"Drive-By Truckers and ATO Records are looking for enthusiastic fans to organize and host a listening party for the Drive-By Trucker's upcoming album 'The Big To-Do'."
Drive By Truckers played Mountain Stage in February 2009. Many NPR affiliates will be airing that episode during the weekend of February 26-28 2010. A complete list of stations that carry the show can be found at the attached link. The following week DBT's set will be posted at NPR.org/mountainstage and archived for continued access. Rock!
"Despite their improbable fairy-tale rise to prominence, Drive-By Truckers are now arguably the South’s preeminent alt-country rockers. Fueled by booze and buzz over their character-driven, lyrically-provoking albums, the Athens, Georgia-based band balances Southern charm with backwoods rowdiness, poignantly nostalgic imagery, and a rousing three-guitar approach to country rock.
“We respect our audiences– times are hard, and it amazed me last year, with the horrendous downturn in the economy, that we had packed houses for most shows,” frontman Patterson Hood says. “We don’t take that for granted. It’s a cliche that every show counts, but it does.”"
"While we were working on FHWA By Day, Deborah Vocke challenged me to come up with a list of highway songs. Her challenge was prompted by the video for the B-52's 'Love Shack,' which shows the quartet driving in their car singing, 'I'm heading down the Atlanta highway.' I looked through my LP and cassette collection and copied the highway songs onto cassettes. They turned out to be fun to listen to in the car or on my regular long walks around Washington.
Deborah and I talked about writing an article on highway songs when we were preparing material for the issue of Public Roads dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the Interstate System (Summer 1996). Somehow, time ran out on that idea, but I kept collecting and taping."
"I support the act of file sharing and argue that the free sharing of these forms of intellectual property would likely produce, overall, more good than harm for society."
Albums Patterson Hood 1. Bloodkin - Baby They Told Us We Would Rise Again On the surface, no frills, meat and potatoes rock (and damn proud of it) but a closer listen reveals the finest songwriting all year as this 24-year-old band sings the horrifying tale of their trip back from the abyss and sees it through to a joyous life-affirming conclusion. It's like that Leaving Las Vegas movie with a happy ending - unbelievable if weren't true. Such well-treaded territory would suck if not for the magnificence of its execution. 'Wild Rhododendrons' is the finest songwriting I've seen all year, and 'The Viper' and 'Heavy With Child' are just as good. Meanwhile 'Easter Eggs' is the best song of man love I've ever heard (including 'Bobby Jean' and 'Angie')."
"Patterson Hood - Drive-By Truckers - Best of Decade List
1. The Glands - The Glands Patterson Hood by Susan J. Weiand My favorite album of the decade and also my all time favorite album ever to come out of Athens, GA. It came out in 2000 and is still growing on me nearly a decade later. Unfortunately it came out on Capricorn in the waning days of their attempt at resurgence and virtually no one outside of Athens heard it, but of those who have there is a cult of us who feel exactly like I do about it. They never released a follow up and Ross now manages a record store in town. A truly timeless masterpiece that gets better with every listen (and I've listened to it weekly for over nine years now)."
"So what does Ray Charles’s Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music have to do with the Drive-By Truckers’ Southern Rock Opera (2001), you might ask?"
"Picking the right ones wasn't such a difficult task, the band tells Spinner. 'It's pretty obvious, really,' guitarist/singer Mike Cooley says. 'It usually is. At some point, you start finding the corner pieces and the ones with the straight edges first.'"
"JASON ISBELL & THE 400 UNIT Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit [Lightning Rod] The former Drive-By Trucker loads his second solo record with a wealth of songwriting gems. No song will ever use the phrase “rolled-up $20 bill” in a lyric any better than “Cigarettes And Wine.”
MAPLEWOOD Yeti Boombox [Tapete] The album title pretty much says it all. Brooklyn boys make good. Harmonies and guitar glitter.
DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS The Fine Print (A Collection Of Oddities And Rarities 2003-2008) [New West] The best way to fulfill a recording contract you’ll ever hear. Seems like some of these should have made a record somewhere along the way."
"“She smelled like cigarettes and wine.” I know that girl, you know that girl– hell, we all know that girl. Well, probably not the exact girl, but we’ve all known a few, and even more so, we all know the feeling he’s singing about. Even if you couldn’t understand English, you’d know exactly what is going on in this song.
If for some reason you don’t own the album, get it here."
"Was there a moment when you were younger where you heard a pop song and the format of that really clicked for you?
Oh yeah. I don’t know what artist in particular but a lot of that probably came from ‘80s radio for me: Prince, Crowded House, Until Tuesday and a lot of those bands they were playing on the radio then—Colin Hay from Men at Work. That kind of stuff really appealed to me when I was really young and first started to write. I loved how those songs all fit together."
"Embedded Tour Stop Special with White Rabbits, Black Lips, Jason Isbell, Fucked Up & Amazing Baby. Premieres December 31 at 10pm EST.
Got big plans for NYE? Catch Embedded on New Year’s Day or over the weekend, too!
Here’s when to turn on the TV:
Thursday night: 12/31 starting at 7pm EST/4pm PST, then again starting at 12 midnight EST/9pm PST. Friday afternoon: 1/1 starting at 4pm EST/1pm PST Saturday morning: 1/2 starting at 10am EST/7am PST Sunday afternoon: 1/3 starting at 5pm EST/2pm EST
And, of course, once they’ve aired you’ll be able to watch all 15 Tour Stops at current.com/tourstop, plus our channels on Hulu, YouTube and MySpace."
