I'll get back to that DBT thing before long, but I need to do a little Steve Earle posting first. Me and the Davis saw him in De Moines the other day.
By the way, I can't imagine a cooler idea than a Patterson Hood produced Steve Earle record with the Drive By Truckers as his backup band. They've done that before, for Bettye Lavette and Booker T. Jones. And can you imaging a DBT/Steve Earle tour? Holy God. That'd be the coolest thing ever. Steve's AA sponsor might not approve though.
First a little background for those who don't know who Steve Earle is. Steve Earle is a really big deal. He's widely considered on of the fathers of "alt-country" and of the whole indie roots rock thing, and his legacy as a songwriter makes him a towering figure. For some people, he's like Bob Dylan or Townes Van Zandt (whose name will come up a lot in this post). Because he's an ornery left wing agitator, other people consider him a huge pain in the ass, which is okay by him.
Steve began his career as a kid in the seventies. He was basically a folk singer who was a part of the Townes Van Zandt "cult," and he established a career as a somewhat successful professinal songwriter and a less successful performer. Mostly, he was woodshedding, learning his shit and wracking up experience. After a few false starts (including a shitty neo-rockabiliy album), his career got going in earnest with 1986's "Guitar Town," a a modest hit which is now considered a classic. Steve was kind of a cross between Dwight Yolkham and John Mellencamp: twangy, country-flavored rock music with a strong populist streak. He kept this up for a couple of albums, and then on "Copperhead Road," he upped the rock quotient in his writing and had a big crossover hit, mostly thanks to the song "Copperhead Road," a big ol' badass redneck rock song with some seriously smart lyrics about a Vietnam vet who decides to follow in his grandad's moonshiner footsteps by growing pot for a living.
Guitar town:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytHMQyJfVfg
Copperhead Road:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc86_Weoye0
Then things got ugly. Earle's slowly deepening dependency on drugs got really bad, and he slipped into being a semi-homeless junkie before finally getting sentenced to a year in a rehab facility.
Don't do heroin kids.
He got so messed up that people pretty much expected him to die. He was so bad off that he got a couple of intervention-type lectures from Townes Van Zandt, who at that time was deeply involved with drinking himself to death. When Townes Van Zandt is worried about your health, you are in trouble.
Not all was a waste during this period though. He did write one classic song that showed some real growth under all the fucked-up-ness:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBtQcZx9gAo
Incarceration cleaned him up, when he got out he mounted a hugely artistically successful comeback that produece five classic albums that made him a cult favorite. His rep these days is pretty unassailable. His music also got a lot more diverse. He went deeper into hard rock and even punk rock, he also played more straight-up country and folk music, and he made a couple of bluegrass records. During the 2000's, he's gotten increasingly political (which has made some of his recent albums a little strident, even if he was mostly right about how bad the Bush administration sucked). He really got in hot water when he wrote a song about John Walker Lindh.
Here he is kickin ass in 1996 (BTW, MTV has really fallen in recent years. I can't imaging this being on MTV now):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhj5Y4gG1Ss
A sample of Steve in Irish folk mode:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7-PM_4aeE4
So that's who he is. . . . .
The show we saw was great, not only because it's Steve Fuckin' Earle, but because he's touring behind "Townes," his new record which is, for my money, the best thing he's done in ten years. Townes Van Zandt was one of the greatest country/folk songwriters ever. He was a seriously troubled guy who suffered from mental illenss (his teenaged years were defined by a disasterous enoucnter with electroshock therapy) and addiction, and his various problems meant he wasn't really willing or able to craft a successful career. He spent most of his life as an obscure cult figure, and only after Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard made "Pancho and Lefty" into a big hit did people start seeking him out. He died in his early fifties from a heart attack brought on by a life as a alcoholic. During the last few years of his life, his guitar playing suffered from the nerve damage that achohol had done. That's pretty bad, dude.
The show Steve Earle played in De Moines was in part a tribute to Townes, who was a friend and mentor, and this focus encouraged him to revisit some of the darker episodes in his own life. Before he went through rehab, Steve Earle looked to be on the road to being another Townes Van Zandt, but with faster and with heroin.
The show was an acoustic solo show, but Steve managed to kick it off with a bang. He took the stage and immediately dove headfirst into an intense version of "Where I Lead Me," followed by "Colorado Girl," followed by a bunch of other Townes Van Zandt songs (including, yes, "Pancho and Lefty"). He was in really great form, and his intense delivery and rapid fire approach was overwhelming. His last tour, in support of the relatively upbeat "Washington Square Serenade" (Steve's first album after moving to New York and getting married), got good notices, but the somewhat lighter tone of those shows didn't overwhelm people. (That tour was also marred by some semi-successful experements with a DJ and samplers.) This was something else. It was intense and dark. You don't expect folk music to feel like that.
After about half an hour of heart in the throat intensity, he backed off a little and the show started getting more diverse and more Steve Earle songs crept in. It was just a really good Steve Earle show, with folk songs, political songs, and personal songs mixed and mingled, and lots of stories and political ranting serving to connect things together. Steve stopped touring with a band a couple of years ago. I'd say he's gotten the hang of it.
The most interesting thing about this particular show was the way that Steve has managed to reconnect some of the different parts of his career. By focusing on Townes' life as an outisider and his own past problems, the set managed to connect Steve's political work to a broader interest in anyone who is marginalized. You might say that Townes and Steve brought there troubles on themselves, but Steve does a good job of pointing out that life in the gutter is something that can happen when you chose to opt out of mainstream society. Not that he'd endorse the life he led, but there is a connection between Steve's principles and his painful past.
A couple of moments deserve special attention. As I've said, this show started off pretty dark. One particular harrowing moment was Steve's telling a story about one of Townes' efforts at intervention. Steve gets home and Townes' truck is in his driveway. Steve finds Townes on the couch and Townes comments that Steve looks "like shit." Steve agrees. Then he comments that "your arms look like shit." Steve agrees. Then he asks if he uses clean needles. Steve claims he does. "Every time?" "Yep." "Okay then, I want you to hear this new song I wrote."
