Purgatory Line

As A New Album Drops And Another Year of Touring Kicks Off, Patterson Hood Opens Up About The Difficulties Of Balancing The Drive-By Truckers, His Family, Money, Art… And How He Still Manages To Dig For Old Records.

originally published January 9, 2008

All musicians have a tough time balancing life and art, making rent and making music, and only a handful have been able to say they're able to make a living from playing their hearts out night after night. Drive-By Truckers guitarist and songwriter Patterson Hood is one of the few, and the path to that point hasn't been without heavy tumult. Last year, the band parted ways with guitarist and songwriter Jason Isbell, who's gone on to pursue a solo career.

The official band lineup now includes Mike Cooley on guitar and vocals, Shonna Tucker on bass and vocals, and Brad Morgan on drums. Founding member, guitarist and pedal-steel player John Neff is back as a full-time member as well; Hood says, "Neff on this new record… I just can't overstate how important it is having him back with the band. He's all over the thing!"

The Truckers - based more or less in Athens but with members around the Deep South - are preparing to release Brighter Than Creation's Dark, their eighth album in a 10-year stretch. It's a sprawling, 19-track romp that's at times as loud and raucous as anything the band has ever done, yet it reaches past the Rolling Stones-y straightforward rock of 2006's A Blessing and a Curse to find a resurgence of earlier country influences. There's a softer hand at work with a good amount of contemplative, quieter numbers, and Tucker makes her debut as a songwriter with three tracks on the album alongside those of the longtime Cooley/ Hood partnership. The CD comes out on Jan. 22 with cover art by iconic Truckers constant Wes Freed, and a double-vinyl release follows soon after.

Spooner Oldham, the legendary Muscle Shoals songwriter and organ player, has been a de facto member of the band since early last year, when he teamed up with the Truckers to back soul singer Bettye LaVette on her album The Scene of the Crime, a pairing that brought LaVette out of obscurity and netted the collaboration a Grammy nomination.

This weekend, the band plays three shows at the 40 Watt Club, and the first night, a fundraiser for local musician's resource space Nuçi's Space, features the Truckers' new album played live in its entirety two weeks before Brighter Than Creation's Dark officially hits stores. (Chances are the record will be for sale at the shows, though.)

Flagpole sat down with Hood at his home before the winter holidays, and spent an hour in a forest green room stocked with CDs, records and audio equipment. It's a recent addition to the house. Hood calls it "my big luxury where I can go sit and write," and it's one of the few extravagances he's bought for himself now that the Truckers have reached a level of comfortable - but not too comfortable - success. The talk ranged from dissatisfaction with the music industry and the band's longtime label to the troubles of making ends meet as a musician, and from the value of laughter in the creative struggle to the night the band almost split up (again) and to the need to sometimes get away from something in order to remember what you liked most about it.

Flagpole

Brighter Than Creation's Dark is the last record you're putting out with New West Records, and the band's name and profile have grown significantly over the past several years. Is it feasible for a band like the Drive-By Truckers to put out an album without the support of a label?

Patterson Hood

Well, I think so. What support have we gotten? At this point I don't feel they've done shit for us, really. To hear them talk, they took a band that was playing 50-seaters and have grown us to this great touring act, but I beg to differ. I feel like that's something we've done on our own very much, and we've drug them like a ball and chain around. That said, whatever we do in the future's gonna be something where we have not just lip service about full control of what we do, but actual full control. Y'know, on paper we have final cut on our records, but we've had to put up with a lot of bullshit that has interfered with our artistic process.

Now, granted, we may do things a little bit weird and different than most bands, but we were very upfront about the fact that we did things weird and different than most bands when we signed on with the label.

Flagpole

What's weird and different? Putting out records as often as you do?

Patterson Hood

Putting out records more frequently than the two-year cycle, yeah. I mean, when we gave them [2004's] The Dirty South a year ahead of schedule, you'd think we had somehow grudge-fucked their mothers. They were so pissed off about it and acted like we had done something wrong. We were 75 percent through making that record before we signed the deal with them. If the management we had then chose not to tell them that, that's between the two of them. But by the time we turned in the record, we had already fired that management and gotten different management. Part of the reason we fired them was because of stuff like that. They had their own things they were doing, and we didn't see why things like that should be secretive.

