Drive-By Truckers articles

[Kudzu Guillotine]

From American Songwriter:

Drive-By Truckers, “Ronnie And Neil”
Written by Jim Beviglia

[bovine knievel]

Thanks for sharing. Does it piss anybody else off that you can't comment (on the article) unless you have a Facebook account? Seems like more and more interweb stuff is being governed by your Facebook existence.

[Kudzu Guillotine]

Thanks for sharing. Does it piss anybody else off that you can't comment (on the article) unless you have a Facebook account? Seems like more and more interweb stuff is being governed by your Facebook existence.

I agree and I have a FB account. FB has it's pluses and minuses but I know of plenty of people that have zero interest in FB that should have a means of commenting if they'd like to. The Facebookization of the web leaves them no other option.

On a more positive note, I have to commend publications like American Songwriter for helping to fill the void left by No Depression. I've yet to pick up an issue but I frequently read their articles online. The piece they did with Patterson when Heat Lightning Rumbles In the Distance came out that included audio of him commenting on the songs (as well as the songs themselves) was a real treat. I really love when print, audio and video are mixed together so effectively (though there was no video in this particular instance). One of my favorite sites is Dust and Grooves who do profiles of record collectors (as well as other folks) that usually include a Mixcloud mix that you can play while reading the article. Their current feature is on Zach Cowie (aka "Turquoise Wisdom"), one of the folks behind the Country Funk album that I've seen Cortez and others mention pretty frequently here in the past few months.

[John A Arkansawyer]

Thanks for sharing. Does it piss anybody else off that you can't comment (on the article) unless you have a Facebook account? Seems like more and more interweb stuff is being governed by your Facebook existence.

I agree and I have a FB account. FB has it's pluses and minuses but I know of plenty of people that have zero interest in FB that should have a means of commenting if they'd like to. The Facebookization of the web leaves them no other option.

How the Web is being body-snatched. (And if you read the comments, Bret is right. Google is worse.)

[Cole Younger]

Thanks for sharing. Does it piss anybody else off that you can't comment (on the article) unless you have a Facebook account? Seems like more and more interweb stuff is being governed by your Facebook existence.

Yeah. I deleted my facebook account a while back. Too much stupid on facebook.

[Tequila Cowboy]

New Cooley piece:

http://www.redandblack.com/variety/driv ... 0f31a.html

This was kind of glaring

Though Cooley has performed onstage for more than a decade, he’s always been the quieter part of a larger group — putting himself front and center has created a new set of challenges for the performer.

More than a decade? Try close to three.

Still it's pub and pub is good.

[Kudzu Guillotine]

Sound Bites: Patterson Hood of The Drive-By Truckers


The Drive-By Truckers (l to r): L to R: Jay Gonzalez,
Patterson Hood, Mike Cooley, Brad Morgan, Matt Patton
Courtesy of DriveByTruckers.com

[colodogdoc]

So I know it's frowned-upon to post full articles here but damned if the Arkansas Democrat Online doesn't want you to subscribe to their newspaper to read their articles. Democratic? I think not. Anyways somebody posted this on DBT's Facebook page in its entirety. I thought it was just a really great write-up about what makes the band special, and articulates a lot of the reasons the band hooked me in 5 years ago. Written by a guy named Philip Martin:

Tonight:The best band at Riverfest
[re-posted from my paid subscription]
PHILIP MARTIN

Don’t call what you’re wearing an outfit/ Don’t ever say your car is broke/
Don’t sing with a fake British accent/ Don’t act like your family’s a joke.
—Drive-By Truckers, “Outfit”

Popularity has never been a reliable indicator of quality; people consume what is cheap and available, what satisfies the immediate yen for sweetness or comfort. Billions and billions get served.
It’s a losing game to complain about the culture—it’s like Congress in that everyone understands it’s broken but most people love their little stake in it. The big corporations long ago figured out how to impose certain economic efficiencies on the global market, they figured out how to produce content-free entertainment products that appeal across national, ethnic and tribal bounds. Look at it one way and it’s called appealing to the lowest common denominator. Look at it another and it’s a world without borders. T Bone Burnett says it started when some businessman figured out he could sell music to people who didn’t really care for music, but it probably really started in our schools, where they made reading Henry James and Willa Cather seem like a chore to be deferred or avoided. Now they’re stripping all that’s recognizable of this world out of our movies. (And I would much appreciate it if you children would stay off of my lawn.)

Anyway, most people don’t go to Riverfest looking for anything more than a little sunshiny buzz and fireworks, and we don’t hardly go at all. We saw Richard Thompson persevere on a small stage one evening a few years ago and watched a solo Steve Earle be confounded on a larger one that backed up to a metal show a few years before that. (The lesson there? Don’t bring an acoustic guitar to a rock concert, son.) But most of the time we look at who’s playing and wonder how they’re still alive and make a date to dismiss the spectacle without prejudice. I might be more interested in the likes of Barenaked Ladies and Poison if I hadn’t misspent my youth directly in front of a PA system. I try to remember what Nick Carraway’s father told him—not everybody has had the advantages I have. I saw REO Speedwagon in the ’70s, kids; I hung out backstage with Bryan Adams.

