I had a damn cool DBT experience in NorCal Wednesday. I was leaving my apartment with laundry in hand and as I was locking the door I heard a truck driving through the complex with music blaring out an opened window. As the truck passed my apartment building, coming out the window I heard "Didn't kill nobody, didn't mean no harm". I ran down the stairs and chased after the truck until it turned into a parking spot. It was the pool guy. He was still inside when I reached his truck. I said, "Excuse me, but where you just listening to Drive-By Truckers". His eyes got real wide and he jumped out of the truck and said 'Hell yeah, I was listening to Great Car Dealer Wars from The Fine Print. I told him I was a fan too. He said he had every record but AAW and Austin City Limits. He made a playlist on his iPod of his favorite DBT songs. 75 songs in all. He saw the RnRMW tour but missed the last Fillmore show. We chatted for another 5 minutes about DBT. I went upstairs and burned him a copy of AAW. He was a pleased man when I handed it to him.... as was I.
"One of our favorite rock ’n’ roll bands on the planet right now is Drive-By Truckers, who released a string of brilliant albums in the ’00s thick with Southern noir and whiskey-drunk wisdom. This year’s The Big To-Do is another winner, and the show we caught last week in DeKalb, Ill. was one of the best fist-pumping rock gigs we’ve been to in a long while. We were severely bummed when DBT cancelled a concert at Turner Hall last February, but now the band has planned a return trip Oct. 1 for a show at the Pabst Theater. Tickets are $25 in advance ($28 the day of the show) and go on sale at noon on July 23. The A.V. Club will also be handing out free tickets, so stay tuned here for more information in the weeks ahead."
"Warming up the crowd and ramping up beer sales are the Drive-By Truckers, long-standing candidates for America’s best live act and masters of three-hour sets that leave fans clamoring for more. Stuck in the opening slot, the Truckers are hemmed in, but there’s great satisfaction in hearing a band that references so much classic rock (on albums like Alabama Ass Whuppin’) echoing around a giant arena. The Southern booze-and-boogie hounds play every set as if they’re the mega-star headliners, anyway."
"11) A Ghost to Most, the Drive-By Truckers. “I guess I’ll never grow sideburns, it’s a shame with all I’ve got to go between.” A just consistently great band, by turns funny and dark, but always sharp and always rocking. “So Cold the River” features a bright but resentful country boy, prone to flashes of temper, and the Drive-By Truckers and Reckless Kelly became the heart of my soundtrack for those point-of-view portions."
"A few hours after I meet Gelb, the Drive-by Truckers' Patterson Hood is onstage at the 40 Watt Club, in front of a crowd more in the mood for a raucous wake than a reverent memorial. Hood saw Chesnutt for the first time at the 40 Watt back in the mid-'90s and was blown away.
'Pretty much from the first song, I stood there with my mouth gaping open, amazed,' he tells me later. 'It was almost like a religious experience. He had this fearlessness about exposing things about himself or his feelings about things that might make people cringe or make his grandmama cry, but he could write about the most dark, primal stuff and still somehow be funny.'"
"As this little rambling comes to a close, I can’t help but extend the Truckers’ experience in the music world to the lives that we all lead. Today may be shitty. Yesterday may have been a trial. But, if you work hard, take a few chances, and trust your skills, you too could end up with the success you deserve. Or at least you will know you did the things that were true to your soul. Cooley, Hood and the rest of you, thanks for the lesson."
"When Patterson Hood finished singing, he laid his guitar down on stage, still plugged in and walked off. He was followed, one-by-one, by Mike Cooley and the rest of the band, leaving the stage empty when the music ended. Wow."
"Openers the Drive-By Truckers, a club-level band with the spirit of a '70s Southern rock act, likely earned a few new followers with their performance.
They delivered a roaring, hourlong set with far more energy — and a far higher volume — than most stage-warmers. Kudos to Petty for letting them really crank it."
"The crowd left drenched, but happy, after seeing one of the better rock shows to come through Little Rock since the last time the band was in town."
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Music I Fucking Love
Jeff Soileau posted his song "Muscle Shoals" on Patterson's Facebook page earlier this week. His son, Evan, created the video. Both song and video are very fine work. The first line is such a large part of the lore of the Shoals. So many variations of that story and not at all a myth. I've seen catfish 4-5 feet in length and so old that they had algae growing on their backs.
The rest of the tune is a great history lesson of Northwest, AL.
Yes, we were very close to being Detroit. Very close.
BUT, what really captured my fancy about this tune was the vocalist, Lera Lynn. An Athens native (wtf is in the water down their, seriously... Athen's should have its own MTV).