And then Steve procedes to play THIS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feM4QT9_AmM
(That vid appears to be from the same tour, so you can kinda get a feel for what the setup was like.)
The other moment was the performance of "Fort Worth Blues." "FWB" is a Steve Earle song written a couple of years after Townes' death about Townes. When Steve wrote it, his son Justin was dealing with the kind of trouble that Steve and Townes had been through, and you have to think it was on his mind. In any event, its a beautiful song, and hearing it in this context made it more so. I like the line "you always said the highway was your home/but we both know that that ain't true." I also like the way the lyrics shift from second to first person in the last verse. It's like Steve is moving from a memory to the present, and the way the lyrics of the last verse echo some of the lyrics in earlier verses really connect the "I" to the departed "you."
This clip is an especially great performance of the song from a television show. It's kinda neat because you can see everybody's trying not to loose their shit. Seeing Steve Earle singing his song makes people loose their shit. There's a famous clip of Steve Earle playing this on "Austin City Limits," and Nancy Griffith is sitting next to him crying her eyes out. The poor guy at 5:10 almost makes it, but not quite. . . . The kid with the funny hat at 4:40 is Justin Earle. Actually, his full name is Justin Townes Earle:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMknbUBLu5E&feature=PlayList&p=BED976106B2BC81A&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=20
And just to screw up that perfect ending to this post, here's the Austin City Limits clip I referred to in the last paragraph:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4WOys7sWvU
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Last DBT post for today
Having a little series on one topic is fun. I'm new at blogging, and this seems to be getting me going a little. . .
I'll do some more of these song things 'till I feel like I'm getting redundant. I want to talk about "Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife." If you're familiar with that song and don't know what it's about, you'll be heartbroken when you hear the story behind the song. You might not want to hear the song again for a while. It's just one of those awful things.
In the meantime, here's a clip somebody recorded of the last DBT show I was at. I was standing just to the left of where the camera is. One of the cool things about DBT is that they are big enough to get written about in the national press and do television every once and a while, but you can still see them at venues where you can get three feet away (if you're willing to get there 20 min before showtime to claim a spot).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHrdGnqGWKo
Remember, this was them on a somewhat off night when they were kinda tired.
That reminds me, do not see them without earplugs.
John Neff looks like he's doing homework back there at that steel guitar.
I'll do some more of these song things 'till I feel like I'm getting redundant. I want to talk about "Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife." If you're familiar with that song and don't know what it's about, you'll be heartbroken when you hear the story behind the song. You might not want to hear the song again for a while. It's just one of those awful things.
In the meantime, here's a clip somebody recorded of the last DBT show I was at. I was standing just to the left of where the camera is. One of the cool things about DBT is that they are big enough to get written about in the national press and do television every once and a while, but you can still see them at venues where you can get three feet away (if you're willing to get there 20 min before showtime to claim a spot).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHrdGnqGWKo
Remember, this was them on a somewhat off night when they were kinda tired.
That reminds me, do not see them without earplugs.
John Neff looks like he's doing homework back there at that steel guitar.
DBT Lyrics project no. 2
This is fun, so I'll do some more.
This is my analysis of Patterson's "Let There be Rock," a key track from "Southern Rock Opera." As always, my comments are in brackets:
Dropped acid, Blue Oyster Cult concert, fourteen years old,
And I thought them lasers were a spider chasing me.
On my way home, got pulled over in Rogersville Alabama, with a half-ounce of weed and a case of Sterling Big Mouth.
My buddy Gene was driving, he just barely turned sixteen.
And I'd like to say I'm sorry, but we lived to tell about it
And we lived to do a whole lot more crazy, stupid shit.
And I never saw Lynyrd Skynyrd but I sure saw Molly Hatchet
With 38 Special and the Johnny Van Zant Band.
[This song is impossible to talk about without talking about the album is comes from. "Southern Rock Opera" was DBT's breakthrough, both commercially and artistically. Before "Southern Rock Opera," DBT was basically a local alt-country band, although they toured all over the place. They played drunken, stumbling electric country music with weirdly morbid lyrics. An intriguing group with a few great songs ("The Living Bubba" and "The Night G.G. Alin Came to Town" which are flat out great, are from this period), but not a first tier band. A great little group that could deliver onstage, but not the kind of band you'd devote a lot of time thinking about. They were clearly a group with "potential."
"Southern Rock Opera" changed all that. It's worth explaining that the record was mostly recorded live, and the band actually had to go out and raise money from investors to make the damn thing. They also had to recruit more musicians to play on the damn thing, seeing as how a concept record about Lynyrd Skynyrd really needed female backup singers on some tracks, and seeing as how it would just be fucking lame to do it without three guitars. This extra guitar slot eventually became the reason they recruited a chubby 23 year old named Jason Isbell to join the touring band. Turned out he could sing and write songs pretty good too. Jason lost weight from smoking cigarettes and rocking out, got a better haircut, and became a star in his own right. Although he can sometimes look a little world weary these days. Drinking a fifth of whiskey onstage everynight for five years will do that to you.
"Southern Rock Opera," despite sounding like a coked-up Skynyrd demo tape, is in many ways a punk record. Homegrown and independent. When they released it, it got the band unprecedented attention and led to their getting a record deal. (Actually, their first record deal fell apart, but they ened up on the estemable New West records where they still are.) But more importantly, it redefined what the band sounded like. Instead of playing slightly kitchy country music, they invented a super heavy duty crunchy guitar roar. This incarnation of the DBT essentially sounded like a cross between Lynyrd Skynyrd and the early Replacements. It doesn't make sense on paper, but it sounds perfect. This record also marks Cooley's debut as a mature songwriter. Several of the best songs on the record are his, including "Zip City," "Shut Your Mouth and Get Your Ass on the Plane" (which includes the great line "the price of being sober's being scared out of your mind"), and "Women without Whiskey."