I have no beef with Riverfest. I understand why they book the kind of acts they book; I don’t begrudge Darius Rucker, Daughtry, Sugar Ray, Lupe Fiasco, Bush and the others their spots. I just don’t have much interest in seeing them in this particular venue. I’m pretty spoiled—I wouldn’t spend a penny to see another Rolling Stones show. (I won’t get fooled again.) While I’m probably as susceptible to nostalgia as anyone else, rock critics are not the target demographic for family entertainment festivals run by non-profits.

But I will be down there tonight to see the Drive-By Truckers.

I think the Truckers may be the best American rock ’n’ roll band currently working, though I’m not necessarily prepared to make that argument. (Wilco is still a vital collaboration, but Bruce Springsteen’s E Streeters and Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers are essentially backing groups, right?) What matters is that I’m deeply intrigued by them and their cinematic songs and flashing guitars. I’m impressed by what we might have in the old days called “their integrity,” by which I mean their refusal (or more likely incapability) of compromising their specific storytelling vision. They are a Southern rock band not because they affect the three-guitar attack of Lynyrd Skynyrd or because their singers have voices that sound more like those you’d encounter in the congregation than the choir, but because they make songs about the places they are from and the people they have grown up around. People like us, people like our neighbors. They take our pain—a common sort of pain—and make it into something sharp and piercing; something to lance the wound.

I don’t want to waste your time telling you something you already know or could look up on Wikipedia, but I do want you to consider them, to listen to at least a little of their deep and deeply humane catalog. To consider for a moment or two that music isn’t about contestants getting pitchy on American Idol or The Voice or any of those evil corporate misrepresentations of the art-making process, but about communicating real ideas about the way real people live. The Truckers work a rich if narrow vein of human experience—the experience of those who, like them, grew up in stunted and thwarted corners of the country, in North Alabama and Tennessee and Arkansas. Places that bear the stigma of poverty and willful ignorance, places New Yorkers and Los Angelenos know as swampy pockets of evangelical dread and fear, places cable news anchors parachute into, places worthy of pity and condescension.

Places that exist in the shadow of the so-called “New South”—blighted, angry little towns of shuttered main street stores where the fortunate-to-be-employed cash their paychecks at Wal-Mart and take it home on a gift card.

I know how it is, most people don’t much care about lyrics and can’t be bothered to think about the sounds they use to furnish their lives so long as they match the curtains, so long as they get the major lift coming out of an IV chord. They want their singers pretty and the voices to match. Who wants to hear about some old hooker matter-of-factly instructing a farm boy in “Birthday Boy” (off 2010’s The Big To-Do) or from some jumpy character whose career path had been derailed (on “Used to Be a Cop” from 2011’s Go Go Boots)? I got scars on my back from the way my Daddy raised me/ I used to have a family until I got divorced/ I’ve come too far from the things that could save me/ I used to be a cop ’til they kicked me off the force.)

I guess after all these years I retain an appetite for this kind of music that falls in line with the sounds I’ve been hearing all my life, that threads back to a place I remember and confers dignity on the different and the humble, the poor and the proud. The kind of people who sometimes go to festivals like Riverfest, to party to those old familiar songs.

[John A Arkansawyer]

So I know it's frowned-upon to post full articles here but damned if the Arkansas Democrat Online doesn't want you to subscribe to their newspaper to read their articles. Democratic? I think not. Anyways somebody posted this on DBT's Facebook page in its entirety. I thought it was just a really great write-up about what makes the band special, and articulates a lot of the reasons the band hooked me in 5 years ago. Written by a guy named Philip Martin:

Philip Martin is a good guy and would be okay with it.

His publisher is a pig dog. The Democrat was the pro-segregation paper and the Gazette was the quite heroic anti, as well as the possessor of more Pulitzers than any other paper west of the Mississippi. Eventually, Gannett bought the Gazette, ran it into the ground, and sold it to the Democrat.

[GuitarManUpstairs]

http://blurtonline.com/feature/fool-in-the-rain-shaky-knees-festival-report/

Write up about the Shaky knees festival in Atlanta. Not a particularly interesting article however given my "feud" I have with a friend over Drive By Truckers vs. The Lumineers, I could not help but grin a bit seeing his write up about them closely followed with his description of the Lumineers afterward.

After DBT’s set, I’m momentarily aimless, trudging through the mud and mist, debating whether to stay or go. I can hear new acoustic heartthrobs The Lumineers in the shivering distance as they hokey-pokey their way through Creedence Clearwater’s “Have You Ever Seen the Rain.” Yes, I have, thanks for asking—I’ve seen just about enough of it for one weekend. A few thousand stick it out to hear the festival’s final act, but I decide there’s no way I’m going to let the consumption sink its icy, congested claws into my lungs to watch a bunch of carefully coiffed goons in suspenders and pre-distressed fedoras hump their acoustic guitars for an hour.

