By WAYNE BLEDSOE
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
There is no generation gap when it comes to the music of the Drive-By Truckers. The band is just as likely to appeal to 16-year-olds drawn by the act's in-your-face raucousness as 50-year-olds attracted to the group's classic-rock edge.
Patterson Hood, the most prolific of the three singer-songwriter-guitarists in the quintet, is incredulous that his group's wide appeal is lost on the music industry.
"The music industry is so inept that they view that aspect as a negative," says Hood from his home in Athens, Ga., where the band is now based. "They only know how to focus on one select demographic and (brainwash) that one demographic until they go, 'Uhhh ... must ... have ... Black ... Eyed ... Peas!' or whoever it is at any given moment.
And because we've never pandered to any one demographic or even been interested in any one thing, it's always been viewed by the industry as a shortcoming ... The industry is sucking all over, and, hopefully, my band is going to be dancing on their graves."
That doesn't seem all that unlikely. The members of Drive-By Truckers have done a pretty good job of forging success on their own terms. Formerly a likable Alabama-based bar band, the group became improbable heroes with the 2001 album "Southern Rock Opera," a two-CD combination of Lynyrd Skynyrd biography, documentary of growing up in the era of arena rock, and first-person commentary on what it means to be from the South.
With no record company wanting to get behind such an off-kilter project, the Truckers enlisted their own backers and initially released the album on their own. By the time the disc had been picked up by a major label in 2002, it already had found its way onto "best of the year" lists and become an underground classic.
Proving that "Opera" was no fluke, the band followed with three albums ("Decoration Day," "The Dirty South" and 2006's "A Blessing and a Curse"), all of which earned critical acclaim and increasingly good sales. The band has now graduated from smoky bars to 1,000-plus-seat theaters and recently completed a tour opening for the Black Crowes and Robert Randolph.
"In some ways, we've been on a leash all summer," says Hood. "We were playing at 6 in the afternoon; no audience, people just walking in. ... It made us a better band than what we were."
One of the things that the band is not about is making set-lists.
"We decide when we're walking onstage what the first song will be," says Hood. "Doing a set-list is like planning your sex."
While no song is sacred to any set, Hood says there are a few that are "surefire" numbers for certain occasions:
"It's hard not to play 'Lookout Mountain.' If anything is going wrong, we can pull it out and wipe the slate clean. And 'Let There Be Rock' probably has a higher percentage of plays than most."
"Lookout Mountain" dates back to the late 1980s, when Hood and fellow Trucker Mike Cooley were in a band called Adam's House Cat. After that group's demise, Hood and Cooley formed the Truckers. Hood knew what he wanted.
"I knew if I stumbled into a club to see a band what the band that I would want to see would be like," says Hood.
If Hood turns out to be right, music executives banking solely on new releases by Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera may be in trouble.
"What's bad for the music industry," says Hood, "is, secretly, pretty good for music."
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