Kelly Ruberto

Patterson Hood

We wanted to be upfront and honest about what we were doing, because we felt like we were doing what we wanted and needed to do. We didn't want all this typical "music biz" bullshit going on. So we turned in The Dirty South early, which of course ended being our best-selling record. But they were pissed because it fucked with their two-year cycle, and that was kind of the beginning of the end between us and them, here three albums later. And [there was a] constant battle about side projects and solo projects. They were not at all happy about us doing the Bettye LaVette record, which ended up getting nominated for a Grammy, and that's really going to help this next record because that's all happening just as this next one's coming out. It's like stuff that can help out the band and its profile. I'd like to find some entity with access to really good distribution where we can piggyback what we're doing onto that. I think we're in a position where we can pretty much get whatever we want.

So we'll see, I guess, and that's kinda where I see it. I've been keeping a close eye on the whole Radiohead thing. I think it's so cool that a band in that position had the balls to do what they did. That's great.

Flagpole

Did you download that album?

Patterson Hood

I did, it's great, it's fucking great!

Flagpole

Did you pay for it?

Patterson Hood

I tried to! [Laughs.] What I'm gonna do is buy it on vinyl when it comes out on vinyl. I tried to pay and I couldn't make it work - I'm not too good on computers - so I ended up dubbing it from someone else who downloaded it who did pay for it. I think she paid 10 bucks. That's a fair price. I'd pay 10 bucks any day for a record. I have no problem with that.

Anything that I download or get access to for free, I go buy it, and if it's out on vinyl, I go buy it on vinyl. If it's not on vinyl, I'll buy it anyway on whatever form I can. But if I download something and don't really like it, I'll just throw it away. I like to pay people for their music.

Flagpole

Truckers albums have always stood on their own with individual identities. Do you think easy downloads and song-by-song listening means an album approach is a fading art?

Patterson Hood

On the big, wide sort of band, yes, I think it's fading. But on the other hand, I don't think we'll ever be a big, wide, mainstream sort of band. I think we'd be kidding ourselves if we thought otherwise. At the same time, the whole industry is shifting to more niche things anyway, and that's where our niche lies. That's why I think we'll do real well on vinyl if we can ever get our shit out on vinyl, cause a lot of people that are into our band are into that. And vinyl's growing again anyway, which is such a cool thing to see.

I think all this downloading is finally taking the CD out of the equation. I mean, having a bunch of crap on your computer is great, and I love my iPod as much as anybody. Y'know, as a touring musician, it's a great thing. We have a turntable on our bus, though, too! [Laughs.] I bought more records on tour this year than probably I've bought in any other year. Everybody was hittin' record stores in each town. We had so many by the end of the tour that it was kind of overflowing on the bus, and we had record parties up in the front.

Flagpole

If there's more success with a niche environment by finding the people who'll really tune into what you're doing, have you guys taken it as far as you can? Are there still new Truckers listeners to find?

Patterson Hood

I think we can take it a lot farther. I think we can take it a whole lot farther. That's another reason why I'm ready to be free of our deal because things that we could do to take it farther, they weren't willing to do because it was too far off from the mainstream. They're trying so hard to act like a major label, and it's like, uh, didn't you read the papers? I don't think major labels are doing all that good. Especially labels that don't have major label kind of money.

Flagpole

What sort of stuff are you interested in doing that you feel you haven't been able to do so far?

Patterson Hood

More different things. I want to put out my solo record [Murdering Oscar (And Other Love Songs)]. I think if I'd been able to put that out when I wanted to, it could've exposed our band to a whole different segment of people that might not think they like the Truckers, because it's a very different kind of record. And it might've made a smoother transition when we put out Blessing and a Curse because in some ways it was more in the direction that record went in, and it made more sense as a follow-up to Dirty South than just putting Blessing out like it was.

Hell, if Jason [Isbell] had been allowed to do what he wanted to do, I'm not saying we wouldn't've ended up with the same result, but… I think we would've had a happier couple of later years with him in the band because part of why he became resentful about being in the band was because he wasn't allowed to do what he wanted to do. It was because he was in that band, in the Truckers, and it wasn't anybody in the band keeping him from doing it!

