The SoGoth Populism of the DBT

[Smitty]

http://entropymag.org/cosmopolitan-moon ... -part-one/

Take it from this Katherine Anne Porter / Zora Neale Hurston fan – some of the finest contemporary short fiction to come out of the American South hails from the shaggy-haired and power-chord festooned likes of Athens, Georgia-based rock outfit Drive-By Truckers. Two decades into a songwriting career informed by both country music’s rural/urban divide and the cultural semi-bohemianism of indie rock’s club circuit, lit majors and Tin House subscribers remain largely absent from a rowdy Trucker fan base that can rival fellow classic-rock bards The Hold Steady in the beer-chugging department. Yet while both collectives embrace a bar band exterior that belies their more eggheaded tendencies and blue-collar leftism, Truckers songwriters Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley remind me at times less of Hold Steady bellicose frontman Craig Finn and more of John Darnielle, the tirelessly productive creative center of long-running DIY project The Mountain Goats.

What unites such sonically disparate types as Hood/Cooley, Finn, and Darnielle is a commitment to forthright narrative often lacking or at least undervalued within an indie community that regularly prefers obscurantism or sound poetry over storytelling. Yet while Finn’s Hold Steady panoramas consider the fragmentation of hipster/hood rat claques amid a general search for spiritual truth, Hood/Cooley spend less time examining the periphery of mainstream culture and more time pondering the daily trudge and brief highs of the kinds of working class lives receiving little artistic attention outside of country radio. And if the ongoing Mountain Goats project draws strength from Darnielle’s own peripatetic tendencies, with locales and existentialist storylines constantly shifting from West Texas and northwest Illinois to San Luis Obispo and skid row Seattle, Hood/Cooley remain stubborn regionalists, few of their narratives drifting far outside a Deep South orbit, brief jaunts into neighboring states rarely offsetting the heavy familiarity of North Alabama / Southern Tennessee / Western Georgia.

[RolanK]

Power-chords??

[beantownbubba]

Power-chords??

I think he means "loud."

[Rocky]

Kind of an egghead piece but I found myself liking it by the time I finished reading it.

[cortez the killer]

Kind of an egghead piece but I found myself liking it by the time I finished reading it.

Pretty much the same reaction here. The guy is overly-obsessed with his thesaurus. Some of those descriptors are way over the top. And triptych? Really??

Overall, kind of a mixed bag. I like the approach of examining the "Southern Gothic" side of the band in part 1 and concluding with the "Leftist Populism" in the second part. But the editing/fact-checking over at Entropy needs to step its game up. TC already pointed out "Uncle Frank" is a Cooley song, as opposed to the author crediting it to Hood. He also writes "That Man I Shot" & "The Home Front" are off Decoration Day.

[cortez the killer]

Power-chords??

I think he means "loud."

Perfect.

[psychobillycadillac]

Let me summarize:

Blah blah blah, long winded run on sentence made up of wordy bull shit blah blah blah comparrison to other band blah blah blah more wordy bull shit blah blah blah reference to hipsters in a good light blah blah reference to hipsters in a bad light blah blah reference to hipsters in an ironic light that is in of itself ironic blah blah blah psuedo political comparrison of fan bases blah blah comparrison to other band and how that band compares to the first band when compared to other band that had a similar influence that can be compared to other band from the 1970's blah blah blah whimsical prose about how all bands were in the past blah blah blah.....
and the thesaurus comment was spot on and yeah, I took some liberties there, it's just been that kind of morning where last nights alcohol hasn't surrendered to this mornings coffee yet.

or if you want to really simplify this article, here's the third grader version:

I like three bands, they are the Drive By Truckers, The Hold Steady and the Mountain Goats. They make good music and their songwriters write good songs. Sometimes they sound alike and sometimes they don't. Overly analytical comparrisons of social class members and current fashion trends mixed with overt political undertones and wordy run on sentences make my head hurt (ok that last part wasn't the third grader in me) All these bands play live shows and travel arround to play live shows and sometimes they play near me and sometimes they don't. The End.

[beantownbubba]

Kind of an egghead piece but I found myself liking it by the time I finished reading it.

