While some bands just aren’t cut out for life on the road, there are a few that call the singing of rolling tires music to their ears. The Drive-By Truckers embrace the latter.
With thousands of live shows under their belt, the Drive-By Truckers have always known where their bread was buttered: Ear-piercing guitar layers from darkened stages, and even darker subject matter. DBT has never been an idea that was necessarily marketable to the popular-music hierarchy, but that just might be what has made them the relentless touring rock band they are today.
They weren’t that much different in their infancy. Legend has it, Patterson Hood hosted a week-long party at his house, and they emerged with the band’s sophomore record. They went right back out there after releasing Pizza Deliverance on May 11, 1999 via Soul Dump Records, mounting a nearly eight-month tour in which they played some 200 live shows. (It was during this time that the Hood and Mike Cooley began piecing together 2001’s now-legendary Southern Rock Opera.)
Still, Pizza Deliverance‘s more country-based tone – and the emergence of Mike Cooley as a songwriting force – made this a signature moment.
Whether the Drive-By Truckers are searching their soulful side on 2011’s Go-Go Boots or finding their unique songwriting styles in Pizza Deliverance, this Alabama band has always been about storytelling. That remains their best and most awe-inspiring quality – but, at least early on, those duties mainly fell to Patterson Hood.
He doesn’t disappoint on Pizza Deliverance. In fact, the opening track might be one of Hood’s best – a comical, yet on-the-money tale of the domestic bliss of trailer park love in “Bulldozers and Dirt”: “I met your mama when I was 16. You couldn’t have been anymore than three. She caught me stealing y’all’s color TV. She called the cops and they arrested me.”
Elsewhere, Hood delivers several other quirky cuts including “Too Much Sex (Too Little Jesus)” and “The President’s Penis is Missing,” but it’s Mike Cooley who really shines on the Drive-By Truckers’ second studio album. Cooley dished out two now-classic Drive-By Truckers tunes, marking his first major contributions to the band.
In “Uncle Frank,” Cooley gives his take on the dark side of the Tennessee Valley Authority. With eminent domain pushing the subject of the song out of his home in the holler and into an urban environment, suicide becomes Uncle Frank’s only way out: “Uncle Frank lived in a cabin down on Cedar Creek, bought 15 acres when he got back home from overseas. Fifteen rocky acres, figured no one else would want, ’till all that backed-up water had to have some place to go.”
“One of These Days” is another terrific Cooley ballad that cautions against focusing on the other side of the river, lest you fail to appreciate where your feet stand. Its beautiful chord progression mixed with Cooley’s painfully truthful lyrics sets this song apart from other early Drive-By Truckers songs – and points the way for many of their future successes.
Mike Cooley had arrived, and something very important was about to happen for the Drive-By Truckers.
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