"Southern Rock Opera" is a concept album about Patterson's relationship to rock music and to Alabama. There are reflections about Southern racism, about Lynyrd Skynyrd, about the costs of living the rock star life, and about the sometimes painful class issues of the South. "Let There Be Rock" is in many ways the central song on the album. Patterson celebrates fucking up and rocking out. "But I lived to tell about it," seems like the moral of the story, except that it isn't. HE might have lived to tell about it, but lots of people DON'T live to tell about it. "Southern Rock Opera" is haunted by dead people. The first song is actually about kids dying in a car crash.]
One night when I was seventeen, I drank a fifth of vodka, on an empty stomach, then drove over to a friend's house. And I backed my car between his parent's Cadillacs without a scratch.
Then crawled to the back door and slithered threw the key hole, and sneaked up the stares
And puked in the toilet.
I passed out and nearly drowned but his sister, DD, pulled me out.
And I never saw Lynyrd Skynyrd but I sure saw Molly Hatchet
And the band that I was in played "The Boy's are Back in Town."
[Drunken bravado. Drinking a fifth of Vodka is a bad idea. I should know. But part of the point of doing "crazy stupid shit" like that is to accumulate stories to tell about what you did. You unscrew that plastic cap, toss it off the end of the porch, and act like an asshole. Then you get really sick. These stories are really kind of humiliating, but we keep telling them. Patterson passed out with his head in a toilet after drinking a fifth of vodka. One time I passed out in the passenger seat of my car after puking the better part of a fifth of whiskey all in the window. I think this is funnier than my wife, who was behind the wheel, does. I sincerely hope I'm old enough not to do shit like that anymore.
These dumbass things that we do, for whatever reason, are key to the whole rock and roll experience. We want rock stars to live it up, to be a traveling party. We want that escape from common sense and responsibility. We pay our money down and let them lead us away from the responsibilities of real life for a while. Elsewhere on "Southern Rock Opera" Patterson points out this this image of rock and roll is mistaken. You have to work fucking hard to be any good at rock and roll, and if you are lucky enough to live out your rock and roll fantasy, actually living in a cocaine and whiskey saturated bubble really sucks. As Mike Cooley wrote elsewhere, "Rock and Roll means well, but it can't help telling ya'll boys lies."]
Skynyrd was set to play Huntsville, Alabama, in the spring of 77, I had a ticket but it got cancelled.
So, the show, it was rescheduled for the Street Survivors Tour.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
So I never saw Lynyrd Skynyrd but I sure saw Ozzy Osbourne with Randy Rhoads in 82
Right before that plane crash.
And I never saw Lynyrd Skynyrd but I sure saw AC/DC
With Bon Scott singing, Let There Be Rock Tour.
With Bon Scott singing, LET THERE BE ROCK!
[Bon Scott, or course, died in what might be described as a drinking related accident, and the plan crash that Randi Rhoads died in was completely avoidable. A friend of the band was flying a small plane up and down over the top of a moving tour bus, playing a game. The plane crashed and killed Randi Rhaods, who was a serious and sober young man, instantly.
This is a particularly strange way to end the song. Two completely stupid deaths that we can chalk up to "rock and roll living," and we are supposed to chant along "Let There Be Rock!" Patterson is, in some weird way, honoring these guys for being martyrs. However stupid all this is, for some reason we need it, and these legendary musicians lost their lives to it. The more earthbound albums DBT has made since "Southern Rock Opera" are in many ways about trying to reconcile all the contradictions in this song. In one song Cooley's singing about saving himself by getting married and getting off the road, but three songs later he says "I might have slipped the ring on your finger from a van as it drove away." (Come to think of it, that song refers to Lynyrd Skynyrd too. The refrain is "Lawd knows I can't change/ sounds better in the song than it does with hell to pay." "The song" in question is, of course, "Freebird.")
In many ways, "Southern Rock Opera" fits squarely into the tradition of several great "classis rock" albums. Van Morrison's "Atral Weeks" is also about nostalgia for youthful freedom and sadness for it's consequences. Van end the record on the note of "now I have to say goodbye and move on." Bruce Springsteens breackthrough records "The Wild The Innocent and The E-Street Shuffle" and "Born to Run" are pretty much different treatments of these same themes. This "classic rock" thing is probably deliberate, as part of what "Southern Rock Opera" is about is Patterson's struggle to reconcile the music of the "parking lot" in Alabama with his experience as an outsider. It took him a long time to coming around to appreciating Lynyrd Skynyrd.
We need this youthful bravado, but you really can't base your life on that stuff. "Southern Rock Opera" ends with a song about a plane crash, the fantastic "Angels and Fucelage." "I'm scared shitless for what's coming next," Patterson sings as he imagines his plane crashing into the swamp.
Last time I saw DBT, they were clearly a bit tired of the big rock show thing. This was just before Jason Isbell left, and from the hints we've gotton of the story, there was some real tension within the band. They had also just come of opening for the Black Crows in a serious of big stadium shows. It was still a great show, but there were stretches when they were clearly plowing through the songs, searching for momentum. They found that momentum for several amazing stretches (by any reasonable standard it was a great show, although not one of DBT's best. . . . a mediocre DBT show is fantastic), but you felt a little fatigue. At the end of the last encore, they played a hair raisng version of "Angels and Fucelage" then ended with massive bursts of feedback. The band left their guitars up against the amps when they took their bow and walked off the stage. Perhaps not the happiest statement, but oddly perfect.]
This is my analysis of Patterson's "Let There be Rock," a key track from "Southern Rock Opera." As always, my comments are in brackets:
Dropped acid, Blue Oyster Cult concert, fourteen years old,
And I thought them lasers were a spider chasing me.
