Drive-By Truckers at Rough Trade East

Drive-By Truckers at Rough Trade East

14 February, 2011
by: Uckfield99

The duality of the Southern thing...

“Have y'all got nothing better to do on a Friday night in London than watch two rednecks?” asks Mike Cooley of Drive-By Truckers. “Nah, London sucks,” he jokes as his best friend and band mate, Patterson Hood, takes a swig from the mandatory bottle of Jack Daniels resting on top of his amp. “Tastes like home,” he declares.

Growing up in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, Hood and Cooley became accustomed to being around that allusive Southern soulful sound. Hood’s father played in the Muscle Shoals band, recording for the likes of Percy Sledge, Bob Seger, Traffic and Cat Stevens while also producing songs for The Rolling Stones and Willie Nelson.  And the influences show. ‘Go Go Boots’ was recorded at the same time as their 2010 effort, ‘The Big To Do’. Realising that they in fact had two albums worth of material, the mould was set. One album was to be a rousing howl of Southern rock and roll (‘The Big To Do’) and the other (‘Decoration Day’) was to draw on the soulful legacy of the music they grew up on, drawing attention to the particular gothic southernisms that they do so well.

Tonight’s show is tied in with the release of the Drive-By Truckers' ninth studio album, ‘Go Go Boots’, and the release of a new documentary about their experiences of making the album and life in the band. The first hundred or so people to purchase the album received tickets to a special acoustic show in the Rough Trade Brick Lane store.

Acoustic guitars have always been kind to DBT. They’ve got the rare ability to yell in whiskey-drenched tones over blistering red-hot solos, but as previous records have suggested, their astute songwriting radiates with just as much fervour in a stripped down environment.

Hood’s voice has improved somewhat over the years, and his melodious clamour is testament to that as he progressively gets louder and the chorus rings with bare-boned affection. As the Jack Daniels bottle beings to become transparent after just twenty minutes, Hood bellows out ‘Mercy Buckets’. The ‘60s soul influences of Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin lightly swoon through this aching declaration of companionship. “I’ll carry your secrets to my grave,” Hood states, before stomping his boots on the stage to open into a pounding acoustic rendition of ‘Drag The Lake Charlie’. A cover of Eddie Hinton’s ‘Everybody Needs Love’ goes down as well as any original material from the band.

Then, as Cooley takes the helm on country ballad ‘Pulaski’, you come close to realising that his viscous Southern slur is made for these types of story-telling ditties. Deeply crooned in his care-free but impassioned way, his lyrical ability only furthers the intellectual approach of their music. They may be rednecks, but that doesn’t mean they're hicks. 

After moving to Athens, Georgia, in his early twenties to start this band, Hood recently announced that he didn’t make any money until he was in his mid-thirties. A total of eleven records have now past and he’s 43, and despite the non-stop touring and constant pouring of their own funds into their beloved records, it’s reassuring to know that there are still bands out there likes DBT – constantly looking to the future but keeping one foot in the past. “I don’t know what I’d be doing if I wasn’t making music,” might be a cliché phrase, but it’s never embodied more truth or conviction than when it’s proclaimed by a Drive-By Trucker.

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