Recently I‘ve come to the conclusion that I‘m a bit of an old man. Not any sense of age or appearance as I’m still able to bend down and pick things up without making a noise and I know how to update an ipod - it‘s more a state of mind thing. I’m not the type of person who will get peeved at Facebook changing their homepage - who gives a flying fuck? I think young people’s manors have taken a decidedly dire turn towards inexcusable discourtesy and I’m only 23 and I also fucking loathe the X-Factor and believe it is the foundation of apocalyptic happenings with civilisation almost certainly being doomed due to the smoke and mirrors tricks played by these corporate, know-nothing Nazi bastards.
But there’s a number of reasons for this - My overbearing cynicism and slight naivety certainly contributes to this uneasy state of agitation, not to mention a touch of unjust arrogance and a healthy helping of stubbornness. But most old men confine to these tendencies so I’ll sweep it under my Marks and Spencer’s rug and sit with a smug grin as I don a Boden shirt.
But before I appear too grumpy to even approach, I‘d like to confirm that I do enjoy a number of things. Cigarettes is one. Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young, The Rolling Stones, red wine, Uncut Magazine is a god damn bible, bitter, the debauchery and love-fest of the sixties and seventies which I can sure as hell read about due to being born a few decades too late. Then there’s the Drive By Truckers discography which is a work of exploration in itself. The entire rock and roll saga of nostalgia intrigues me on a daily basis, and I also like to read. But that’s it.
Currently my life is a little hectic. I’m working two jobs so I can pay of Uni debts and eventually collect enough tender to be able to do what I want in a year or so. Write. So while I work my near-seven day weeks I come across a variety of utter twats. In particular, one excruciating trait dominated particularly by buck-toothed, public school girls grates me like nails on a chalk board…
In what complex strata of humanity do these hand-me-down, second-class princess’s believe it’s satisfactory to wander around in shops, cafes and restaurants while aimlessly spewing out futile noises posing as conversation on their phones. While being served they jabber, while waiting in line three inches from my face they jabber, when did this become acceptable? I’m sure Tara and Beatrix can live without your ineffectual input for a minute of two while you show some politeness and courtesy to those around you.
Just the other day in a retail outlet I was standing there when this bouffant haired, cocktail drinking Ab Fab throwback plods in, hand glued stuck to her left ear, ‘Yaaaaar’ she disgorged as her face contorted back into that scrunched up balloon knot of failed botox, ‘Yaaaar I know, yes Mummy, I’ll explain it all later but it was sooooo gorgeous’. Well that must have been a vital line of communication between to highly intelligent individuals. The only hope these air-heads have is to marry rich, which most do, or let their parents path their way through private education and high-class social networking until Daddy has to call in a favour to the chairman of the board.
These are the type of girls footballers love. Someone with a corresponding echelon of aptitude and intellect. Maybe we should just let them breed in a gold-clad farm somewhere among telephone pylons and a cloud of carbon monoxide that their gas guzzling, grotesquely personalized automobiles emit with constant coverage of their meaningless subsistence by Hello and Ok magazine. But obviously this doesn’t apply to all, just most.
I gather though, from my experience among these characters, that there is a sense of superiority amid the upper-class females whose Blackberry’s are surgically attached to their scathing paws. And I suppose this is nothing new. The poor only have themselves to blame, right? So the paupers who come face to face with these vulgar and uncharitable ‘yaaaars’ should really just accommodate the substandard conduct. OMG.
Since I can remember I’ve always been curious about the Southern states of America. Perhaps it’s my Dad’s interest in Westerns like ‘Lonesome Dove’ and ‘Dances With Wolves’ along with a youth spent travelling the U.K and places like Georgia and Alabama to follow the misconstrued legend that is Lynyrd Skynyrd. Both of these suggest reason for curiosity, but I think there’s more to it than that.
