Drive-By Truckers – The Dirty South (2004)

The Dirty South is the fifth album by Alabamian alternative country/Southern rock group Drive-By Truckers, released in 2004. The Dirty South is Drive-By Truckers’ second concept album. Like its predecessor, Southern Rock Opera, the album examines the state of the South, and unveils the hypocrisy, irony, and tragedy that continues to exist.

“Where The Devil Don’t Stay” was inspired by a poem by Mike Cooley’s uncle Ed Cooley, and was recorded in one take.

Patterson Hood’s “Tornadoes” was originally written in 1988 in reaction to the closing concert for the Adam’s House Cat Nightmare Tour. The Nightmare Tour set list was composed almost exclusively of songs containing metaphors or imagery of trains, but the lack of the tour’s success forced Hood and his band to abandon the concept and start afresh. Hood read an eyewitness account of the tornado in the local paper the next day and wrote “Tornadoes” after reading her statement that “it sounded like a train.”

Isbell’s “The Day John Henry Died,” retells the story of John Henry.

“Puttin’ People on the Moon”, written by Hood, tells the story of a town downriver of Huntsville and their “rocket envy” or economic depression due to the negative environmental and economic effects of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.

Mike Cooley’s “Carl Perkins’ Cadillac” recounts the celebrated Sun Records, Sam Phillips, and the music industry in general.

“The Sands of Iwo Jima” recounts Hood’s experiences with his great uncle while growing up in North Alabama. Questioning the veracity of the movie, his uncle answers he never saw John Wayne on the sands of Iwo Jima.

Isbell’s second track on the album, “Danko/Manuel,” is a departure from the usual southern gothic lyrical style written by Cooley and Hood. Originally Isbell tried to tell the story of Rick Danko, Richard Manuel, and The Band’s demise, but found the scope of the concept too difficult to actually do justice to their story, and instead shifted the concept to a telling of life of a musician through the eyes and actions of Danko and Manuel. Isbell stated that the horn parts for the song came to him in a dream.

“The Dirty South” contains a three song suite (“The Boys From Alabama,” “Cottonseed” and “The Buford Stick”) about Sheriff Buford Pusser. “The Boys From Alabama” was inspired by the misconceptions and “really bad movies” of the Redneck Mafia and recounts the movie “Walking Tall”‘ from a “different point of view.” Hood felt that telling the story from “the bad guy’s” point of view would be more interesting. Cooley’s “Cottonseed” tells a story of corruption, crime, killing, greed, fixed elections, guns, drugs, prostitution and alcohol and uses subtle imagery to provide a very negative interpretation of Pusser. Hood’s “The Buford Stick” completes the suite by providing examples of the negative effects of Pusser’s actions while offering a less glorified view of the mythology surrounding Pusser.

Cooley’s last song on the album is a story about a father who instills a love of racing in his son. “Daddy’s Cup” is the only song on “The Dirty South” that does not revolve around a negative experience, instead offering a lighter touch to the overall dirty feel of the album.

Isbell has explained that “Never Gonna Change” is simply about a stubborn North Alabama man who “refuses to live in fear,” which Isbell goes on to explain are rather rare.

“Lookout Mountain” was written around 1990 by Hood, and can be heard in its original incarnation on Adam’s House Cat’s LP Town Burned Down. It was a last minute addition to the album, beating out another Hood song entitled “Goode’s Field Road.” “Goode’s Field Road” was eventually rerecorded for 2008’s Brighter Than Creation’s Dark, however the cut that was dropped from The Dirty South managed to see the light of day on The Fine Print: A Collection of Oddities and Rarities. The version as it appears on The Dirty South was recorded in one take.

The Dirty South ends with Isbell’s “Goddamn Lonely Love.” Though described by Isbell as a love song, “Goddamn Lonely Love” heavily and painfully delves into the loneliness associated with love. Isbell wrote the song for Shonna Tucker. (by wikipedia)

When you’ve named your band the Drive-By Truckers and your first three albums are called Pizza Deliverance, Gangstabilly, and Alabama Ass Whuppin’, you might have a hard time at first convincing folks that you aren’t joking. But the Drive-By Truckers proved that they were most definitely not kidding with 2001’s brilliant double-disc Southern Rock Opera, and 2003’s Decoration Day actually upped the ante on what might have been a fluke masterpiece with its dark and thoroughly absorbing chronicle of hard times in the American South. With The Dirty South, the DBTs have crafted an equally effective companion piece to Decoration Day that plays on the gangsta rap reference of its title with a set of vividly rendered portraits of life along the margins of respectability below the Mason-Dixon line, from laid-off factory rats dealing drugs to feed their kids to Alabama gangsters determined to shut down the cops who made their daughters cry. From the first low, metallic stomps from Brad Morgan’s kick drum on “Where the Devil Don’t Stay,” it’s clear that The Dirty South isn’t going to be a good-time party most of the way, and while there are some brilliant anthemic rockers on this album (most notably “The Day John Henry Died,” “Carl Perkins’ Cadillac,” and “Never Gonna Change”), and Patterson Hood, Mike Cooley, and Jason Isbell have grown into a force to be reckoned with as both guitarists and songwriters, there’s more than a little blood, fear, doubt, shame, and simple human tragedy at the heart of these stories.