On my way home, got pulled over in Rogersville Alabama, with a half-ounce of weed and a case of Sterling Big Mouth.
My buddy Gene was driving, he just barely turned sixteen.
And I'd like to say I'm sorry, but we lived to tell about it
And we lived to do a whole lot more crazy, stupid shit.
And I never saw Lynyrd Skynyrd but I sure saw Molly Hatchet
With 38 Special and the Johnny Van Zant Band.
[This song is impossible to talk about without talking about the album is comes from. "Southern Rock Opera" was DBT's breakthrough, both commercially and artistically. Before "Southern Rock Opera," DBT was basically a local alt-country band, although they toured all over the place. They played drunken, stumbling electric country music with weirdly morbid lyrics. An intriguing group with a few great songs ("The Living Bubba" and "The Night G.G. Alin Came to Town" which are flat out great, are from this period), but not a first tier band. A great little group that could deliver onstage, but not the kind of band you'd devote a lot of time thinking about. They were clearly a group with "potential."
"Southern Rock Opera" changed all that. It's worth explaining that the record was mostly recorded live, and the band actually had to go out and raise money from investors to make the damn thing. They also had to recruit more musicians to play on the damn thing, seeing as how a concept record about Lynyrd Skynyrd really needed female backup singers on some tracks, and seeing as how it would just be fucking lame to do it without three guitars. This extra guitar slot eventually became the reason they recruited a chubby 23 year old named Jason Isbell to join the touring band. Turned out he could sing and write songs pretty good too. Jason lost weight from smoking cigarettes and rocking out, got a better haircut, and became a star in his own right. Although he can sometimes look a little world weary these days. Drinking a fifth of whiskey onstage everynight for five years will do that to you.
"Southern Rock Opera," despite sounding like a coked-up Skynyrd demo tape, is in many ways a punk record. Homegrown and independent. When they released it, it got the band unprecedented attention and led to their getting a record deal. (Actually, their first record deal fell apart, but they ened up on the estemable New West records where they still are.) But more importantly, it redefined what the band sounded like. Instead of playing slightly kitchy country music, they invented a super heavy duty crunchy guitar roar. This incarnation of the DBT essentially sounded like a cross between Lynyrd Skynyrd and the early Replacements. It doesn't make sense on paper, but it sounds perfect. This record also marks Cooley's debut as a mature songwriter. Several of the best songs on the record are his, including "Zip City," "Shut Your Mouth and Get Your Ass on the Plane" (which includes the great line "the price of being sober's being scared out of your mind"), and "Women without Whiskey."
"Southern Rock Opera" is a concept album about Patterson's relationship to rock music and to Alabama. There are reflections about Southern racism, about Lynyrd Skynyrd, about the costs of living the rock star life, and about the sometimes painful class issues of the South. "Let There Be Rock" is in many ways the central song on the album. Patterson celebrates fucking up and rocking out. "But I lived to tell about it," seems like the moral of the story, except that it isn't. HE might have lived to tell about it, but lots of people DON'T live to tell about it. "Southern Rock Opera" is haunted by dead people. The first song is actually about kids dying in a car crash.]
One night when I was seventeen, I drank a fifth of vodka, on an empty stomach, then drove over to a friend's house. And I backed my car between his parent's Cadillacs without a scratch.
Then crawled to the back door and slithered threw the key hole, and sneaked up the stares
And puked in the toilet.
I passed out and nearly drowned but his sister, DD, pulled me out.
And I never saw Lynyrd Skynyrd but I sure saw Molly Hatchet
And the band that I was in played "The Boy's are Back in Town."
[Drunken bravado. Drinking a fifth of Vodka is a bad idea. I should know. But part of the point of doing "crazy stupid shit" like that is to accumulate stories to tell about what you did. You unscrew that plastic cap, toss it off the end of the porch, and act like an asshole. Then you get really sick. These stories are really kind of humiliating, but we keep telling them. Patterson passed out with his head in a toilet after drinking a fifth of vodka. One time I passed out in the passenger seat of my car after puking the better part of a fifth of whiskey all in the window. I think this is funnier than my wife, who was behind the wheel, does. I sincerely hope I'm old enough not to do shit like that anymore.
These dumbass things that we do, for whatever reason, are key to the whole rock and roll experience. We want rock stars to live it up, to be a traveling party. We want that escape from common sense and responsibility. We pay our money down and let them lead us away from the responsibilities of real life for a while. Elsewhere on "Southern Rock Opera" Patterson points out this this image of rock and roll is mistaken. You have to work fucking hard to be any good at rock and roll, and if you are lucky enough to live out your rock and roll fantasy, actually living in a cocaine and whiskey saturated bubble really sucks. As Mike Cooley wrote elsewhere, "Rock and Roll means well, but it can't help telling ya'll boys lies."]
Skynyrd was set to play Huntsville, Alabama, in the spring of 77, I had a ticket but it got cancelled.
So, the show, it was rescheduled for the Street Survivors Tour.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
So I never saw Lynyrd Skynyrd but I sure saw Ozzy Osbourne with Randy Rhoads in 82
Right before that plane crash.
And I never saw Lynyrd Skynyrd but I sure saw AC/DC
With Bon Scott singing, Let There Be Rock Tour.
With Bon Scott singing, LET THERE BE ROCK!
[Bon Scott, or course, died in what might be described as a drinking related accident, and the plan crash that Randi Rhoads died in was completely avoidable. A friend of the band was flying a small plane up and down over the top of a moving tour bus, playing a game. The plane crashed and killed Randi Rhaods, who was a serious and sober young man, instantly.
