irreverent bastards with good hearts and big dreams, ready to show the rest of the world what The South is really all about, who wind up in Athens, Ga., where you don’t have to play in a cover band, where it’s cheap to live and there’re plenty of people to make music with …

FIVE, FOUR, THREE…

And it’s a story about everything you have to go through to get people to hear your music in the first place—all the bullshit they never tell you about when you’re a runaway kid at a Springsteen concert with delusions of rock ’n’ roll grandeur: endless nights in stinking vans, stolen equipment, broken hearts, electrocution, hangovers, backstabbers, bad weather, divorce, death and destruction. And, if you’re lucky, you might live to tell about it, and you might live to do a whole lot more crazy, stupid shit…

TWO, ONE…

HAPPY NEW YEAR

All that’s visible is a pair of glowing red EXIT signs. Suddenly, the black curtain flies open, and the Truckers—flanked on either side by dark crimson walls and white concrete pillars—stare out from the stage’s darkness at over a thousand screaming fans. It’s New Year’s Eve at Atlanta’s Variety Playhouse and the place is sold-out. An ominous drumbeat pounds over the deafening roar, and the spotlight illuminates Mike Cooley, black-and-white Flying V guitar slung over his shoulder, as the band breaks into “Where the Devil Don’t Stay,” the lead track from their new record, The Dirty South. Clad in faded blue jeans and a black button-up, embroidered roses on the collar, Cooley looks like Keith Richards’ long-lost little brother.

Jason Isbell cranks out vicious slide licks from his hollow-body guitar as frontman Patterson Hood strums away, thick mop of brown hair flopping while his toothy grin lights the room with mischief. The stage is a sea of Marshall stacks and Fender combos. Bassist Shonna Tucker—dressed head-to-toe in black—locks in with thick armed-drummer Brad Morgan, to whom the band lovingly refers as “EZB.”

After a year involving label changes (Lost Highway to