Drive-By Truckers Tackle Lifes' Dualities on New Disc

Sunday News
Published: September 24, 2006
by JOHN DUFFY, Correspondent

For most of its early life, Drive-By Truckers was just another alt- country bar band with a cool-sounding name. But without really setting out to do so, the band has matured into one of the best acts of the eclectic Americana scene. Singer/guitarists Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley met at college, initially playing in punk bands together, but had formed the nucleus of Truckers by 1996 in Athens, Ga.

With independently released albums teasingly named "Gangstabilly" and "Pizza Deliverance," it was easy to dismiss the group as irony obsessed, even if it tackled subjects like death, suicide and arachnophobia. But a rock opera released in 2001 based loosely on the rise and fall of Lynyrd Skynyrd - and chronicling Patterson's coming to terms with his Southern heritage and its musical legacy - signaled the quintet was aiming for something higher, even if that goal might prove to be out of reach. Hood, while preparing for a show in Philadelphia, spoke by phone about how the rock-opera project earned the group a reputation even before it got off the ground. "I knew we were onto something because everyone we knew said it was an absolutely horrible idea. But I always said something can be so bad that it comes out the other side as pretty good."

When it was released, it wasn't the dud everyone predicted, and while the project, from recording to artwork to packaging, cost the band a total of $5,000, Universal's roots-rock Lost Highway picked it up for distribution. From then on, the band was taken more seriously. "But I hope we don't take ourselves too seriously. We sing about some weighty subjects, but in the end, it's still just a rock n' roll show, I hope." In April, Truckers released "A Blessing and a Curse," their seventh full-length album, on New West Records. And while it was recorded in exactly the opposite fashion of "Southern Rock Opera," with most songs written in the studio and often tracked the same day, it is by no means a throwaway affair.

The songs discuss the nature of love and its power, its positive and negative impact. A man suffers loneliness after the death of a spouse on the touching acoustic ballad "Space City"; a youth grows up in the shadow of a deceased sibling on "Little Bonnie"; and a friendship shatters on "Goodbye." "To love is to feel pain. There's no way around it ..." said Hood, almost paraphrasing Buddha in the spoken verse of the album's final track, "A World of Hurt." That pretty well sums up the album's theme: Love is both a blessing and a curse.

The decision to tackle matters of love was almost simultaneous among the group's three songwriters, Hood said. "In the last year, several of us have had babies and started families, and we see love as a much more powerful thing than before," he said. "We live pretty cooped-up together on the road, so we talk a lot and sort of came to the same conclusions." Hood is overjoyed at being a father, but it makes life as a road rocker more difficult.

"It's turned something that is usually a really cool job into something that at times is painful. We're away from home 150 days a year," he said. "It can't help but affect what you write about." Hood said that, in the end, the album's scale tilts toward the "curse" side of love. "Maybe we'll sing more about the blessings on the next album." In closing out the album, the band still acknowledges the blessings amidst the pain. In the end, Truckers would have you believe it's all worth it. "It's not too late to take a deep breath and throw yourself into it with everything you've got ... It's great to be alive."