There’s some fear inducing element that appeals to me regarding The South. It appears as a straight forward and slightly backward existence aided by confederate right wingers and crooked politicians, but I think this is the misunderstood beauty of it all - as Ronnie Van Zant attempted to interpret in ‘Sweet Home Alabama‘. Fuelled by liqueur and horse riding mafia men, leather jackets and Jack Daniels, bar room brawls and backhanded compliments, a unified sense of brotherhood and above all - that mythological flair of old time rock and roll, and when a Southerner slurs his way through that viscose accent under the smoky cloud of 20 Marlboro Reds, there’s a harsher sense of reality, but one that’s all the more exciting.
I began listening to The Drive By Truckers around eighteen months ago. I’d heard bits and pieces, shards of praise and adoration from Uncut Editor Allen Jones prompted me to delve deeper into the thrilling truth behind this unappreciated and undervalued genuine Southern rock band.
Since the release of their first album (now on their 10th) there have been numerous changes to the line up. Including the five in the band at the moment, there have been seven others involved throughout the years, all adding some form of solicited input to the records they have been putting out - either personally via their first two albums or on the major who has supported them since 2000. Out of all members been and cast into the abyss, one name will notably engrave itself into the long history of DBT as a legend, and that is Jason Isbell.
In 1998 the Truckers released their debut record, self-funded and individually put out for the masses to enjoy. ‘Gangstabilly’, which was then re-released by their Major in 2005, is the most ‘country’ of their eleven albums. A vein of authenticity and true southern spirit ran through this album, which although doesn’t portray them in their brightest hour, it did construct a future for them to build upon.
In 2001 Patterson Hood, Mike Cooley and the other DBT bandits created a concept album (Isbell was not in the band yet). An unsettled and nervy path to explore, especially when you consider the subject of this concept record was Lynyrd Skynyrd, a misunderstood collective whose genius pennings of country rock and roll stormers has met with slightly unappreciated response from a world who maybe just don’t get it quite yet…
It was not so much a point to prove for DBT but more of a story to tell. People’s misconceptions of the Southern thing have led them down a dubious and ill-informed street where Skynyrd’s greatest achievement is portrayed as ‘Sweet Home…’ and every other confederate flag waving, hard-working, chain-smoking working class individual is an uneducated racist whose adulation for George Wallace comes before the welfare of their family. It soon became clear ‘The Southern Rock Opera’ was a record about exposing the tales of legends with blasting guitars and an overwhelming sense of beloved pride. It was a record supported by an in depth spine of research behind Skynyrd and co. as well as a flirting sense of nostalgia for a group of people who grew up around The Southern Thing.
‘The Southern Rock Opera’ was also created with the intent of exposing some rather fabled elements of the past. When Patterson Hood wrote ‘Ronnie And Neil’ he was writing with passion, and that comes through with a gritty rockin’ ease. His deep awareness of the Muscle Shoals association (due to his father being in the original line up) added a sense of historic importance to the song and when singing about a misread friendship between two of rock and rolls greatest song writers you have to be careful, but Hood didn’t approach this with a sense of care - he couldn’t. Throughout the howling anthem about Young and Van Zant, Hood tells a tale of unity and understanding between to very delicate individuals who consistently attempted to keep their private lives private - the way it should be. It hits emotional peaks of utter rock and roll brilliance when Hood hollers out with absolute awe-inspiring growl…
“Now Ronnie and Neil became good friends their feud was just in song Skynyrd was a bunch of Neil Young fans and Neil he loved that song So He wrote "Powderfinger" for Skynyrd to record But Ronnie ended up singing "Sweet Home Alabama" to the lord”
And in the aftermath of this poignant anthem Hood brings the fatal reality of it back to us, ‘And Neil helped carry Ronnie in his casket to the ground, And to my way of thinking, us southern men need both of them around’ and our sense of displacement with our existence resumes as we realise that DBT are right, we still need Skynyrd - or the legend that they’ve tattooed to the history of music.
