Music

Going Solo

Drive-By Truckers' Patterson Hood Puts Heartache to Song

by Hannah Levin

Wed July 14, Tractor Tavern, 9 pm, $10.

Choosing to create music during the demise of a marriage is a risky proposition that's also difficult to resist. The simple act of working on one's craft is comforting, but history is littered with humorless personal diatribes of little interest to anyone but their authors. Mercifully, this is not the case with Patterson Hood's divorce time capsule, Killers and Stars (released this spring on New West Records).

In 2001, while weathering the concurrent stresses of a demolished marriage and a storm of inner-circle conflict threatening to dissolve his promising, neo-Southern rock outfit, the Drive-By Truckers, Hood recorded a raw collection of acoustic songs, most of which were written over the previous two weeks and all of which were distinguished by their striking structural differences from the trademark storytelling approach he used for the Truckers.

Instead of vivid narratives about Southern culture and road life, Hood captured the isolated sounds of someone whose troubled headspace causes him to subject-surf over such diverse turf as Belinda Carlisle's affection for cocaine, the ruminations of a retired assassin, and a vengeful fantasy about thawing out a cryogenically frozen Walt Disney. These eclectic entries are interspersed with the more expected shards of bitter anger and shell-shocked grief, with Hood telling his dearly departed that they'll miss him when he's gone and wondering why people always seem to destroy what they love. The end result is an honest, oddball snapshot, whimsical and wistful--and one that should translate beautifully into an intimate, dark-humored evening of entertainment.

editor@thestranger.com

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