This is a particularly strange way to end the song. Two completely stupid deaths that we can chalk up to "rock and roll living," and we are supposed to chant along "Let There Be Rock!" Patterson is, in some weird way, honoring these guys for being martyrs. However stupid all this is, for some reason we need it, and these legendary musicians lost their lives to it. The more earthbound albums DBT has made since "Southern Rock Opera" are in many ways about trying to reconcile all the contradictions in this song. In one song Cooley's singing about saving himself by getting married and getting off the road, but three songs later he says "I might have slipped the ring on your finger from a van as it drove away." (Come to think of it, that song refers to Lynyrd Skynyrd too. The refrain is "Lawd knows I can't change/ sounds better in the song than it does with hell to pay." "The song" in question is, of course, "Freebird.")
In many ways, "Southern Rock Opera" fits squarely into the tradition of several great "classis rock" albums. Van Morrison's "Atral Weeks" is also about nostalgia for youthful freedom and sadness for it's consequences. Van end the record on the note of "now I have to say goodbye and move on." Bruce Springsteens breackthrough records "The Wild The Innocent and The E-Street Shuffle" and "Born to Run" are pretty much different treatments of these same themes. This "classic rock" thing is probably deliberate, as part of what "Southern Rock Opera" is about is Patterson's struggle to reconcile the music of the "parking lot" in Alabama with his experience as an outsider. It took him a long time to coming around to appreciating Lynyrd Skynyrd.
We need this youthful bravado, but you really can't base your life on that stuff. "Southern Rock Opera" ends with a song about a plane crash, the fantastic "Angels and Fucelage." "I'm scared shitless for what's coming next," Patterson sings as he imagines his plane crashing into the swamp.
Last time I saw DBT, they were clearly a bit tired of the big rock show thing. This was just before Jason Isbell left, and from the hints we've gotton of the story, there was some real tension within the band. They had also just come of opening for the Black Crows in a serious of big stadium shows. It was still a great show, but there were stretches when they were clearly plowing through the songs, searching for momentum. They found that momentum for several amazing stretches (by any reasonable standard it was a great show, although not one of DBT's best. . . . a mediocre DBT show is fantastic), but you felt a little fatigue. At the end of the last encore, they played a hair raisng version of "Angels and Fucelage" then ended with massive bursts of feedback. The band left their guitars up against the amps when they took their bow and walked off the stage. Perhaps not the happiest statement, but oddly perfect.]
As a part of my ongoing DBT kick, I want to talk about one of Cooley's best songs. This one's called "Zip City." Below are the lyrics with my commentary. My comments are in brackets:
Your Daddy was mad as hell
He was mad at me and you
As he tied that chain to the front of my car and pulled me out of that ditch that we slid into
Don't know what his problem is
Why he keeps dragging you away
Don't know why I put up with this shit
When you don't put out and Zip City's so far away
[This is a perfect job of capturing the character's voice. This is just what a horny 17 year old would say about his girlfriend's dad. "Don't know what his problem is. . . Don't know why I put with this shit." Great stuff. This kid is kind of a punk, but he's funny. And the parallel between "dragging you away" and pulling the car out of the ditch is great, as is the detail of the car BEING in a ditch. If you grew up in the rural South, you know what that's all about. There are at least two other DBT songs that describe cars in ditches.]
Your Daddy is a deacon down at the Salem Church of Christ
And He makes good money as long as Reynolds Wrap keeps everything wrapped up tight
Your Mama's as good a wife and Mama as she can be
And your Sister's puttin' that sweet stuff on everybody in town but me
Your Brother was the first-born, got ten fingers and ten toes
And it's a damn good thing cause He needs all twenty to keep the closet door closed
[He's not just pissed cause he's not getting laid, but because of the hypocrisy of the "fine upstanding family" that's standing between him getting some action. The last line of this verse is halarious.]
Maybe it's the twenty-six mile drive from Zip City to Colbert Heights
Keeps my mind clean
Gets me through the night
Maybe you're just a destination, a place for me to go
A way to keep from having to deal with my seventeen-year-old mind all alone
Keep your drawers on, girl, it ain't worth the fight
By the time you drop them I'll be gone
And you'll be right where they fall the rest of your life
[He's still kind of a dick, but he's getting more interesting by the minute. There's some genuine angst here. His sexual frustrations are just a part of the problem here. There's a class thing going on here too. The town names say it all. It's not as much fun to grow up in Zip City as in Colbert Heights and this kid wants out. His girlfriend's refusal to get horizontal is just a part of a larger tension between her wanting to play it safe and be a good girl and her boyfriend's being pissed off at the world around him. That doesn't excuse his sexual put downs, but he's a dumb kid. He's not stupid, but he's still kinda dumb.]
You say you're tired of me taking you for granted
Waiting' up till the last minute to call you up and see what you want to do
Well you're only fifteen, girl, you ain't got no secretary
And "for granted" is a mighty big word for a country girl like you
You know it's just your Daddy talking
Cause He knows that blood red carpet at the Salem Church of Christ
Ain't gonna ever see no wedding between me and you
[Now he's being a little mean. And finding out about the age difference her makes him a bit less sympathetic. 17 can be a long way from 15. But again, we get those little hints that there's a bigger anger that has more to do with social class than with just sex. She's a good girl, and that pisses him off for reasons that are bigger and more important that the fact that she won't take her pants off for him. Of course, his trouble is that he doesn't really have the means to articulate all that. What he knows for sure that she's not putting out and her Daddy's a pain in the ass. He feels like there's something more serious than that going on, but he can't put it all together. It almost seems like fucking her would be a way to get even. If he can't do that, he'll try to hurt her by breaking up with her. He's not a nice kid, but you sympathize with him.]
Zip City it's a good thing that they built a wall around you
Zip up to Tennessee then zip back down to Alabama
I got 350 heads on a 305 engine
I get ten miles to the gallon
I ain't got no good intentions
[Great last verse. He's got a jazzed up car and he lives on the state line. He's out of here.
If he doesn't run out of gas first. That's a distinct possibility.