I couldn't be more enamored with this woman. I've always been a sucker for female songstresses but, lawdy, I've been listening to her all week long. No, it doesn't hurt that she OMG beautiful (hey, I think Shakira is beautiful too, but if she opens her mouth and the volume is still on, I'm reaching for a bat to smash things and knitting needles to puncture my ear drums) BUT, she also is a mighty fine strummer (been trying to copy her all week w/0 much luck) and her voice is this ethereal soul-rangy perfection.
So, yes, I'm musically smitten. This is what makes music so very special. It is like finding magic that's been there all along. Keeps hope alive.
Makes me want to move to Athens... and y'all know my going-back-to-the-south issues. Powerful stuff.
I've played this about 3o times this week. I'm really digging the production by AthensSoundies, too. This video moans 'Athens'. Porch singing, summer rain on broad, green leaves...
"As you folks know, we don't normally sell original DBT art unless something really big is afoot - and sadly, it is. Bill Constable, an old high school chum and fellow musician friend of Jyl's has gotten the cancer at a time in his life when, surprise! , he didn't have medical insurance."
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Brent Best
If you haven't already, do it! If you have already, do it again!
"On the heels of an announcement of a sweet Shel Silverstein tribute, one the contributing artists is getting a compilation of his own. John Prine, known for the wry humor of 'Illegal Smile,' the thoughtful protesting 'The Great Comprimise,' and the sweetly sad 'Donald and Lydia,' will be feted by artists such as Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, My Morning Jacket, Conor Oberst, and the Drive-By Truckers. A full track list follows:"
I learned valuable insight last Thursday night at Webster Hall into why people quit their day jobs, sell their homes, buy a camper, and follow their favorite band on tour as a lifestyle.
The Drive-By Truckers played for just over two hours on April 1, 2010 in support of their new album The Big To-Do. My father and I attended the show and haven't stopped talking, emailing, or texting about what an experience it was.
Q: You guys were ahead of the curve in establishing an online presence, building a fan base without a record label and manager. How did that come to pass?
A: It's true. We were in early. We put the band together in the 1996-98 period when the Internet was kind of taking shape and we had a site manager, Jen Bryant, who was already doing Web design for a living. So we were able to get a really good site together, all on our own, for very little money.
We started to feel the impact immediately. It would be a long time before we were drawing a crowd, but there would always be five people there, no matter where we went, who knew who we were. We weren't just shooting in the dark.
"ExploreMusic chats with Mike Cooley from the Drive-By Truckers on their recording process, the different sound on their new album 'The Big To-Do,' their plans for a new record, and their involvement on social media sites."
"Actor Robert Duvall, left, stands with country singer Billy Joe Shaver during a break in Shaver's trial Thursday, April 8, 2010 in Waco Texas. Shaver, 70, is charged with shooting Billy Bryant Coker outside Papa Joe's Texas Saloon in Lorena, Texas on April 1, 2007."
"In December we posted a story from the Athens Banner-Herald that reported an apartment theft in Athens, GA. In addition to many other valuables, one of the stolen items was a Tom Petty box set."
"His compound, which once belonged to his grandfather, a cotton farmer, is now home to Mr. Anthony; his father, Bishop Anthony, a retired insurance adjuster and occasional restaurateur; and sometimes Mr. Anthony’s partner, Natalie Chanin, and their 4-year-old daughter, Maggie. (She and Maggie come and go “on a part-time basis,” Ms. Chanin said, because her business — producing handmade clothes and soft goods under the Alabama Chanin label, which is sewn by local seamstresses and coveted by fashion world insiders — is run from her own home in Florence, Ala., a five-hour drive away.)"
"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."
"The tour begins May 6 in Raleigh, NC and will take the band throughout the US and Canada all summer long. Special guests on the tour will include a mix of appearances by My Morning Jacket, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Joe Cocker, ZZ Top, and Drive-By Truckers."
"And there is only one thing the American People hate more than cowardly lying bullies.
People who lie down and roll over to cowardly lying bullies and let them take their lunch money.
WITHOUT EVEN A FIGHT.
If you had a choice between either voting for cowardly lying bullies or voting for someone who lets a cowardly lying bully beat them up every goddam day and never fight back.....who would you vote for?
That is the choice the American voter faces in November.
That is the ONLY reason any swing election will be close this year.
The Republicans have a tiny base, a horrible record, no money, no ideas, no solutions....nothing. And the voters KNOW this. Yet they have no real choice. Vote for the bully, or vote for the victim of the bully who gets rolled every frikking time. When they aren't busy running from the fight or hiding under their desks, that is.
Their is only one thing the Democrats have to do to change that, to BREAK the hold of the bully and get our government working for the American People again.
"WASHINGTON — A major health insurer that wants to boost rates in California by up to 39 percent was trying to maximize profits by purging its sickest customers while spending millions on exorbitant salaries and retreats for its executives, congressional Democrats said Wednesday."