Other reflective highlights of this double album include ‘Let There Be Rock’, a song about Hood’s music obsessed youth, up to no good and not regretting it, ‘Greenville to Baton Rogue’ which tells the unexpected journey Skynyrd took on their private plane before its incurable crash in 1977 which took the lives of Van Zant, Steve Gaines, Cassie Gaines and two road crew members. It’s embedded with glory and elation as well as fear and mortality, which is what makes this record celebrated and in-depth in its own terms.
Then there was ‘Decoration Day’. A sinister premise beats throughout this record like the black heart of these North Alabama characters whose unfavourable antics make this gloomy product of crooked swamp-dwelling cowboys an intriguing and humanizing listen. In this, Jason Isbell‘s first full length album with the band, the young guitarist and singer comes through as a wiser-than-his-years preacher, invigorated by booze and hard-living, calmly stewing his way through the traditional country ballad of ‘Outfit’ which is charged with good old southern morality, originally penned after Isbell’s Dad advised him on staying clear of particular narcotics and to call home on his sisters birthday. The record hit’s a ominous but captivating climax on the epic disruptive scream of ‘Decoration Day’ - a title track that’s enriched in the fraudulent and violent heritage of family’s at war in a place where junkyards act as playground for criminals and the firm hand of the law has little sway over anyone. As heard through the grapevine, Isbell penned this song three days after joining the band, basing it on a true story of a family feud in his home town.
The folklore heard on ‘Decoration Day’ is enhance by its by its heavy-hitting rock and roll punches, packed by the trio of guitars that wail through the grimy thunderous tracks on the album. Then there’s tracks such as ‘Heathens’ and ‘Your Daddy Hates Me’ which add to the substance of this album and the legitimacy in which it relies, and as a whole we can stand back and appreciate this album for what it is - a record of actions and consequences.
One year later in 2003, DBT began work on their sixth full length studio effort - ‘The Dirty South’, another concept album intended at exposing more false impressions of the lives they live and the past they adore. It’s an album packed with irony and hypocrisy, with an air of catastrophe circulating through the darker corners of it‘s gloomier parts.
Another change to the band occurred during the recording of ‘The Dirty South’. New bassist, Shonna Tucker (Isbell‘s wife at the time), had been recruited as the first and only female participant in the band. She bought a variety of skills to the gang, including a luscious and richly soulful voice that yelps its way through the chorus on ‘Never Gonna Change‘ like Merry Clayton in ‘Gimme Shelter’. And it’s this track in question which provides a steady anchorage to the album about the misread southern thing, with Isbell crooning his way through the tracks final declaration of pride and self-respect, ‘You can throw me in the Colbert County jailhouse, You can throw me off the Wilson Dam, But there ain't much difference in the man I wanna be and the man I really am’ he concludes as the scorching guitars slowly burn out.
This, possibly their most accomplished record to date, also contains an edifying and revealing three song suit about Sherriff Buford Pusser. Pusser was a sherriff in Mississippi during the mid to late sixties. Unfortunately for the crooks and thugs who make DBT’s songs so damn appealing, Pusser was on a one-man mission to rid this southern minefield of illegal activity, riding the shacks and bars of moonshine, gambling, whores, brawls and all other filthy antics that make these shady whiskey rock’n’rollers the fabled outlaws they are. His mission, however, was not as straight forward as he had hoped. Pusser died on August 21, 1974 from injuries sustained in a one-car automobile accident. Earlier in the day, Pusser contracted with Bing Crosby Productions in Memphis to portray himself in the sequel to Walking Tall. That evening, Pusser, returning home alone from the McNairy County Fair in his specially and powerfully modified Corvette, struck an embankment at high speed ejecting him from the vehicle. But as with all good tales of misfortune, Patterson Hood felt that the other side of this story must be told, and that’s precisely what he did in ‘Boys From Alabama’, ‘the Buford Stick’ and ‘Cottonseed’, which adorns a multifaceted quality in which Mike Cooley’s corrupt lyricism thickly delves into the darker side of politics and the deadbeats who associate themselves with the fraudulent scheme…
“Stories of corruption, crime and killing, yes it's true Greed and fixed elections, guns and drugs and whores and booze”
And…
“Somewhere, I ain't saying, there's a hole that holds a judge The last one that I dug myself And I must admit I was sad to lay him in it, but I did the best I could Once his Honor grows a conscience, well folks, that there just ain't no good”
By February 2008 this was the DBT’s most successful record, intensified by a number of things, namely the growth and development of the band whose many years together demonstrates that with experience comes an ability to grow as musicians and song writers.