If you look up Zip City on a map, you'll find that it's a real place. It's an unincorporated town near the Tennessee Alabama border (just where Cooley says it is). It's a community that doesn't enjoy the respect of being "official." It's the perfect place for the kid in the song, who's a disreputable neither-here-nor-there guy to live. He's always driving around and seething.
In the notes Patterson wrote for the album, he insists that this song is mostly true. Cooley's songs always turn out to be autobiographical, and Patterson's always the one explaining them. That pretty much exemplifies their roles in the band. Cooley's got real depths, but he plays it cool. Meanwhile Patterson's waving his arms around and yelling about his family stories.]
Your Daddy was mad as hell
He was mad at me and you
As he tied that chain to the front of my car and pulled me out of that ditch that we slid into
Don't know what his problem is
Why he keeps dragging you away
Don't know why I put up with this shit
When you don't put out and Zip City's so far away
[This is a perfect job of capturing the character's voice. This is just what a horny 17 year old would say about his girlfriend's dad. "Don't know what his problem is. . . Don't know why I put with this shit." Great stuff. This kid is kind of a punk, but he's funny. And the parallel between "dragging you away" and pulling the car out of the ditch is great, as is the detail of the car BEING in a ditch. If you grew up in the rural South, you know what that's all about. There are at least two other DBT songs that describe cars in ditches.]
Your Daddy is a deacon down at the Salem Church of Christ
And He makes good money as long as Reynolds Wrap keeps everything wrapped up tight
Your Mama's as good a wife and Mama as she can be
And your Sister's puttin' that sweet stuff on everybody in town but me
Your Brother was the first-born, got ten fingers and ten toes
And it's a damn good thing cause He needs all twenty to keep the closet door closed
[He's not just pissed cause he's not getting laid, but because of the hypocrisy of the "fine upstanding family" that's standing between him getting some action. The last line of this verse is halarious.]
Maybe it's the twenty-six mile drive from Zip City to Colbert Heights
Keeps my mind clean
Gets me through the night
Maybe you're just a destination, a place for me to go
A way to keep from having to deal with my seventeen-year-old mind all alone
Keep your drawers on, girl, it ain't worth the fight
By the time you drop them I'll be gone
And you'll be right where they fall the rest of your life
[He's still kind of a dick, but he's getting more interesting by the minute. There's some genuine angst here. His sexual frustrations are just a part of the problem here. There's a class thing going on here too. The town names say it all. It's not as much fun to grow up in Zip City as in Colbert Heights and this kid wants out. His girlfriend's refusal to get horizontal is just a part of a larger tension between her wanting to play it safe and be a good girl and her boyfriend's being pissed off at the world around him. That doesn't excuse his sexual put downs, but he's a dumb kid. He's not stupid, but he's still kinda dumb.]
You say you're tired of me taking you for granted
Waiting' up till the last minute to call you up and see what you want to do
Well you're only fifteen, girl, you ain't got no secretary
And "for granted" is a mighty big word for a country girl like you
You know it's just your Daddy talking
Cause He knows that blood red carpet at the Salem Church of Christ
Ain't gonna ever see no wedding between me and you
[Now he's being a little mean. And finding out about the age difference her makes him a bit less sympathetic. 17 can be a long way from 15. But again, we get those little hints that there's a bigger anger that has more to do with social class than with just sex. She's a good girl, and that pisses him off for reasons that are bigger and more important that the fact that she won't take her pants off for him. Of course, his trouble is that he doesn't really have the means to articulate all that. What he knows for sure that she's not putting out and her Daddy's a pain in the ass. He feels like there's something more serious than that going on, but he can't put it all together. It almost seems like fucking her would be a way to get even. If he can't do that, he'll try to hurt her by breaking up with her. He's not a nice kid, but you sympathize with him.]
Zip City it's a good thing that they built a wall around you
Zip up to Tennessee then zip back down to Alabama
I got 350 heads on a 305 engine
I get ten miles to the gallon
I ain't got no good intentions
[Great last verse. He's got a jazzed up car and he lives on the state line. He's out of here.
If he doesn't run out of gas first. That's a distinct possibility.
If you look up Zip City on a map, you'll find that it's a real place. It's an unincorporated town near the Tennessee Alabama border (just where Cooley says it is). It's a community that doesn't enjoy the respect of being "official." It's the perfect place for the kid in the song, who's a disreputable neither-here-nor-there guy to live. He's always driving around and seething.
In the notes Patterson wrote for the album, he insists that this song is mostly true. Cooley's songs always turn out to be autobiographical, and Patterson's always the one explaining them. That pretty much exemplifies their roles in the band. Cooley's got real depths, but he plays it cool. Meanwhile Patterson's waving his arms around and yelling about his family stories.]
Sunday, July 12, 2009
I'm all abuzz because I'm going to see the Drive By Truckers in a Month.
Of course tonight I'm going to see Grant Hart (formerly of Husker Du), which is also kind of a big deal to me, and in a couple of weeks I'm going to see Steve Earle, who's one of my all time heroes.
All in all it's been a pretty good summer. As cool as my musical experiences have been this summer (including seeing an awe inspiring Jonathan Richman show and finally getting to see Public Enemy live), I'm most jazzed about the DTB show. Nobody commands a stage like the mighty DBT.
Seeing a great band a great moment in their career is always the best time to see them. DBT has been on an amazing streak for some time (since 2001, they've released 5 records, all of them great) , but they've recently been through a slight reinvention. When Jason Isbell left a couple of years ago (and took some of the Trucker's best known songs with him), they used to change as an opportunity to rethink the "bigges, baddest, loudest mutherfucking band on the planet" approach they'd been using since Southern Rock Opera in favor of a more varied approach that is informed by soul music (Pattersoh Hood is from Muscle Shoals and his dad played bass there) and country music. The stuff they've done since Isbell left has almost miraculously been the best of their career.
