Note from The Hood

Because lazy bloggers take content from the sites they work on and use for the ol' personal blog.

My personal contribution to today's post: Yay for the Gayz in CA.

Now, here's Mr. Hood who is far more interesting than anything I would have bitched about:

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August 4, 2010 (Athens GA, office).

Happy August.

My Mom’s Birthday is tomorrow (8/5). Good manners will prevent me from revealing her age, but we can safely say she’s very young to have a son as old as me (my Father also).

The next day (August 6th) we will play Lollapalooza in Chicago. It’s one of my favorite cities and I’m grateful to be there for the third time in very recent months. The 6th would also be my Grandfather (Hood)’s 100th Birthday. Happy Birthday Smoky! I will no doubt order a shot of fine scotch and raise a toast to a man I really never knew well enough but have none the less been affected by in ways that become apparent as I too age.

This week marks the 25th Anniversary of my meeting and subsequently forming a band with Mike Cooley. 25 Fucking Years! Wow! I’ve always marked August 1st as the beginning of Adam’s House Cat, even though it was some time later before we actually played our first gig. We basically slugged our way through six years in that band, followed by two years of playing as a duo (Virgil Kane) and attempting another band (Horsepussy) before splitting for a couple of years, during which time I moved to Athens GA and began the process of forming what became DBT. The Truckers were formed with the intent of luring Cooley back into the fold and I have always kinda considered it ‘his’ band, as it has usually been closer to his initial vision of how a band should be than Adam’s House Cat ever was. We will celebrate our Anniversary month by completing our eleventh album (Go-Go Boots) but will hopefully commemorate it in a more definite way sometime in the not too distant future.

It’s been a long and crazy summer. We had a blast opening for Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers last month and look forward to playing one more show with them in Cleveland on the 31st. There aren’t many bands we could open for that have been together longer than us and they are a constant inspiration to us all.

Been doing a little bit of writing. Excited about getting a head start on DBT-12. So much of writing is just waiting and trying to be prepared. I have likened it to building a runway so a plane can land, or building a high enough antenna to pick up whatever radio signals are out there. That’s the technical part but the important part is the signal itself and sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn’t. After all these years (37 and counting) it’s still a mystery and I suppose it always will be.

Summer reading has included re-reading Levon Helm’s incredible autobiography“This Wheel’s On Fire” for the third time. Still great and still heartbreaking all these years later. I got to hang out with him for his 70th birthday and he autographed my copy to Ava Ruth and Emmett. They can someday fight over it when I’m gone. Read a badly written, but interesting account of the Frank Lloyd Wright and the ‘Taliesin Murders’ from August of 1914 and then next day watched an amazing film that took place in Germany that same month. If you haven’t seen “The White Ribbon”, I highly urge it, as it was one of the best films of the last several years and I was left pondering it for days afterward. (It won the Palm d’Or at Cannes last year).

Went to Ciné (Athens’ great little art cinema) and saw “Winters Bone” which won Best Picture at Sundance this year. What an amazing film and if there was any justice, Jennifer Lawrence would win Best Actress at next years’ Academy Awards. I also got to see “To Kill A Mockingbird” there as part of their summer ‘classic films series’. It was great to finally see it on the big screen, having seen it a dozen or so times on the small.

My other summer reading includes “Just Kids” by Patti Smith about her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe; and I’m still trying to finish Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian”which is daunting but fantastic. I’m also reading “101 Things I Learned in Architecture School” by Matthew Frederick. I plan to set it to music and dance to it as soon as I finish it.

My listening has included ‘roughs’ for the next Centro-matic album, which may end up being their best yet. I’ve been on a huge binge of listening to The Long Winters, who I saw years ago and have always liked but only recently gotten a-hold of, Bobby Bare Jr.’s new album “A Storm - A Tree - My Mother’s Head”, which he recorded in 2 days with members of My Morning Jacket; and “Brothers” by The Black Keys, which has been in heavy rotation since its release.

In other news: Amazon is running a special on “Murdering Oscar (and other love songs)”, my solo album from last year. MP3 Downloads of it are only $5 for the entire month of August and I’d like to think it’s more than worth it. It’s not quite the bargain of say, buying Newsweek Magazine (the entire thing) for $1, but damned close to it.

Also: “That Evening Sun”, the fine film written and directed by Scott Teems (who this year directed our “This Fucking Job” video) and starring our friend Ray McKinnon is coming out on Blu-ray and DVD on September 7th and PRE-ORDERS can be purchased now. I contributed two songs to it and Hal Holbrook turned in an incredible performance. It also features the last screen appearance from his wife Dixie Carter, who passed away a few months ago.

Don’t miss the new DBT Tour Dates for Fall and stay tuned for more details and dates forthcoming.

Back to packing, as we have Lollapalooza and a quick trip to Spain this weekend. Life is good, albeit busier than hell.

Have a safe and happy rest of summer.

See you at The Big To-Do.

Patterson Hood

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