So obviously, I'm a little bitter today, and I'm working on that. [Laughs.] Holidays, sobriety and all this stuff are not a good combination for my personality! [Laughs.]

Flagpole

It's been years and years since your second solo album was recorded. Do you find yourself revisiting it to work on it?

Patterson Hood

A little bit. I've tinkered with it a bit, but I've been overall resistant to do too much to it. When it's time to do too much, it's time to make another record.

Flagpole

The songs that end up on a Patterson Hood solo album, could they also work on a Drive-By Truckers album?

Patterson Hood

There's only two or three songs off that album that could maybe be Truckers songs, and the Killers & Stars album I put out was all written at the same time as [2003's] Decoration Day. And at the time, I didn't think I was "making a solo album," I was just recording my new songs in my kitchen. I recorded a version of "Heathens" and "My Sweet Annette," and I'd listen back to 'em and go, okay, this is a Truckers song, this is, too, and the record is the rest of 'em.

But with three songwriters in the band, it's not like I get that many songs on a record… especially when everyone's telling us to make our records shorter anyway!

Flagpole

That's not the case this time, for sure - Brighter Than Creation's Dark has 19 songs. Is it going to be a double CD release? It's coming out on vinyl, right?

Patterson Hood

Yeah, it's coming out on vinyl, and it'll come with a coupon for a free MP3 download if you buy that album, which is a no-brainer. It'll be on one CD, but on two records. We kept the "Side One," "Side Two," labels on the CD when we laid out the artwork, I don't know why. I guess 'cause I like records and I kinda like the idea. There might be one person out of a thousand that decides to listen to it that way - "I'll listen to Side Two today" - but when we sequenced the album, I wanted to sequence it in such a way that each side was its own entity.

Flagpole

It seems like each side of each disc is like a little Truckers sampler, with songs from you, Shonna Tucker and Mike Cooley spread out.

Patterson Hood

Sure, sure. Side Four in particular is almost like a little mini-album in its own self. Even the division between disc one and disc two on the vinyl is like a little personality break.

Flagpole

Being on the road as much as you are, you mentioned hitting the vinyl bins, but how do you go about finding new music?

Patterson Hood

I read Paste, Harp, those things, and whatever local weeklies wherever we are on the road. I try to kinda keep up. I grew up reading all of my dad's magazines, so I read Rolling Stone cover to cover, and Musician cover to cover, and even Billboard. He got all those because he's a musician. Building up an encyclopedia of useless information, y'know.

And around the time I moved [to Athens,] I got really disillusioned with everything that was going on in so-called mainstream music, so I just kinda shut it all off and went through five or six years [of] total blackout. Not only did I not read all those magazines, I didn't listen to new stuff, I didn't listen to the radio… if I stumbled across the radio accidentally, I generally hated what I was hearing - this was like the era leading up to Creed and Nickelback and all that shit, post-Cobain, all the crap that came along after him but wasn't good like him and just sucked. So I just shut it all down and for several years all I listened to was old soul or old country, and then local records. I was working clubs doing sound, and at one point had hundreds of local albums. I really just immersed myself into the scene here.

Flagpole

Do you remember the first show you went to when you moved here?

Patterson Hood

God, what was it? One of the first was Vic Chesnutt. I just kept hearing, "He's the best songwriter in town, he's the best songwriter in town." Okay, who's this damn guy who's supposed to be the best songwriter in town? I wanna see this guy. And then it was like, "in town"? Hell! In the world, maybe! I saw Jack Logan pretty early, and Buzz Hungry. I saw so many shows in such a short period of time.

Flagpole

Tell me about the first shows you played in town.

Patterson Hood

Kelly Ruberto

I didn't know anybody, and this was not a good solo-performer town at the time, by any means. There wasn't anything like Flicker, or the Melting Point at the other end of the spectrum. This was even before the High Hat Club [A bar/venue on Clayton Street that shut down in 2000 - Ed.]. I would end up playing upstairs at The Globe, they had a songwriter song circle thing. I actually met Tim Bracy there, who later had the Mendoza Line. I'd play at the Peppino's pizza place downtown, which sucked, it was like the worst gig imaginable.

Flagpole

Do you miss playing locally as much as you used to?