I'm a big fan of Ibell's solo records, and an even bigger fan of Isbell's live show. I think this was a case of peope just needing their own space. Isbell took his loud ass guitar and started his own party, and everybody discovered that they suddenly had a lot more room to breathe. I'll keep seeing Ibell and the DBT whenever I can.
As a way to gush about how great the truckers are, I'll write a little review of their most recent release, the "Live at Austin City Limits" CD/DVD set and throw in a few links to videos. . . .
This performance is a pretty great way to get introduced, or re-introduced, to the the Drive By Truckers. Because of their somewhat goofy name and somewhat scraggly appearance, these guys (and girl) don't seem like they'd be capable of the kind of subtle, literary performances that they are. While their reputation for giving pedal to the metal, rocked out, drunk ass performances has endeared them to their fans (me included), people forget that these guys are the among the greatest songwriters in rock music. They've been compared to Flannery O'Connor more than once, and while I'm not sure that fits (The Handsome Family are the musical heirs to Flannery, if anybody is.), that oughta tell you something.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FthiOls0w4I
As if to make the point, they start the set with a couple of Mike Cooley's cleverest songs, "Perfect Timing" and "A Ghost to Most" (interrupted by Patterson Hood's almost equally brilliant "Heathens.") The first lines Cooley sings during the show "There I am again/ perfect timing/ the strings are ringing and the words are rhyming/ I used to hate the fool in me, but only in the morning/ now I tolerate him all day long," pretty much sums up a lot of what's special about the Trucker's songs. It's a song about growing into wisdom-- Cooley's essentially saying "I used to be a fuck up, but I've learned to have the patience to be a grown up." There's a little tinge of disappointment there, but a lot of pride. It's a wry, comfortable sentiment that's a lot more substantial and hard won than it first appears. Later Cooley sings "I though I was too cool to give a damn."
So far I've written a whole paragraph and I'm a few seconds into the album. . . .
We'll pick up the pace a bit. . . come to think of it, "picking up the pace a bit" is pretty much what DBT does throughout the show, which is why it's a great show. Condensing the unweildy marathons that the Truckers routinely deliver onstage into an 80 minute show required the band to be really smart about how they did their business. They start with some clever alt country tunes and gradually inject more and more rock until Patterson Hood is screaming like a crazy man and the band is in full roar. It doesn't have the woolly unpredicatbility or the sing along atmosphere of the band in a regular concert setting where Patterson can decide to play the second half of "Southern Rock Opera" as an encore, but it does provide a better paced, tighter show that throws into sharp releif all the different things that the band does so well. All killer no filler.
A couple of moments deserve special attention:
The "Puttin' People on the Moon"/ "Space City" sequence is brilliant. "Puttin' People on The Moon," one of Patterson's angriest songs, is about the underclass in Alabama who live within driving distance of the big NASA facility in Huntsville. They spend billions to shoot rockets into space while people in the next county deal drugs because they can't get jobs and die of cancer because they can't get health insurance. "Space City" (one of Cooley's) is a sadder, more reflective meditation on mortality and rockets. Cooley's narrator complains about how empty his house has become since his wife died, and he thinks that it's ironic that only an hour down the road is a place that's as close to heaven as anybody could ever get. Where Patterson is bitter and accusatory ("And all the politicians, they're all lyin' sacks of shit!"), Cooley thinks about his own shortcomings ("I'm not ashamed of anything these hands have ever done, but sometimes my words were as hard as my fists"). Playing them back to back give them all kinds of interesting thematic ressonance that they wouldn't have othewise. A real highpoint. And the quiet stoicism of Cooley's song really makes its point after watching Patterson scream for five minutes. It's like watching debris float down after an explosion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEZ-bIfeM4E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAVK7eqlm8o
Another high point is a staggering version "The Living Bubba." Probably the first really good DBT song, "The Living Bubba" is an amazing statement of perseverance. It's about Gregory Dean Smalley, and important mentor for Patterson. Smalley died of AIDS in the mid ninties, and in the year before he died, he played over 100 shows. The point of this song is basically "Fuck death." The grungy ambiance of the original record is here replaced by the more nuanced approach of a more seasoned band, but the song still builds to a climax where Patterson is basially yelling at the top of his lungs. Best lines: "I got no message for the youth of America/ except wear a rubber/ and be careful who you screw/ I can't die now/ cause I got another show to do." Great stuff.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INHrzNtzTi4
I'd write something about the amazing eleven minute version of "Eighteen Wheels of Love," but you have to hear it yourself. Its the story of Patterson's Mom and her second husband, "the biggest meanest trucker" who checked in at the truck stop where she worked. (Nobody's posted a vid of the "Austin City Limits" version, which is the money shot. Sorry.)
In any event, this is about as good as an 80 minute live document of the DBT could be. Because they are "on the clock" here, they don't stretch out to reveal all of their idiosyncratic glories, but as a concise statement of what they are and what they can do, this is about perfect. There are quite a few iconic songs that aren't here, including "Sinkhole" (which is THE DBT song for a lot of people), "The Man I Shot," "Carl Perkin's Cadallac," "Three Alabama Icons," and "Sounds Better in the Song," but the tradeoff is that we get a brilliantly programmed set that flows almost perfectly. This isn't quite the definitive live DBT album, but it's a triumph just the same.
I'm looking forward to seeing them live again. I've seen them a couple of times, and they were amazing. From watching this DVD, it appears they've only gotten better.
Of course tonight I'm going to see Grant Hart (formerly of Husker Du), which is also kind of a big deal to me, and in a couple of weeks I'm going to see Steve Earle, who's one of my all time heroes.
All in all it's been a pretty good summer. As cool as my musical experiences have been this summer (including seeing an awe inspiring Jonathan Richman show and finally getting to see Public Enemy live), I'm most jazzed about the DTB show. Nobody commands a stage like the mighty DBT.
