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.