In 2024, Drive-By Truckers hit the road for the first time in a long time on their “Southern Rock Opera Revisited” tour, revisiting songs from the 2001 fan-favorite release and more.
“It was kind of crazy,” Truckers co-founder Patterson Hood said in a phone call from his home in Portland, Oregon. “Now that all the accounting is done, it was a very successful tour for us, which we desperately needed. It’s been pretty brutal the last few years, with the lockdown and trying to recover from that.
“But 2024 was a good year for the band. I was really proud of the shows we played and how well they turned out. The fans liked it, and it got us back on our feet financially to the extent you can nowadays.”
Now, though, Hood is on tour with another album, “Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams,” which brings him to Terminal West on Wednesday.
Credit: Robb Cohen for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Credit: Robb Cohen for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Here’s some backstory on how his fourth solo album came together in collaboration with his friend and producer, Chris Funk of the Portland band the Decemberists:
“The whole thing came about as kind of a combination of my friendship with Chris,” Hood said. “He would sit in and play with me whenever I would do solo shows up here in the Northwest. He was one of the first people I met when I was thinking of moving out here. We just hit it off in a really good way, and we play together in really interesting ways.
“Every time we do a Trucker record, there’s always a couple of songs that I really love that never get played just because that’s the way our show is. In the context of the rock show and the rooms we play in, they just get lost.”
Q: How did those “lost” songs translate to a new album?
A: I started keeping a file of those types of songs to do something different with them. So it was, “Maybe this is the record I’ll make with Chris someday.” Then during lockdown, when I was bored and not in a very good place mentally, I wasn’t able to write much but I could edit. I spent a lot of time working on those songs, trying to perfect them and demoing them. That became a blueprint of the record.
But it wasn’t until we were mixing the record and I was sequencing it that I realized that it kind of tells a story of my coming of age from childhood to right before I turned 30. But it tells it in backwards order. “Exploding Trees” takes place right before I moved to Athens, Georgia. And “Pinocchio,” the last song on the record, takes place when I was 7, and ever since.
Credit: Michael A. Schwarz/The Carter Center
Credit: Michael A. Schwarz/The Carter Center
Q: So, is it the idea that child is father to the man?
A: All those things in your childhood still affect you years and years later and who you become. I have to say that a lot of these experiences I’ve had with autistic kids and all that has entered into it, too. I’ve heard a lot about how that brain works and maybe I have some of that in my brain. All of that is kind of tied in with it, and it’s all there.
I’m particularly proud of “Pinocchio.” It’s probably the most deeply personal thing I’ve ever written. It’s like every line in it has several layers of relevance to things in my current life, as well as my childhood. That all ties together and maybe ties in with my kids, too.
Q: Do your kids like “Pinocchio?”
A: My kids hate “Pinocchio.” They think it’s the creepiest thing they’ve ever seen, and they’re not wrong. It is creepy. And why did I relate to that so much as a little kid? But if I was entering a contest, I think it was one of the best things I’ve ever written.
Q: What’s the story behind “Miss Coldrion’s Oldsmobile?”
A: As story songs go, “Miss Coldrion’s Oldsmobile” is also very personal. She was my godmother, and she lived across the street from my grandmother who raised me. She had some mental problems, and she was what people used to call an old maid.
She was gaslighted and she had some inheritance that was taken away. It’s probably an unconventional thing to write a song about, but that appeals to me, too. It’s kind of a complex story, and I’m real proud of how that turned out.
Q: Who are some of the other musicians on the album?
A: Katie Crutchfield from Waxahatchee is singing on the song “The Forks of Cyprus.” I’m such a huge fan. Kevin Morby plays guitar on that song, too. The drummer on most of the record is Dan Hunt, who is a really cool guy. Lydia Loveless is on “A Werewolf and a Girl.” When I wrote that song I knew I wanted Lydia to sing the female part, and I absolutely love what she did. She’s going to be part of the band that’s touring with me.
Q: What comes after “Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams?”
A: I’m in a place right now where I (haven’t been able to) start writing the next Truckers record because it’s been a long time. It’s going on four years since one’s come out.
We had a band meeting talking about that. This is the first time I don’t have single song for the next Truckers record. It’s kind of scary but kind of liberating because it’s totally a blank slate. We all want to do something, but we don’t know quite what it is what we want to do.
Q: And what about your personal life?
A: I’m trying to embrace anything that will bring me joy or distract me from how unhappy I am from pretty much everything that’s going on around me. I don’t want to make another political record, at least not like the ones we did. We did those and they didn’t work. They didn’t change anything.
Hell, I’m 60 now and I’m about to be 61 a few days before I come to Atlanta. I’m an old fart. How did those things that happened in my life as a little kid make me who I became, for better or for worse? As an artist, as a person, as a dad, as a husband, and the whole thing? Making “Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams” was a very personal deep dive into all that.
CONCERT PREVIEW
Patterson Hood and the Sensurrounders with special guest Lydia Loveless
8 p.m. Wednesday at Terminal West. $30-$35. 887 W. Marietta St. NW, Suite C, Atlanta. terminalwestatl.com
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