The Art of the Rock Show

Drive-By Truckers

Jackson Free Press

June 16, 2010

My first rock show was in sixth grade. I saw the Smashing Pumpkins on their Infinite Sadness Tour. Guitarist James Iha and bassist D’arcy bounced around on the immense stage as they played, while Billy Corgan moaned and wailed into the microphone like he was dictating his suicide note. This was energy and passion. The show instantly became a concert benchmark for me.

As the years went by, though, I realized that maybe what I had seen wasn’t necessarily as good as I thought it had been. The more bands I saw, the more I realized I was watching the same show with different characters. The lead singer always stood at the microphone and sang, eyes closed, passionately pleading and howling. Other band members jumped around, demonstratively whipping the necks of their instruments up and down and side-to-side, in a display, I suppose, of their uncontrollable aggression.

Eventually, it just stopped working for me.

The first time I saw the Drive-By Truckers was 2002, and this concert changed everything. The band alternated between arena rock and country without losing an ounce of urgency—their sound always tinged with musical and mythological Southern influence.

But it wasn’t just the music that made it such a great concert. It was the first time I felt a genuine connection between a band and the crowd. One of the memories that sticks with me was Patterson Hood, the lead singer, and then-guitarist Jason Isbell looking at each other and letting their enthusiasm overwhelm them as they burst into huge smiles. These guys were living every boy’s rock-star fantasy, and they knew it. It was a completely organic moment and so refreshing. The new benchmark had been set.

I saw the Truckers again a few months ago in New Orleans, and while the lineup had shifted slightly, that enthusiasm was still evident. They have long been a band representing the lower middle class, a strata that in recent years has been repeatedly brutalized. These themes are naturally prevalent in the Truckers’ music, and while they are always mentioned in their concerts, they are never the focal point.

The band could easily harness their populist anthems to work the crowd into an anti-establishment frenzy. However, they recognize that these emotions aren’t constructive. While their songs about foreclosures and broken homes aren’t always the happiest stories, they do manage to lace them with humor and hope—two emotions that are considerably harder to evoke than unchecked rage.

That is not to say you leave their concerts with no sense of anger at the government and the entitled. It is impossible not to. But those feelings take a back seat to the feeling of unity and proactiveness the band instills in you. After a Drive-By Truckers concert, the few hundred strangers you entered with won’t quite feel like strangers anymore.

The Drive-By Truckers will be coming to Hal & Mal’s June 26 in support of their newest album, “The Big To-Do.”

Original Article

Forgetting the Little Things

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit

Jackson Free Press

February 11, 2009

Jason Isbell made a name for himself as third guitarist for the preeminent southern rock band of this decade, the Drive-By Truckers. While he was with the band, Isbell established himself as arguably their folksiest songwriter. Despite his junior-songwriter status, Isbell’s contributions always shone through on the Truckers’ albums. His soul-weary voice combined with his unpretentious, personal lyrics was always poignant. The song “Outfit,” from the Truckers’ 2003 album “Decoration Day,” remains one of their most moving songs.

Isbell split with the Truckers in 2007 and released his well-received debut solo album, “Sirens of the Ditch,” the same year. His newest release, “Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit,” is a bold step forward for him. He sets out to expand his sound on the album, dipping his toes into different sounds and genres of music.

The results are as problematic as the idea. Few artists ever successfully pull off this hodge-podge album concept without it sounding disjointed and overwhelming. Isbell inevitably falls into this trap.

The record opens promisingly, as its first two songs, “Seven Mile Island” and “Sunstroke,” play to his strengths as a singer. The instrumental lineup is minimal, which allows his expressive voice to come through at its most effective.

Then the first problem arises. The track “Good” boasts an instrumental assault that The Hold Steady would salivate over. However, the chorus veers a little too close to the Gin Blossoms for comfort, and Isbell’s voice doesn’t lend itself to driving bar rock songs. His weary voice over such a heavy riff is the musical equivalent to an aging boxer stepping into the ring with someone half his age.

The album’s highlight is “Cigarettes and Wine,” a seven-minute love song that maintains its power from start to finish. Its chorus features Isbell’s world-weary vocals at their best with lyrics to match (“She lives down inside of me still / Rolled up like a twenty dollar bill”).

After this relatively strong beginning, the album trails off a bit. It offers three forgettable songs, including the regrettable Jack Johnson-inspired “The Blue,” before picking its head up one last time for Isbell’s only successful step outside the comfort zone, “No Choice in the Matter.” The song is an ode to the Muscle Shoals sound, complete with a horn line.

The album closes with something closer to a whimper than one would like. It has two more disposable songs before an instrumentally strong, though vocally underwhelming closer, “The Last Song I Will Write.”

Jason Isbell is a talented songwriter whose career bears following. With an expressive voice and a natural eye for the small things, he has the ability to deliver solid, strong songs. “Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit,” while offering glimpses of this potential, ultimately leaves listeners wishing he was a little more focused on his strengths and less on genre-hopping.

Original Article

Singing for a New South

Drive-By Truckers- Brighter Than Creation's Dark

Jackson Free Press

January 30, 2008

The Drive-By Truckers are an old-school southern-rock band. In 2001, they released “Southern Rock Opera,” which will go down as the best southern-rock album of the decade. The band proudly touts their three-guitar attack (a la Skynyrd) and will defend the South ’til death. But unlike many other popular southern-rock bands, the South the DBTs represent is one in which Robert E. Lee and Martin Luther King can coexist as heroes in history. The DBTs represent a South that hasn’t been co-opted and boiled down to the solitary symbol of the confederate flag.

But Southerners generally overlook the content of DBTs’ songs, which don’t highlight newsmakers who hang nooses from trees or protest the removal of the Ten Commandments from a courthouse. The protagonists of the Truckers’ songs are unpretentious, often ignored people who have common problems; problems such as having to worry about the foreclosure on the family house, or not having the money to keep up with the rising cost of living. In their songs they put a human face on these ubiquitous issues without ever getting too preachy.

On Jan. 22, the band released their seventh studio album, “Brighter Than Creation’s Dark,” which perfectly fits into this vein. The studio record matches the energy and quality of their live displays, and shows the band’s gradual shift from southern arena rock to country. Patterson Hood, who is half the main singer/songwriting team, and bassist Shonna Tucker have a beautiful chemistry that fits somewhere between the duos of Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, and Frank Black and Kim Deal from the Pixies. You can hear this on the opening track, “Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife,” on “Daddy Needs a Drink” and on the heart-breaking song, “The Home Front.”

Soul-music legend Spooner Oldham played the piano, organ and Wurlitzer on more than half the songs on the album, giving the Truckers’ sound a dimension not heard on any of their previous records.

Mike Cooley, the other half of the songwriting tandem, continues to pen strong songs as well, generally acting as the outlaw voice to counterbalance Hood’s play-it-straight voice. For every forlorn, self-destructive character that Cooley presents, like the narrator and Lisa in “Lisa’s Birthday,” Hood will introduce a persevering character, such as in “The Righteous Path.” It’s the feeling that both their characters will end up in the same dreary place that gives the music its power.

The main problem with the album, as with most DBT records, is the length. Clocking in at nearly 80 minutes, at times you wish they had trimmed some of the fat off the album, or at least a couple minutes off the five minute-plus songs.

“Brighter Than Creation’s Dark” continues the Drive-By Truckers’ tradition of creating straightforward, intelligent music, and they remain one of the few bands that intellectuals and hillbillies can agree on.

Original Article