Drive-by Truckers

Certain Songs #363: Drive-by Truckers – “After The Scene Dies”

November 6, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Big To-Do
Year: 2010

I got lucky. Because I was a DJ on KFSR for much of the 1980s, wrote for various local zines, and eventually taught myself how to play the drums, I got to be part of Fresno’s music scene for about a decade.

Figure 1984, when bands started giving me tapes to play on the air through 1994, when I moved away.

I don’t know how many local bands I saw during that period, but despite being able to walk into the Wild Blue any early 1990s night that Don was on the door and watch whoever was playing, I still don’t think I saw everybody.

Certain Songs #362: Drive-by Truckers – “Birthday Boy”

November 5, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Big-To Do
Year: 2010

The Drive-by Truckers capped their near-perfect post-millennial run with 2010’s The Big To-Do, which was one of my favorite albums in my favorite year for music since the century turned.

Apparently one of the last tracks written for it, Mike Cooley’s “Birthday Boy” is yet another in his long list of character studies.

Certain Songs #361: Drive-by Truckers – “That Man I Shot”

November 4, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: Brighter Than Creation’s Dark
Year: 2008

There’s a reason that we demonize the people we go to war against. It’s to make it easier to think of them as “enemy combatants” and “casualties” as opposed to “human beings we are trying to kill.”

But, of course, no matter the justification for the war, no matter the righteousness of the war, no matter how the evil the enemy, they’re still “human beings we are trying to kill.”

That’s what “That Man I Shot” is getting at.

Certain Songs #360: Drive-by Truckers – “The Righteous Path”

November 3, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: Brighter Than Creation’s Dark
Year: 2008

Despite the loss of Jason Isbell, the Drive-by Truckers kept rolling along, and their 2008 album, Brighter Than Creation’s Dark was a definite rebound, despite being their most stripped-down album since Pizza Deliverance.

So naturally, my favorite song on the whole record — Patterson Hood’s “The Righteous Path” — was the most rockingest. But I swear it’s because it’s got my favorite lyric.

Certain Songs #359: Drive-by Truckers – “Feb. 14”

November 2, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: A Blessing and a Curse
Year: 2006

The first Drive-by Truckers album of the 2000s to not have The South as the focal point, A Blessing and a Curse has always been — somewhat unfairly — slagged for feeling somewhat half-baked compared to the rest of their stellar catalog.

That said, most bands would kill to kick off one of their weaker albums with a foot-stomping alternate universe hit single like “Feb 14.”

Certain Songs #358: Drive-by Truckers – “Mama Bake a Pie (Daddy Kill a Chicken)”

November 1, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Fine Print: A Collection of Oddities and Rarities
Year: 2004

Recorded in 2004 for a tribute album that never got released, Drive-by Truckers cover of Tom T. Hall’s “Mama Bake a Pie (Daddy Kill a Chicken)” is one of those rare times a band takes a 40-year-old song and makes it feel like it was written yesterday.

Which, given the subject matter — a paralyzed vet coming home for the first time — kinda sucks. Tom T. Hall wrote it about a Vietnam vet, but of course it still has resonance now for our vets coming home from Iraq or Afghanistan. And will sadly have resonance for whichever of the endless series of wars we find ourselves in next.

Certain Songs #356: Drive-by Truckers – “Goddamn Lonely Love”

October 30, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Dirty South
Year: 2004

Jason Isbell’s last great Drive-by Truckers song was so strong they had it close out The Dirty South.

After the all of the folklore and Southern mythos that covered the album like so much kudzu, it felt fitting to close it all out with a melancholy love song written by one member of the band to another. Like a reminder of what’s truly important.

Certain Songs #355: Drive-by Truckers – “Carl Perkins’ Cadillac”

October 29, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Dirty South
Year: 2004

Set at the very dawn of rock ‘n’ roll, Mike Cooley takes a look at the famous Million Dollar Quartet — Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins, for those of you keeping score at home — and their even more infamous record producer, Sam Phillips.

Probably if you like Drive-by Truckers, you know all about the explosion that came out of Sun Records in the mid-1950s, and while the impetus for the song is the fact that Sam Phillips gave Carl Perkins a Cadillac when “Blue Suede Shoes” sold a million copies, Cooley has more than just that on his mind.

Certain Songs #354: Drive-by Truckers – “The Day John Henry Died”

October 28, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Dirty South
Year: 2004

If Decoration Day was a conscious effort to tell smaller, more personal stories, then its follow-up, The Dirty South, found DBT feeling both their oats and their ambitions again.

While not quite a concept album — there isn’t really a through line here — The Dirty South tackled several Southern-oriented myths, large and small, and one of the key tracks was Jason Isbell’s “The Day John Henry Died.”

Certain Songs #353: Drive-by Truckers – “Outfit”

October 27, 2015 by Jim Connelly

Album: Decoration Day
Year: 2003

So if you’re going to break into a band that already has two songwriters as great as Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley, you’d best come in with your A game.

Which is exactly what Jason Isbell did with “Outfit,” his first song on any Drive-by Truckers album, and probably one of my five favorite songs of the 21st century.