In 2006 the band were to record their final album ever with Jason Isbell. A young man who acted as a totem of solidarity, providing endless quantities talent and an ear for lyrics that scale the path from irony to depression, wit to reality and, possibly most important of all, an ability to craft musical narratives installed with tradition, value and heart-wrenchingly terrifying truth.
The album was named ’A Blessing And A Curse’ and was to be the only other DBT record with the exact same band line up as it’s predecessor, ’The Dirty South’. So with an satirical and rather close-to-home title already set in stone the band went about creating their most controversial album thus far.
It had been a drink-heavy rocky affair since ‘The Southern Rock Opera’. Distortion was rife and people had come to know this band as an Alabamaian rock collective, heavy in the bite that makes rock and roll what it is, but also with the ability to craft a melodic acoustic ditty every now and then, but that was not what they were particularly treasured for. So when ‘A Blessing And A Curse’ came out, fans and critics were slightly challenged as they were hit by an unexpected melodious and harmonious output in which the Truckers owe as much to Willie Nelson, Guthrie and CSNY as their first few outputs did to Skynyrd, Young and Creedence.
Isbell’s input included the oh-so sweet high-note hitting country-pop beauty that is ‘Daylight’, along with the more Springsteen-esqe ‘Easy On Yourself’. Cooley’s ‘Space City’ and articulately insightful ‘Gravity’s Gone’ do not go unnoticed either. The lyrical craftsmanship on ‘Gravity’s Gone’ exhibits some astute observations which includes…
“Those little demons ain't the reasons for the bruises on your soul you've been neglecting, You'll never lose your mind as long as you're heart always reminds you where you left it, And don't ever let them make you feel like saying what you want is unbecoming If you were supposed to watch you're mouth all the time I doubt your eyes would be above it”
Despite the varied opinions of this album, the closing track, ‘A World Of Hurt’, pin points a seminal moment of literary clarity within a judicious bands whose weighty drinking sessions have clearly not malformed their outlook on a world gone to pot. It’s scenic aura and talk-through verses embellish that country-rock lifestyle and the highs and lows of being a normal human, facing the same god damn problems that everyone else does. ‘The secret to a happy ending is knowing when to roll the credits’ Hood chatters as the charismatic depth of his southern slur prudently runs its way through pretentious-absent wordplay in this morose album closer.
On April 5, 2007 Isbell announced that he was no longer a member of Drive-By Truckers. The following day, Patterson Hood confirmed the break on the band's official site. In his letter to the fans, Hood described the parting of ways as "amicable" and expressed the hope that fans would continue to support Drive-By Truckers as well as Jason's solo efforts.
Since that point, DBT have released another four albums, including the nineteen track monster that is ‘Brighter Than Creations Dark’ and, most recently, ‘The Big To Do’, which was met with critical acclaim and a rousing applaud with Uncut editor, Allen Jones, stating that the album ‘Blows the fucking roof off!’.
What I believe is special about the Truckers is that their albums are more than a collection of aimlessly penned rock songs. They steer away from meaningless ditties and filler-heavy tracks as they portray a lifestyle that remains a vital part of American culture and the music scene that continues to thrive there. Obviously the references heard throughout a number of the albums mean very little to us Brits, comfortably wrapped up in our suburban bubble of on-coming social decline, but it’s the insight they construe of being a misunderstood sector of culture that nearly all inhabitants of any form of well-rounded civilization can identify with. Then there’s the nostalgic aspect. They name-drop individuals who most will have no idea about while also paying homage to the likes of Neil Young and Molly Hatchet which only adds to the illusive sustainability of the legends that preceded them.