Seeing a great band a great moment in their career is always the best time to see them. DBT has been on an amazing streak for some time (since 2001, they've released 5 records, all of them great) , but they've recently been through a slight reinvention. When Jason Isbell left a couple of years ago (and took some of the Trucker's best known songs with him), they used to change as an opportunity to rethink the "bigges, baddest, loudest mutherfucking band on the planet" approach they'd been using since Southern Rock Opera in favor of a more varied approach that is informed by soul music (Pattersoh Hood is from Muscle Shoals and his dad played bass there) and country music. The stuff they've done since Isbell left has almost miraculously been the best of their career.
I'm a big fan of Ibell's solo records, and an even bigger fan of Isbell's live show. I think this was a case of peope just needing their own space. Isbell took his loud ass guitar and started his own party, and everybody discovered that they suddenly had a lot more room to breathe. I'll keep seeing Ibell and the DBT whenever I can.
As a way to gush about how great the truckers are, I'll write a little review of their most recent release, the "Live at Austin City Limits" CD/DVD set and throw in a few links to videos. . . .
This performance is a pretty great way to get introduced, or re-introduced, to the the Drive By Truckers. Because of their somewhat goofy name and somewhat scraggly appearance, these guys (and girl) don't seem like they'd be capable of the kind of subtle, literary performances that they are. While their reputation for giving pedal to the metal, rocked out, drunk ass performances has endeared them to their fans (me included), people forget that these guys are the among the greatest songwriters in rock music. They've been compared to Flannery O'Connor more than once, and while I'm not sure that fits (The Handsome Family are the musical heirs to Flannery, if anybody is.), that oughta tell you something.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FthiOls0w4I
As if to make the point, they start the set with a couple of Mike Cooley's cleverest songs, "Perfect Timing" and "A Ghost to Most" (interrupted by Patterson Hood's almost equally brilliant "Heathens.") The first lines Cooley sings during the show "There I am again/ perfect timing/ the strings are ringing and the words are rhyming/ I used to hate the fool in me, but only in the morning/ now I tolerate him all day long," pretty much sums up a lot of what's special about the Trucker's songs. It's a song about growing into wisdom-- Cooley's essentially saying "I used to be a fuck up, but I've learned to have the patience to be a grown up." There's a little tinge of disappointment there, but a lot of pride. It's a wry, comfortable sentiment that's a lot more substantial and hard won than it first appears. Later Cooley sings "I though I was too cool to give a damn."
So far I've written a whole paragraph and I'm a few seconds into the album. . . .
We'll pick up the pace a bit. . . come to think of it, "picking up the pace a bit" is pretty much what DBT does throughout the show, which is why it's a great show. Condensing the unweildy marathons that the Truckers routinely deliver onstage into an 80 minute show required the band to be really smart about how they did their business. They start with some clever alt country tunes and gradually inject more and more rock until Patterson Hood is screaming like a crazy man and the band is in full roar. It doesn't have the woolly unpredicatbility or the sing along atmosphere of the band in a regular concert setting where Patterson can decide to play the second half of "Southern Rock Opera" as an encore, but it does provide a better paced, tighter show that throws into sharp releif all the different things that the band does so well. All killer no filler.
A couple of moments deserve special attention:
The "Puttin' People on the Moon"/ "Space City" sequence is brilliant. "Puttin' People on The Moon," one of Patterson's angriest songs, is about the underclass in Alabama who live within driving distance of the big NASA facility in Huntsville. They spend billions to shoot rockets into space while people in the next county deal drugs because they can't get jobs and die of cancer because they can't get health insurance. "Space City" (one of Cooley's) is a sadder, more reflective meditation on mortality and rockets. Cooley's narrator complains about how empty his house has become since his wife died, and he thinks that it's ironic that only an hour down the road is a place that's as close to heaven as anybody could ever get. Where Patterson is bitter and accusatory ("And all the politicians, they're all lyin' sacks of shit!"), Cooley thinks about his own shortcomings ("I'm not ashamed of anything these hands have ever done, but sometimes my words were as hard as my fists"). Playing them back to back give them all kinds of interesting thematic ressonance that they wouldn't have othewise. A real highpoint. And the quiet stoicism of Cooley's song really makes its point after watching Patterson scream for five minutes. It's like watching debris float down after an explosion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEZ-bIfeM4E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAVK7eqlm8o
Another high point is a staggering version "The Living Bubba." Probably the first really good DBT song, "The Living Bubba" is an amazing statement of perseverance. It's about Gregory Dean Smalley, and important mentor for Patterson. Smalley died of AIDS in the mid ninties, and in the year before he died, he played over 100 shows. The point of this song is basically "Fuck death." The grungy ambiance of the original record is here replaced by the more nuanced approach of a more seasoned band, but the song still builds to a climax where Patterson is basially yelling at the top of his lungs. Best lines: "I got no message for the youth of America/ except wear a rubber/ and be careful who you screw/ I can't die now/ cause I got another show to do." Great stuff.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INHrzNtzTi4
I'd write something about the amazing eleven minute version of "Eighteen Wheels of Love," but you have to hear it yourself. Its the story of Patterson's Mom and her second husband, "the biggest meanest trucker" who checked in at the truck stop where she worked. (Nobody's posted a vid of the "Austin City Limits" version, which is the money shot. Sorry.)
In any event, this is about as good as an 80 minute live document of the DBT could be. Because they are "on the clock" here, they don't stretch out to reveal all of their idiosyncratic glories, but as a concise statement of what they are and what they can do, this is about perfect. There are quite a few iconic songs that aren't here, including "Sinkhole" (which is THE DBT song for a lot of people), "The Man I Shot," "Carl Perkin's Cadallac," "Three Alabama Icons," and "Sounds Better in the Song," but the tradeoff is that we get a brilliantly programmed set that flows almost perfectly. This isn't quite the definitive live DBT album, but it's a triumph just the same.
I'm looking forward to seeing them live again. I've seen them a couple of times, and they were amazing. From watching this DVD, it appears they've only gotten better.
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