Pretty much the same reaction here. The guy is overly-obsessed with his thesaurus. Some of those descriptors are way over the top. And triptych? Really??

Overall, kind of a mixed bag. I like the approach of examining the "Southern Gothic" side of the band in part 1 and concluding with the "Leftist Populism" in the second part. But the editing/fact-checking over at Entropy needs to step its game up. TC already pointed out "Uncle Frank" is a Cooley song, as opposed to the author crediting it to Hood. He also writes "That Man I Shot" & "The Home Front" are off Decoration Day.

Yep. I agree w/ all that. The guy gets a number of details wrong; he clearly comes from the academic side, which is often problematic when it comes to popular music; and he really wants us to know how many books he's read. But he gets the big picture right and being taken seriously is not the worst thing that could happen to songwriters

I thought it was kind of funny the way his interpretation of "GG Allin" worked even though it was factually inaccurate (Cooley & Hood were long gone from their too small home towns by that time). I thought it was weird that the second, political part more or less led w/ "The Flying Wallendas", one of the band's least political songs. I understand that the author was digressing into the "small town thing" but that whole section was kind of jumbled to me.

I was surprised that virtually all of the song references and quotes were to Hood songs. Gubbels acknowledges Cooley's contributions in a general way but the only 2 specific references I can think of off the top of my head are "Uncle Frank" (which as has been noted was misattributed) and "Cottonseed." Gubbels makes his points just fine using the examples and quotes he does, but even Isbell gets almost as much space as Cooley. Like i said, just surprising, not a criticism.

[brett27295]

Maybe I'm just not intellectual enough but that entire article bored me to tears.

[Tequila Cowboy]

Maybe I'm just not intellectual enough but that entire article bored me to tears.

I found it mostly interesting although honestly I had to Google some of his references, it's been a long time since I've seen the Night of the Hunter for instance (I don't recall having ever read the book), but I thought he made some good points about DBT's brand of populism. My gripes were in the fact checking and the attempt to pigeonhole some songs into his narrative that clearly did not belong. Bottom line it was very earnest and at least partially successful.

[Kudzu Guillotine]

Evidently Patterson and Wes Freed thought enough of it to post it on their FB pages, so there's that. Otherwise, I wouldn't have seen it.

[beantownbubba]

Let me summarize:

Blah blah blah, long winded run on sentence made up of wordy bull shit blah blah blah comparrison to other band blah blah blah more wordy bull shit blah blah blah reference to hipsters in a good light blah blah reference to hipsters in a bad light blah blah reference to hipsters in an ironic light that is in of itself ironic blah blah blah psuedo political comparrison of fan bases blah blah comparrison to other band and how that band compares to the first band when compared to other band that had a similar influence that can be compared to other band from the 1970's blah blah blah whimsical prose about how all bands were in the past blah blah blah.....
and the thesaurus comment was spot on and yeah, I took some liberties there, it's just been that kind of morning where last nights alcohol hasn't surrendered to this mornings coffee yet.

or if you want to really simplify this article, here's the third grader version:

I like three bands, they are the Drive By Truckers, The Hold Steady and the Mountain Goats. They make good music and their songwriters write good songs. Sometimes they sound alike and sometimes they don't. Overly analytical comparrisons of social class members and current fashion trends mixed with overt political undertones and wordy run on sentences make my head hurt (ok that last part wasn't the third grader in me) All these bands play live shows and travel arround to play live shows and sometimes they play near me and sometimes they don't. The End.

"Overt political undertones." Love it.

[Rocky]

being taken seriously is not the worst thing that could happen to songwriters

This is a good point.

[RolanK]

Power-chords??

I think he means "loud."

Perfect.

Probably. But Power chords is a musical (Guitar technical) term, a way of playing the chords (some would say they are not even real chords since they only have the root and the fifth). Imo it would be appropriate for THS (since they are mentioned), Cheap Trick or The Ramones to name just a few. I really wouldnt say DBT is the typical Power Chords band.

Just some nit picking.

[Lone Wolf1]

too fuckin' wordy. a little pithiness goes a long way