"Chesnutt's very real ensnarement in the insurance system lends an uncomfortable yet deeply compelling undertone to his lyrical attempts to make peace with illness, his paraplegism and death. Chesnutt doesn't hold out too much hope for whatever healthcare bill makes it through the Senate, either -- 'What will pass will be weak, the powers that be will be happy and the insurance companies will be thrilled,' he believes. Those facts only remind a listener that the small braveries of an album like 'At the Cut' can, if not offer solutions, at least be a bit of comfort and companionship. Or solace that Chesnutt doesn't have to figure out even bigger problems, like how to fix California's ailing economy.
'You guys are the most screwed of all,' he said, laughing."
"After a few more words, it all clicked. A woman who knew Chanin and worked at the Chicago fashion boutique Ikram had contacted Rogers, who was looking for a designer to make a tree skirt for the White House's Blue Room. Rogers asked Chanin, founder of the Florence-based fashion and lifestyle company Alabama Chanin. She said yes."
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Music
A really marvelous night for a moondance, apparently.
"A number of weeks ago I wrote about the original song “Depression Era” from Scott Teems’s “That Evening Sun.” It’s a breathy southern soul tune that, for my money, bests all other original song contenders this year. But considering the fact that the film will struggle to be seen, and the music branch isn’t likely to appreciate the song’s placement in the film (closing credits), I doubt an original song nomination is on the horizon."
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Patterson, Finn and Nichols. Onion A.V. folks are on top of it!
"Let’s dispense with an obvious disclaimer: There will never be another Springsteen, just as there will never be another Bob Dylan, Beatles, Zeppelin, insert your favorite classic rock band here. Furthermore, younger artists don’t need to be validated by being compared to a baby boomer favorite. Today’s musical heroes are just as valid as the legends of yesteryear. Okay, now that we’ve got that out of the way: I think the person most deserving of Springsteen’s mantle is Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers."
"'A good bit of our 2000 live album, 'Alabama Ass Whuppin,' was recorded there [at the Caledonia], so we put this together as a way to say thank you to the Caledonia for 10 years of great rock here in Athens,' Hood said."
"The letter (view here ) was signed by a wide range of musicians and music industry voices; from New Orleans own Neville Brothers, Dr. John, Galactic, and Funky Meters to internationally known acts like REM, Trent Reznor, Ok Go, Los Lobos and Bonnie Raitt. Voodoo performers the Drive-By Truckers, Gogol Bordello, JJ Grey & Mofro, the Knux, Parliment-Funkadelic, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Generationals, Warsaw, and many others added their support as well."
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Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
Here are a couple of pictures of JI400 during sound check at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco last Sunday. I should have a full post up next week with pictures and a few tales.
Posted this video of The Blue earlier this week, but this is a do over for better sound. Still working on better compression for the imaging, but sound has been much improved. May still be loading, so vid quality will improve.
"The complete roster of artists includes: Louis Armstrong, Andrew Bird, Terence Blanchard, Pete Seeger, Dr. John, Blind Boys of Alabama, Brandi Carlile, Cory Chisel, Ani DiFranco, Steve Earle, Merle Haggard, Richie Havens, Jason Isbell, Jim James, Angelique Kidjo, Amy LaVere, Anita Briem, Del McCoury, Bobby McFerrin, Buddy Miller, Paolo Nutini, and Tom Waits."
"UNIVERSITY OF NORTH ALABAMA - It takes seasoned guitarists such as Earl 'Peanut' Montgomery and Jimmie Johnson to notice the subtle differences in the two custom-made Benedetto guitars being auctioned by the University of North Alabama.
Johnson and Montgomery are among almost a dozen Shoals musicians who have come to Rogers Hall on the UNA campus to give the guitars a test run.
The guitars are the same model - electric hollow body Benedetto Bambinos handmade in Savannah, Ga."
"Pomplamoose (it means 'grapefruit' in French) is a Bay Area indie jazz-pop band and is compromised made up of Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn, who do what they call VideoSongs.
For those who don't know, a VideoSong is a new medium with (as Jack puts it) two rules:
1. What you see is what you hear (no lip-syncing for instruments or voice).
2. If you hear it, at some point you see it (no hidden sounds)."
"The two surviving members of this legendary trio (brother Maurice died suddenly, in January 2003, aged 53, of complications from a twisted intestine) have come together to celebrate a golden anniversary, 50 years in the music business, with a new compilation The Ultimate Bee Gees. It has been a quite extraordinary career, with two distinct periods of world-beating stardom, as Beatles-influenced soft rockers in the late Sixties (their classic hits included To Love Somebody, Words and How Can You Mend a Broken Heart and blue-eyed disco singers in the late Seventies (Stayin’ Alive, Jive Talkin’, Tragedy) with a twilight period as hitmakers for other artists, including Barbra Streisand (Woman in Love), Diana Ross (Chain Reaction), Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton (Islands in the Stream) and Dionne Warwick (Heartbreaker). Their catalogue of solid gold standards is rivalled only by Lennon and McCartney."
"Since its founding, New York has been an evergreen inspiration for musicians, from Gershwin to Dylan to the Beastie Boys. 'Empire State of Mind,' Jay-Z's love letter to the city, is just the latest, and perhaps greatest, in a long line of New York-inspired songs. But one day -- maybe soon, maybe not -- someone else will come along and pen a diddy about the city that never sleeps that will fully-encapsulate life in the five boroughs and Jay-Z's will be a worn-out standard, played while fans shuffle out of the new new Yankee Stadium.
So in honor of the long and vast history of New York in song, we're extremely pleased to introduce the Huffington Post New York Music Project. Essentially we are trying to discover, uncover, and map every single song lyric that name-checks a location, business, corner, monument, etc., in the city of New York. This can be as vague as George Cohan giving his regards 'to Broadway' to as specific as Lou Reed 'waiting for the man' on 125th and Lexington. We've put together 40 entries to start off with, but that just scratches the surface."
