I think I first heard Drive-by Truckers about 20 years ago, when they popped up on 3WK. I thought they were pretty good, but didn’t really dig into them for several years, until they released the live album, It’s Great To Be Alive, and 3WK was playing People On the Moon and Hell, No I Ain’t Happy from it. There was a definite undercurrent of pissed-offness about them that really spoke to me at that time, so I picked up the 3-disc version of that album, and listened to it on heavy rotation for a couple of months,.
A couple of years later, I got into Jason Isbell via his Reunions album (key tracks: Overseas, What Have I Done To Help), and started digging into his back-catalogue. That was a bit too country for me, but in the process, I discovered that he used to be in Drive-By Truckers, so I started digging into them, too. More in the Lynyrd Skynyrd vein of slightly countrified Southern Rock rather than the unapologetic country of Isbell’s Southeastern, there was a lot to like.
Then DBT released a few more albums, which seemed a lot more currently-political (The New OK, The Unraveling) – and directly aligned with my own political viewpoint – while still kicking musically. And that’s where I started working backward, picking up their earlier albums – The Dirty South, Decoration Day, and Southern Rock Opera, which quickly became a favorite This was definitely outside my usual listening, but something that I really began to appreciate.
So when I saw they were on tour with a stop in Houston, at the House of Blues, I had to go. And as a bonus, they were playing Southern Rock Opera in its entirety – all one and a half hours of it! When tickets went on sale, I saw they had a ‘VIP’ option as well. I’ve done that before a couple of times for The Decemberists, so I figured I’d do the same for DBT. I can’t remember the cost – I think maybe 3x the standard ticket cost, but for that you got a souvenir ticket signed by the whole band, a sew-on patch (odd, but The Decemberists gave same thing), a laminated VIP pass, and most importantly, early access to the venue to see the band play a couple of warm-up numbers, followed by early access to the merch stand where you could spend more money (which I did!).
The warm-up was pretty good. It was advertised as “two songs” but they came out and played four. This wasn’t strictly a soundcheck as I’d heard that while we were queueing up to get in. Instead, it was a fairly loose full run-through of the songs (including a couple they’d play later anyway), but it was good to hear them in a more personal setting. I looked around and there were maybe two dozen of us who had bought into the VIP package, so it definitely felt intimate – especially when you could lock eyes with the band, and they’d smile back at you. Was it worth the extra? Yeah, I think so. It would have been nicer if they’d taken questions from the audience (as The Decemberists did) but Patterson Hood looks pretty intimidating even on a good day, so I don’t know I would have felt too comfortable asking him probing questions, anyway.
The other advantage of early entry was you could get right to the front before the ‘regular’ crowd started filtering in – which meant I was right up against the barrier, just to the left of center stage. Perfect.
There was no support band, as Drive-By Truckers would effectively be performing two sets – the Southern Rock Opera run-through, and then an shorter (but longer than an encore) set playing some of their other songs, not on that album. So around 8:30pm they ambled back onto the stage, and launched into it.
It’s an interesting band. Patterson Hood definitely functions as the front-man, and delivers (I think) all of the stage banter with the audience, along with a good chunk of the vocals and plenty of forceful guitar work. But his counterpart Mike Cooley also shares vocals and does a lot of the fancier guitar work – all while looking effortlessly cool, calm and collected. And it all meshes perfectly – their respective (vocal and guitar) styles pretty well complement each other, and you never really get the feeling of Hood songs vs. Cooley songs – probably because they’ve been writing and playing together for so long.
Given that DBT already has two pretty decent guitarists, you might question the need for a third (although it never did Lynyrd Skynyrd any harm), but Jay Gonzales still manages to come across as the real guitar hero, stepping up to unleash some blistering guitar solos, before retreating back to the keyboards to round out the band’s sound from there. My favorite member to watch was definitely the bassist, Matt Patton – not just for the locked-in groove that was underpinning it all, but for his permanent smile, which seemed to be a mixture of feeling he was the luckiest man alive for getting to do what he was doing, and being stoned and vibing at the gnarly sounds that were coming out of his fingers. I don’t know what he was really thinking, but his blissed-out smile was contagious and you couldn’t help but be in a good mood – even during the more somber songs (like Angels and Fuselage, about the plane crash that killed half of the aforementioned Lynyrd Skynyrd).
Overall, they played for around 2¼ hours, which was the full 1½ hours of Southern Rock Opera with a few other things thrown in along the way. If you’ve heard any of their live releases you’ll know that Patterson Hood likes to include little anecdotes about or explanations of his songs, and he took advantage here to explain The Southern Thing, which apparently didn’t used to get much of an outing on account of dipshit Southerners misinterpreting it and seeing it as a rallying cry and not the denunciation of them that it actually was.
Annoyingly, a fair chunk of the audience chose to talk a fair amount as well, much to the annoyance of Hood, who did direct a few barbed comments at them. That’s something I never understand at concerts. I go see a band and I want to give them my full attention for the entirety of the time they’re on stage. Partly out of respect for the artist, but mainly because that’s what I fucking paid to do. But there always seems to be people who just see it as a social night out – time to catch up with their friends while a band is playing in the background. Maybe they should just price it all at the VIP pricing, just to weed these inconsiderate fuckers out.
Anyway, despite that, it was a damn good gig. Hard, southern rock played with a passion by a bunch of guys who were clearly really happy to still be doing it. Highlights: (my personal favorite) Ronnie and Neil, Let There Be Rock, Zip City (for the guitar work), and the encore, a sing-along cover of Keep On Smilin’. by Wet Willie. Would I go see them again? Yeah, definitely. And would I pay for the VIP package again. Totally.
Setlist:
- Days of Graduation
- Ronnie and Neil
- 72 (This Highway’s Mean)
- Dead, Drunk, and Naked
- Guitar Man Upstairs
- Birmingham
- Ramon Casiano
- The Three Great Alabama Icons
- The Southern Thing
- Surrender Under Protest
- Wallace
- Made Up English Oceans
- Plastic Flowers on the Highway
- Primer Coat
- Mystery Song
- Zip City
- Let There Be Rock
- Every Single Storied Flameout
- Road Cases
- Women Without Whiskey
- Life in the Factory
- Shut Up and Get on the Plane
- Greenville to Baton Rouge
- Angels and Fuselage
- Keep On Smilin’
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