So while the Drive By Truckers continue to rock, nearly 12 years into their existence, I suggest you take your time to rejoice in a modern day revolution that will never amount to anything larger than is has so far - but that’s what makes these things special. ‘I never saw Lynyrd Skynyrd’, Hood sings during ‘Let There Be Rock’, and neither have we, but at least we can still see Drive By Truckers.
It’s been a while since I’ve written anything. The past six months slowly chipped away at my soul as I trod the monotonous path of promotion, aimlessly assisting in the false-expectation of dullard no-hopers and post-oasis thugs with guitars. It got extremely tiresome to be honest, and music became just another blunt clog in my depressing existance and i knew that when i started to not worry about music then it was time to get the fuck out, but I’ve always been a cynic and I’ve always been naïve - so why change now?
But I’m back behind the keyboard and back listening to music I love, for me, and not for the profit of others. (by the way if anyone i know actually reads this, its not directed at anyone - but the music industry, with big booking agents anyway, is fucked)
So in the spirit of my newly established optimism I’ve decided to review my favourite albums, and although my words will never do them justice and my literary cock-ups will never portray the real beauty of such enigmatic works of art, I thought I’d give it a whirl…
Bruce Springsteen - Born To Run
To review an album of such unfathomable fantasy is a hazardous undertaking which I certainly do not have the talent nor knowledge to complete lucratively, but then again, I believe that very few can put down in words the enormity installed in the lyrical dexterity of this 70’s marker of utter genius.
It’s hard to believe that Columbia were debating the dropping of The Boss and the E Street Band during the year long construction of this, Bruce’s third full length studio output: regret would not have come close to the summing up of that situation had it ensued. Luckily for Bruce and the rest of humanity though, their record label held out for the completion of an album that would define the lustful romanticism of the working class beauty and hope that Springsteen held so dearly to his heart.
Perhaps the most accomplished thing about this album is that over time the myth has not preceded the legend. In the three and a half decades since this defining piece of work was released, the teenage generation has undergone numerous changes be it social, technological and economical, yet the theme of endless summer nights held together by the backdrop of young-gun love and stunning tales of girls, love, lust and escapism still remain so relevant and hopeful.
The thing that captured me about this album is the way that Bruce creates this urban wasteland that through the eyes of a romantic construes into an Arcadian paradise where the summer never ends and our hearts never falter. ‘Screen door slams, Mary’s dress waves, like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays’ he tinkles in the opening spark of subtlety that launches ‘Thunder Road’ into the mini epic that it soon becomes, blossoming with the helping hand of a piano, that as Bruce describes in the ‘Wings For Wheels’ documentary, signifies the beginning of something: in this case, youthful vehemence and unbreakable passion
For someone who rather loathes America, I do love the sheer American-ness of this album. The way the movies portrayed it, they way they said it would be, except slightly more imperfect which undoubtedly adds to its flair. The pretty girls cascading the boulevards, the classic American cars, the shore-side scraps and seaside fires that burn as brightly as the love that inhabits it. Lyrical perfection layered by multi-instrumental howls, building a canvas of saxophones, guitars, pianos and the New Jersey growl of a young man who dreamed of changing the lives of thousands through his melodically uplifting narration.
The concept of escapism runs through the veins of ‘Born To Run’ via tenderly penned lyricism as Bruce displays a sense of captivity within his curb side utopia, ‘Tear drops of the city bed, Scooter’s searching for his groove, the whole world’s walking pretty and I can’t find the room to move’ and he continues, ‘I’m going to sit back real easy and laugh, while Scooter and the big man bust the city in half’.
There’s something mystical about the way Clarence Clemmons saxophone invokes a sense of buoyancy into this album, making it all the more energetic and, as becomes clear throughout the rest of the record, it becomes a necessity in Bruce’s blue collar anthems, accurately construing images of mid-seventies Asbury Park.
