After nearly a decade together, Drive-By Truckers have achieved a rare level of success for a working-class rock band. Instead of vaulting to a major label or making an overnight splash by strategically placing a single on a television show, the motley crew of Southern-bred songwriters finally have been able to forsake their day jobs via old-fashioned hard work and years of blood, sweat, and beers. Buoyed by a fiercely loyal fan base and an unusually supportive label (New West Records), they continue to release solid, guitar-driven records informed by their liberal politics, literary minds, and mischievous sense of debauchery. I spoke with singer/guitarist Patterson Hood (one of the band's three frontmen) via phone from his home in Athens, Georgia, where he was spending his last hours of domesticity with his young daughter before embarking on an epic tour in support of A Blessing and a Curse, the band's seventh release.
Did you have much time to spend on pre-production before you began recording this time? Your touring scheduling and family obligations can't allow much time for that.
[Laughs] Actually, the bus dropped us off at the studio, so we were in road mode and very tight when we went in to cut the record.
Really?
Really. It took maybe a day to settle down and get into the groove, but even that went quick. It's kinda like if it ain't broke, don't fix it. We wanted this record to be very immediate and very now. We felt like we'd evolved and become a different band and so we wanted to do something to capture that moment in time.
Compared to the territory covered in The Dirty South, Decoration Day, and Southern Rock Opera, this is a much more inward-looking, abstract record.
This record is much less geographically specific and that's something we wanted to do. I'm sure there are some people who don't like that and maybe some people will—I don't really give a shit, because that's what we wanted to do.
Our best and worst traits come from being very restless and easily bored. None of us has ever made any real money in this thing; we're just now starting to make a pretty good living. It's never like we've had money as a motivating factor—otherwise we would have quit years ago [laughs]. Our main motivating factor has always been our own entertainment. I think some of the best things about this band come from that—and some of the negatives. Sometimes we might have something that's going really good for us [sound-wise], but we just get bored with it—sometimes to the dismay of fans and record companies.
Working with three songwriters who all have such strong, distinct voices has to be a challenge. What does each of you bring to the table, stylistically?
[Mike] Cooley writes stuff I couldn't write in a million years. He can turn a phrase 'bout better than anyone I've ever heard. I'm probably his biggest fan. Jason [Isbell] brings a very overt pop sensibility to [the process]. He's such a technician—his stuff is always really technically sound, whereas sometimes Cooley might revel in the opposite. I'm pretty schizophrenic in my writing, so I'm the middle ground between the two—I can sometimes be as poppy as Jason or as obtuse as Cooley.
Historically, if you're a group like, say, Fleetwood Mac, that creative trinity can be a multifaceted asset, but sometimes there can be too many elements at play. How do you balance that?
No one ever tells anyone what to play on his songs. The person who brought the song in does have a certain amount of veto power... but that doesn't [have to be exercised] too much. There's got to be a lot of mutual respect for it to work. That's probably what keeps us going during those times when we're not necessarily getting along as well.
Have you been having difficult times?
We've been known to have difficult times [laughs]. To me, as long as it's happening musically, everything else... if we can all respect each other and like each other beyond the surface of it, then we can probably continue on for a long time.
