Drive-By Truckers

For the liner notes to the Drive-By Truckers’ newest album, Go-Go Boots, frontman Patterson Hood penned a brief poetic riff called “The Movie Version” to demonstrate the differences between art and reality. “Real life might be stranger than fiction. It’s certainly messier,” Hood writes, before imagining an impeccably rendered cinematic document of that real life that may not surpass it. It is, he says, “hopefully a little more entertaining.”

Assuming the Truckers’ music represents that “movie version” of actual events, you might read Hood’s description of “the camera angles sublime” or his assertion that “the parts were all well cast and the dialogue was snappy” and be inclined to think he’s taking an extremely lofty view of his band’s abilities with this little metaphorical flight of fancy. Quite the contrary: I think Hood’s actually being too hard on himself here. He’s getting at the fact that art can never truly capture all of real life, which is why it so often puts a neat and convenient sheen on things. Yet there may not be a band in business right now that gets closer to including everything about life than the Drive-By Truckers. The good, the evil, the fantastic and the mundane: It’s all present in equal measure on this prolific band’s 11 albums.

Real life may indeed be less pristine than fiction, but the Truckers aren’t much tidier, and thank God for that. No one will ever accuse Hood of having a beautiful voice, and while the band has improved considerably over time from a purely musical standpoint, their melodies, rhythms and even guitar solos still tend more towards the workmanlike than the transcendent. And when it comes to DBT’s raison d’etre—its brilliantly descriptive, story-rich lyrics—messiness has always been the group’s main mode. From the band’s joke-a-minute first two albums (1998’s Gangstabilly and ‘99’s Pizza Deliverance) through its twin opuses (2001’s Southern Rock Opera and ‘08’s Brighter Than Creation’s Dark) and all points in between, the Truckers have never settled for wrapping things up with a neat little bow. Even when they do write about extraordinary people or occurrences, Hood and fellow songwriter Mike Cooley usually find unorthodox angles to take or small but gripping details to uncover, whether it’s two hired hitmen weighing the financial benefits of using a knife over buying a gun (Go-Go Boots’ “The Fireplace Poker”) or a little-remembered competition involving rock and country legends (“Carl Perkins’ Cadillac”). Much more often, however, the Truckers write about the kinds of people and situations that rarely merit a “movie version”—an ex-police officer turned stalker (“Used to Be a Cop”), a former auto-industry worker who ends up working at Wal-Mart (“Puttin’ People on the Moon”) a rock band going nowhere (“Opening Act”) and all manner of drunken small-town ne’er-do-wells.

The lack of pretense is even more starkly apparent when you see the Truckers in concert. This isn’t a band of immaculately chic 20 year-olds.  These five men and one woman are all grown-ass adults who wear comfortable clothes and don’t fuck with laser light shows. Not only do they look like their fans, they also look like a lot of folks who’d never in a million years darken the doors of the Cat’s Cradle or Kings. When you see them live, the only difference between you and them is they’re the ones pouring out their hearts and talent on stage. You’d never call the Drive-By Truckers larger than life—just a hell of a lot louder. —Josh Love