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World's Greatest Rock n' Roll Band

Filed under: Imported

That would be the Drive-By Truckers for you philistines. I traveled to Athens, Georgia this weekend for the band's CD-release party at the 40-Watt Club. This was, indisputably, a ridiculous indulgence on my part, especially given the fact that the band plays Minneapolis in a week. But it's the Truckers.

The show was, of course, two-plus glorious hours of sweaty, beer-sodden three-guitar rock n' roll. Even guitarist Mike Cooley--whose demeanor generally suggests a bitter, drunken loner--looked like he was having a decent time. Or at least he made it through the show without slugging anyone.

The only comparable music-inspired elation that I can recall in recent memory was seeing Springsteen last year in Miami (during which I got so excited that I nearly plummeted to my death from the upper deck of the American Airlines Arena). Like all the other DBT geeks, my brother and I were giddily pumping our fists and singing along right through the fourth and final encore at 2:30 a.m. You should not be permitted to burn through "Ronnie & Neil" in such a manner at that time of the morning.  

The fact that the Drive-By Truckers are the greatest rock 'n roll band in the world is starting to become more widely accepted. The band graces the cover of No Depression's most recent issue. Grant Alden's lengthy profile is a mixed bag. The reporting is top notch. My favorite quote is from David Hood, father of lead Trucker Patterson Hood (and a legendary Muscle Shoals session musician):

"At first I thought, gosh, man, he can't play for shit, can't sing," David Hood says. ... "I thought do something else. I've always been impressed with his writing, but they have worked at it so hard and so long that I'm very impressed every time I hear 'em now."

Thanks pop! Unfortunately, I found Alden's take on the Truckers' music to be less than astute. He holds up the song "Outfit" as proof that the band's new release, Decoration Day, is their "first great album." Now I certainly don't disagree with the conceit, but "Outfit" just happens to be the one stinker on the whole production. It's full of banal cliches and Woe-is-The-Southern-Man sentimentality. (For my own take on Decoration Day go here.)

The DBT's also pop up in the most recent (and possibly last) issue of the Oxford American. They're hailed as the "new Lynyrd Skynyrd." Frankly, I think it's fair to say that the Truckers have surpassed the artistic achievements of their musical heroes at this point. Nothing against Skynyrd, but any reasonable evaluation of their music has to conclude that they only produced about one album worth of classic material before the big plane crash. Here's an excerpt from Will Blythe's Decoration Day write-up:

Where other celebrants of the working life, Steve Earle and Bruce Springsteen, for instance, have appeared for a long time (maybe from the beginning) to be singing more about literary archetypes than real people--which they do well and movingly--the Drive-By Truckers seem to have ripped their songs directly from life, not a poetry book, not a Bob Dylan sampler. The language feels true (raggedy and inadvertently poetic), the situations more desperate, and the music ain't always pretty but it's always loud.

One other Trucker note. In 2001 Patterson Hood recorded a solo album, Killers and Stars, that was never released. At the time he'd just gotten divorced (again) and the band was on the verge of disintegrating. So he sat down in his dining room and laid down a slit-your-wrists soundtrack that he never intended to see the light of day (at least not in this raw form). Hood's never gotten around to revisiting the project, however, and eventually started burning off copies to sell at shows.

I picked up a copy at the 40 Watt. It's a messy affair. By all accounts, Hood is a throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks kind of writer. He certainly benefits from the competition and editing that is inevitable in a band with three songwriters. Some of the tracks on Killers and Stars should have been left on the cutting-room floor. That said, there are a handful of rough gems. I love the first track, "Uncle Disney," in which Hood basically blames Walt for his woman leaving him. "Belinda Carlisle Diet" ("cocaine and milkshakes") is a darkly hilarious rant. "Fire" provides a reasonable psychological explanation for how someone might be driven to arson. You can most likely pick it up at next week's show.

Posted by Paul Demko at July 29, 2003 6:27 PM

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