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.
No comments:
Post a Comment