While much of America might be laughing at “You might be a redneck…” jokes, the Drive-By Truckers aren’t about to let anyone forget the harsh truth behind growing up on the wrong side of the tracks in this country, and the tough, muscular force of their music only sharpens the bite of their stories. They can also turn down the amps and still hit you in the heart, especially on “Danko/Manuel” and “Daddy’s Cup,” and David Barbe’s production gives this band the full-bodied clarity they’ve always deserved. Believe it — the Drive-By Truckers are the best, smartest, and most soulful hard rock band to emerge in a very long time, and while The Dirty South isn’t always good for laughs, it has too many great stories and too much fierce, passionate rock & roll for anyone who cares about such things to dare pass it up. (by Mark Deming)

Personnel:
Mike Cooley (vocals, guitar, banjo on 06. + 08., harmonica on 06.)
Patterson Hood (vocals, guitar, piano on 02 – 14.)
Jason Isbell (vocals, (guitar, piano on 02., 07. + 08. organ on 14., mellotron on 07.)
Brad Morgan (drums, percussion)
Shonna Tucker (bass, background  vocals)
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David Barbe (piano on 04., 06., organ on 08, background vocals on 13.)
Clay Leverett (background vocals on 02.)
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The Minor Hill Singers (background  vocals on 01.):
Jason Isbell – Kimberly Morgan – Shonna Tucker
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The State Line Chain Gang (percussion 08.)

Tracklist:
01. Where The Devil Don’t Stay (Cooley) 5.18
02. Tornadoes (Hood) 4.13
03. The Day John Henry Died (Isbell) 3.46
04. “Puttin’ People on the Moon” Patterson Hood 4:55
05. Carl Perkins’ Cadillac (Cooley) 5.24
06. The Sands Of Iwo Jima (Hood) 4.10
07. Danko/Manuel (Isbell) 5.43
08. The Boys From Alabama (Hood) 4.24
09. Cottonseed (Cooley) 6.20
10. The Buford Stick (Hood) 4.40
11. Daddy’s Cup (Cooley) 5.53
12. Never Gonna Change (Isbell) 5.23
13. Lookout Mountain (Hood) 5.00
14. Goddamn Lonely Love (Isbell) 4.55

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Drive By Truckers – Gangstabilly (1998)

The Drive-By Truckers are an alternative country/Southern rock band based in Athens, Georgia, though two of five current members (Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley) are originally from The Shoals region of northern Alabama, and the band strongly identifies with Alabama. The group also has roots in Richmond, Virginia. The Secret To A Happy Ending [DVD]. ATO Records. The band currently consists of Mike Cooley (lead vocals, guitar, banjo), Patterson Hood (lead vocals, guitar), Brad Morgan (drums), Jay Gonzalez (keys, guitar, accordion, backing vocals), and Matt Patton (bass guitar, backing vocals). Like many alternative country acts, the Drive-By Truckers record in analog (using 2 inch, 16-track open-reel tape recorders). The band’s constant touring has developed its dedicated following.

The band’s original lineup was fluid, but it most often included Hood, Cooley, and Howell, along with drummer Matt Lane, pedal steel player John Neff, and mandolin player Barry Sell. They released their first album Gangstabilly in 1998. With Hood and Cooley sometimes playing mandolin and banjo instead of guitar, and Howell playing double bass, the band’s original sound had a strong alternative country aspect, albeit with some rock mixed in, as well. (by wikipedia)

The Drive-By Truckers don’t need an agenda to be a good band. Sure, Southern Rock Opera more or less anointed the Truckers as a smarter, more attentive Lynyrd Skynyrd, and critics, in turn, made them famous for all the wrong reasons. And while critics tossed around adjectives like “brash” and “raunchy” and dug out their riffs on Southern rock revival and the renovation of country, Gangstabilly, DBT’s debut, went largely overlooked. No mock-rock operas or anxious, insistent Southernism here — Gangstabilly keeps its charm by keeping it simple. Whereas post-Pizza Deliverance DBT tended to veer into weathered tailgate-party twang, Gangstabilly is a swamp of mushy drums, scraggly acoustics, and pedal-steel whimper — a catalog of trashy but telling details and broader yet personal pangs. NASCAR, monster-truck rallies, and countless episodes of COPS and America Undercover have melted the South down into a handful of stereotypes. But if frontman Patterson Hood has shown anything, all you have to do to cut through the velvet Elvis/TV rodeo/Haffenreffer muck of white-trash clichés is simply treat them seriously. While DBT retain a campy sensibility to distance themselves from their songs, the Truckers’ South doesn’t come without its share of loss and hardship.