As heard in Bruce’s first two releases, ‘Greetings From Asbury Park’ and ‘The Wild, The Innocent And The E Street Shuffle’, these illicit characters he continually turns to, semi-autobiographical in parts, attach themselves to the records and the emotions of the listener. There’s that movie-like sense of epic endings in his proletariat settings of run down arcades and decrepit piers. ‘Jungleland’ clearly portrays this in all its gallant and majestic glory - waves of grandiose pianos and splendorous picture-painting words glamorously ache with the distinguished marksmanship of a man who has finally grasped the unobtainable cusp of perfection, crooning towards the end of the eight minute tale, ‘the poets down here don’t write nothing at all, they just stand back and let it all be’, and that is Bruce in all his unblemished splendour.
Tonight is an important night for Ben Knox. The Low Anthem front man and multi-instrumentalist has been creating music from penniless pockets and hard graft since around 2004, but it would appear that no hard work goes unrewarded. Tonight, around three and a half thousand miles from home, Knox and his Low Anthem cohorts have created a bubble of distinctive calm in Brighton’s Komedia, and while he begins to tinkle his way through some harmonies sweeter than sugar, we realise that the Low Anthem have more to give than just graceful folk music…
The release of their second record, ‘Oh My God, Charlie Darwin’, was welcomed as a step forward from the gospel folk and ambient coos of their slightly more ‘traditional’ and much for DIY first output, ‘What The Crow Brings’, which was modestly crafted between Knox’s and Jeff Prystowsky’s apartments during 2007. After the 600 pressings of this delicate folk debut sold out, the band begun to horde in more followers around the New England area with more exposure on its way as the critical acclaim heightened and the band won the Providence Phoenix Best Album of 2008 Award.
The DIY and hard-working ethic of this humble outfit who originally sifted through garbage cans in the back alley streets of Providence to find cardboard to create album sleeves was rendered once again. Less than a year after the release of their debut they begun work on their sophomore effort which was to be self-released once again, recorded this time in Block Island in the middle of winter during a pacing ten day session.
With the completion of OMGCD the band set out supporting Ray LaMontage and Josh Ritter throughout the U.S and once Rough Trade Records in the U.K got hold of a copy of their second effort it was made album of the month and then the British bookings flooded in with the band playing Glastonbury, End Of The Road Festival, Hyde Park Calling and Wireless. This must have seemed a long way from the brisk winter bite of the snowy New England months.
What appears evident tonight is something rather brilliant. They have humbly transcended from a roots based DIY folk outfit whose angelic campfire croons have braved the violent face of the electric guitar and actually come out victorious. The three-piece swap instruments onstage like children swapping football stickers in the playground with an unhindered ability to substitute high-pitched holy synchronization with hillbilly Tom Waits growls and retain an untarnished sense of true folk authenticity.
‘To The Ghosts Who Write History Books’ was the chosen track to open tonight’s show. And as people calmly trundle through the sold out Komedia crowd, silence from all but the four-piece onstage ensues. Surprisingly it’s a while until they kick in with some of the rousing hillbilly rock that made their second album that little more inflated, wading their way through ‘Ohio’ and the apocalyptic ironies of ‘Ticket Taker’ before the sweet gasp of ‘Yellowed By The Sun’ sets in prior to a new track which is to appear of their forthcoming third album.
A real moment of clarity came from the title track off their second record. The eerie haunt of Knox’s pitch perfect vocals discard all known boundaries of sense and capability, escalating his high notes to peaks unknown he bellows out the atmospheric beauty as is heard precisely on the record, delicate and wholesome. And while the Low Anthem chop and change squeeze boxes, bass guitars, Gibsons, Hammond’s, drums and all other manor of weird and wonderful instruments, the ninety minute set seems to have been and gone - swallowed by our minds while the flickering heartbeat inside us continues to chase with optimism and excitement as we realise that if all else fails, we have The Low Anthem.