[Smitty]

Drive-By Truckers' Patterson Hood Talks New Lineup, New Album

No signs of the DBT's becoming a nostalgia act. yet, anyway.

[Kudzu Guillotine]

Drive-By Truckers' Patterson Hood Talks New Lineup, New Album

No signs of the DBT's becoming a nostalgia act. yet, anyway.

I think it's kind of interesting that they've decided to sit on the new songs up until around release time.

[rlipps]

Drive-By Truckers' Patterson Hood Talks New Lineup, New Album

No signs of the DBT's becoming a nostalgia act. yet, anyway.

I think it's kind of interesting that they've decided to sit on the new songs up until around release time.

Me too, although I'm glad. When they debut live songs before the album release, it's about impossible for me to resist the urge to check them out, even though I'd rather be surprised when I hear the album for the first time.

[Rocky]

Can't wait to hear the new song(s) with the string section.

[Kudzu Guillotine]

Drive-By Truckers' Patterson Hood Talks New Lineup, New Album

No signs of the DBT's becoming a nostalgia act. yet, anyway.

I think it's kind of interesting that they've decided to sit on the new songs up until around release time.

Me too, although I'm glad. When they debut live songs before the album release, it's about impossible for me to resist the urge to check them out, even though I'd rather be surprised when I hear the album for the first time.

I like to hear them (as well as other bands) break in new songs. As much as I enjoyed the last show (Haw River Ballroom), I probably would have enjoyed it more if there had been some new stuff. Thankfully, the Patterson and Cooley solo shows I caught this year included some brand new material.

[Tequila Cowboy]

Here's a good un but not sure who "Mike" Patton is and won't Matt be upset someone else was in the studio?

http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/ ... n-its-good

[Cole Younger]

Here's a good un but not sure who "Mike" Patton is and won't Matt be upset someone else was in the studio?

http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/ ... n-its-good

Yeah I can't tell if the comments section is serious about thinking it is Mike Patton from Faith No More or not but it's hilarious either way.

[beergut]

Epic!!!

[John A Arkansawyer]

Here's a good un but not sure who "Mike" Patton is and won't Matt be upset someone else was in the studio?

http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/ ... n-its-good

Yeah I can't tell if the comments section is serious about thinking it is Mike Patton from Faith No More or not but it's hilarious either way.

I'm pretty sure the guy who said he also loved Matt Cooley had an idea what was going on.

[beantownbubba]

Here's a good un but not sure who "Mike" Patton is and won't Matt be upset someone else was in the studio?

http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/ ... n-its-good

Yeah I can't tell if the comments section is serious about thinking it is Mike Patton from Faith No More or not but it's hilarious either way.

I'm pretty sure the guy who said he also loved Matt Cooley had an idea what was going on.

The name sounded familiar but I couldn't quite place it.

[Kudzu Guillotine]

The name sounded familiar but I couldn't quite place it.

I think it may be someone that posts here. Just a hunch.

[John A Arkansawyer]

The name sounded familiar but I couldn't quite place it.

I think it may be someone that posts here. Just a hunch.

I'm not sure anyone here is that subtle.

[beergut]

It's in your fist but you can't grab it.

[John A Arkansawyer]

Man, I'm slipping. It took me till this morning to notice this:

regular DBT collaborator David Barbie

[Tequila Cowboy]

And Rolling Stone weighs in (largely regurgitating the Billboard piece):

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/ ... s-20131111

[4sooner]

And Rolling Stone weighs in (largely regurgitating the Billboard piece):

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/ ... s-20131111

So,....Neff's back in??????
Great job RS

[Tequila Cowboy]

And Rolling Stone weighs in (largely regurgitating the Billboard piece):

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/ ... s-20131111

So,....Neff's back in??????
Great job RS

Yep, it ain't their glory days to be sure.

[Kudzu Guillotine]

For bands that have gone through frequent line up changes such as the Truckers (and Skynyrd), I often see outdated photos used by a variety of publications, venues, etc. Most recently, I noticed the Haw River Ballroom used an old photo on FB. Several of us politely directed them to the most current one on the DBTs' website and they promptly corrected it.

[RevMatt]

Don't get me started on Rolling Stone. They haven't been the same since they moved from San Francisco to New York in 1978, promptly missing out on the great San Francisco punk scene of the late 1970's. Today, when most people talk about San Francisco punk rock, all they know about are The Dead Kennedys. But San Francisco from 1978 -- 1981 might be the most underrated scene. Lots of great bands. But I digress... Back to the topic.

[Kudzu Guillotine]

Surely, Rolling Stone should know better but this particular problem isn't unique to them, at least from what I've seen. Wasn't it Billboard who initially reported the story that got Matt Patton's name wrong? Having fact checking, spellchecking and outright grammatical errors happen so often is a clear indication that that sort of attention to detail has gone out the window in the age of journalism on the internet. Hell, some of the same problems also plague print publications, especially since typewriters and proofreaders have been replaced by computers.