Take “Wifebeater,” the album’s opener. The title explains it all, but the subject matter is accepted as part of life, rendered like a conventional love song — “Don’t go back to him, he’s a wife beater.” The drums lurch, the pedal steel rises like steam, the harmonies go bullfrog-croak low, and Hood puts you inside a would-be dismissed act of domestic violence. Then, there’s “Panties in Your Purse” — a title which tells a whole newly painful story of a night of drinkin’ and cheatin’ in and of itself. But perhaps more than any song in their back catalog, “The Living Bubba” perfects the Truckers’ combination of tough but hurt. Dedicated to the late Atlanta guitarist Gregory Dean Smalley, “The Living Bubba” comes through with an introverted, slowly ascending verse and a chorus you can flick a Bic to. Bottom line: do yourself a favor and don’t ignore this album. The sad songs are sad the way you want them to be, the ballsier songs tempered with a little mellow manly pain. After Gangstabilly, the Drive-By Truckers would provide good albums, sure, but they’d be of the Napster-good sort, the buy-it-used sort. But for a brief moment, the Drive-By Truckers created something whose praise wouldn’t come by default, that wouldn’t play immediately into critics’ expectations. Gangstabilly was a thankless job, but a good one. (by Bill Peters)

Personnel:
Mike Cooley (guitar, vocals, mandolin)
Adam Howell (bass, vocals)
Matt Lane (drums)
Patterson Hood (guitar, vocals, banjo)
John Neff (steel-guitar, vocals)
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Redneck Greece (background vocals on 08.)
Barry Sell (mandolin, background vocals on 05.)
Jim Stacy (harmonica on 09. + 10.)

Tracklist:
01. Wife Beater 3.32
02. Demonic Possession 4.52
03. The Tough Sell 3.41
04. The Living Bubba 5.56
05. Late For Church 5.27
06. Panties In Your Purse 4.41
07. Why Henry Drinks 4.13
08. 18 Wheels Of Love 4.10
09. Steve McQueen 5.13
10.  Buttholeville 5.25
11. Sandwiches For The Road 6.40

Music: Mike Cooley – Adam Howell – Matt Lane – Patterson Hood – John Neff
Lyrics:
Mike Cooley (on 06.)
Adam Howell (on 05.)
Patterson Hood (01. – 04., 07.  11.)

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Drive-By Truckers – Southern Rock Opera (2001)

Southern Rock Opera is the third studio album by the alt country band Drive-By Truckers, released in 2001. A double album covering an ambitious range of subject matter from the politics of race to 1970s stadium rock, Southern Rock Opera either imagines, or filters, every topic through the context of legendary Southern band, Lynyrd Skynyrd. The record was originally self-released on Soul Dump Records. The album was re-released on July 16, 2002 by Lost Highway Records. The album was financed by issuing promissory notes in exchange for loans from fans, family and friends of the band.[citation needed]Southern Rock Opera is the third studio album by the alt country band Drive-By Truckers, released in 2001. A double album covering an ambitious range of subject matter from the politics of race to 1970s stadium rock, Southern Rock Opera either imagines, or filters, every topic through the context of legendary Southern band, Lynyrd Skynyrd. The record was originally self-released on Soul Dump Records. The album was re-released on July 16, 2002 by Lost Highway Records. The album was financed by issuing promissory notes in exchange for loans from fans, family and friends of the band.

The idea for Southern Rock Opera pre-dates the band’s formation in 1996. Southern Rock Opera began in a long discussion between Drive-By Truckers’ frontman Patterson Hood and former Truckers bassist and producer Earl Hicks, during a road trip. The pair discussed writing a semi-autobiographical screenplay about growing up in the South and about the plane crash that almost ended the career of the rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd, taking singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, and Gaines’ back-up-singer sister Cassie Gaines.

Soon after this discussion, Hood formed Drive-By Truckers. The Truckers recorded two studio albums and one live album during the four years between their formation and the actual recording of Southern Rock Opera. During these years, Drive-By’s principal songwriters Hood, Mike Cooley, and Rob Malone continued to contribute songs to “The Rock Opera”, as they had come to call it.
After the release of their live album Alabama Ass Whuppin’, Drive-By Truckers began recording what they hoped would be their magnum opus: Southern Rock Opera. According to Patterson Hood, “(the album) was recorded in Birmingham, upstairs in a uniform shop during an early September heat wave, with no air-conditioning. We had to turn the fans off when we were recording, and we worked from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. So Southern Rock Opera was fun to write, but we had a miserable time making it.”

After the album was finished, however, the troubles continued for The Truckers when they ran out of funding for the immense project. To resolve the problem, and to avoid “any fine print crap”, as Hood put it, the band took a non-traditional approach. The Truckers made a prospectus and solicited investors, with a promise of 15% interest, to pay for the manufacturing and distribution of Southern Rock Opera. The approach worked. Through their fan-based online news group and by sheer word of mouth, The Truckers were able to raise $23,000. This allowed them to print about 5,000 copies of the album, and buy a “new” used van for touring. Notably included in the group, dubbed “The DBT Investors”, was Widespread Panic bassist and fellow Athenian Dave Schools.

Southern Rock Opera was finally released on September 12, 2001 on Soul Dump Records.
The critical praise for Southern Rock Opera created no shortage of buzz around the album and the band. The Truckers didn’t have the means to press the necessary amount of copies of the album on their own.
In order to meet demand, Drive-By Truckers signed a large-scale distribution deal with Lost Highway Records. Southern Rock Opera was re-released, this time worldwide, on July 16, 2002. (by wikipedia)

Don’t be deterred by the rather misleading title. Not a rock opera in the sense of Tommy or Jesus Christ Superstar, this sprawling double disc is more akin to a song cycle about Southern rock, in particular Lynyrd Skynyrd. Almost six years in the making, the Drive-By Truckers have created a startlingly intelligent work that proudly stands with the best music of their obvious inspiration. Largely written and conceived by lead trucker Patterson Hood (son of famed Muscle Shoals bassist David Hood), who sings the majority of the songs in a torn, ragged, but emotionally charged twangy voice somewhere between Tom Petty and Rod Stewart, these 20 literate tracks encapsulate a remarkably objective look at what Hood calls “the duality of the South.” Rocking with a lean hardness, the story unfolds over 90 minutes, but the savvy lyrical observations never overburden the songs’ clenched grip.

While bands like the similarly styled Bottle Rockets have worked this territory before, never has a group created an opus that’s thematically tied to this genre while objectively exploring its conceptual limitations. The two discs are divided into Acts I and II; the first sets the stage by exploring aspects of an unnamed Southern teen’s background growing up as a music fan in an environment where sports stars, not rock stars, were idolized. The second follows him as he joins his Skynyrd-styled dream band, tours the world, and eventually crashes to his death in the same sort of airplane accident that claimed his heroes. The Drive-By Truckers proudly charge through these songs with their three guitars, grinding and soloing with a swampy intensity recalling a grittier, less commercially viable early version of Skynyrd. A potentially dodgy concept that’s redeemed by magnificent songwriting, passionate singing, and ruggedly confident but far from over-the-top playing, Southern Rock Opera should be required listening not only for fans of the genre, but anyone interested in the history of ’70s rock, or even the history of the South in that decade. More the story of Hood than Skynyrd, this is thought-provoking music that also slashes, burns, and kicks out the jams. Its narrative comes to life through these songs of alienation, excess, and, ultimately, salvation, as seen through the eyes of someone who lived and understands it better than most. (by Hal Horowitz)

In other words: A masterpiece !

Personnel:
Mike Cooley (guitar, vocals)
Earl Hicks (bass)
Patterson Hood (guitar, vocals)
Rob Malone (guitar, vocals)
Brad Morgan (drums)
+
background voclas:
Kelly Hogan – Anne Richmond Boston – Jyl Freed – Amy Pike

Tracklist:

CD 1:
01. Days Of Graduation (Hood) 2.37
02. Ronnie And Neil (Hood) 4.53
03. 72 (This Highway’s Mean) (Cooley) 5.26
04. Dead, Drunk, and Naked (Hood) 4.51
05. Guitar Man Upstairs (Cooley) 3.17
06. Birmingham (Hood) 5.03
07. The Southern Thing (Hood) 5.00
08. The Three Great Alabama Icons (Hood) 6.51
09. Wallace (Hood) 3.27
10. Zip City (Cooley) 5.17
11. Moved (Malone) 4.17

CD 2:
12. Let There Be Rock (Hood) 4.18
13. Road Cases (Hood) 2.43
14. Women Without Whiskey (Cooley) 4.20
15. Plastic Flowers On The Highway (Hood) 5.05
16. Cassie’s Brother (Malone) 4.58
17. Life In The Factory (Hood) 5.28
18. Shut Up And Get On The Plane (Cooley) 3.38
19. Greenville To Baton Rouge (Hood) 4.12
20. Angels And Fuselage (Hood) 8.00

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