Patterson Hood

I'd like to play a little more. Y'know, I played a lot last year and did a bunch of benefit shows, but it got to the point where they kinda cracked down on me. I felt like it got to the point where if I even played a benefit it wouldn't do them any good, because people who might come would just say "Aw, hell, we'll see him next week."

I miss the band playing in town, but if we get to do a three-night stand once a year, that's pretty okay. I don't want anyone getting tired of us. And keeping it more like an event, it gives us a little more power to make it special and raise a lot of money for Nuçi's Space and make it count.

Flagpole

You're planning on playing the new record in its entirety at the Thursday show.

Patterson Hood

Yeah! It's gonna be weird. We might vary it just a little, just a teeny bit for the sake of changing instruments - I don't want the show to lull - but we're going to play all the songs. We're actually going to practice, which is almost unheard of, so that should be fun. We've got to learn about five of the songs between now and then.

Flagpole

You've seen the Truckers put together a lot of different things over the years. What do you think of the new record?

Patterson Hood

I mean, I've got real strong feelings about it. It's the best time making a record any of us have ever had, by far. The most harmonious experience. It's a pretty dark record, and a lot of the stuff on there came from some pretty dark experiences - a combination of places we'd been to in our personal lives, and as a band, and there are a number of songs that deal with the Iraqi bullshit and all that's going on with that. There was a lot we felt strongly about and a lot about that situation that really touched us, like on "The Homefront." People we met along the way, on tour.

The whole thing that inspired "Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife" was such a horrendous event. It was a family that we knew the parents a little bit, and some friends of ours were close friends with them, and they were murdered. So the new album parallels Decoration Day a bit in that it was a real tough time in our lives, but with this recording process, it couldn't have been better. We had so much fun. Plus having Spooner [Oldham] there, what he brought to the sessions was just great, besides his musical input… having someone with that kind of personality in the mix of all our personalities was an amazing thing.

Flagpole

What did he bring to the mix?

Patterson Hood

He's the most unfiltered music person imaginable. One of the assistants working on the project just looked at him one day and said, "Man, that guy's just made of music." And that's it! There's no other part of his personality. Some people have the on/off switch. In any given time he's either writing something down in a corner that'll be a song someday, or he's thinking about it. And he's funny, his sense of humor is infectious. Any time there'd be a stressful situation - there really wasn't with this one, but there was with the Bettye LaVette record, which was really stressful - and we were about to run screaming out of the room, he'd say something that'd defuse everything and have us all laughing.

Flagpole

You mentioned songs about Iraq on the new album. Do you think songwriters today can be effective with political songs? Can you effect change with a song today, or is the best you can hope for to express yourself and your own views?

Patterson Hood

I don't know. I really don't know. There's a side of me that wishes that it could. I just don't know if our society's like that any more. Of course, I never wanted to be so overt with my politics, standing up there preaching my beliefs to people who paid their hard-earned cash to come see the show.

At the same time, I believe what I believe, and what I do comes from what I believe, whether it's political or personal or whatever. There is a blurring of the lines, of course. The political is the personal. If your dad, cousin, best friend ends up in Iraq, it's personal, regardless of how you feel about the war, or if it's right or wrong, or if we need to even be involved. And as a writer, I'm more interested in writing about specific people and characters and places and happenings and events, rather than some big political manifesto. And sometimes I'll write about people that I don't agree with. I don't necessarily share some of the views with the guy in "That Man I Shot," but I don't want to put words in his mouth that'd make him want to come after me in the night. I just try to be true to whatever I'm writing about, and what comes out comes out.

And sometimes it's best not to think beyond writing a song, and let it be sorted out on the back end by anyone else.

Flagpole

What's the Truckers' relationship with the audience like?

Patterson Hood

It's so different from night to night. So, so different. That's considered sometimes by people on the business end of things one of our great weaknesses, but one of the things I'm proudest of is that there is no specific demographic, to use that damn word, in who comes to our shows. It does vary. It varies from town to town and night to night and generation to generation. There'll be people in our audience who… hell, there's three generations of people in our band! As young as Shonna is, I could easily have a kid her age if I'd've been lucky in high school… or unlucky, I guess [Laughs.] And Spooner's right at my dad's age. So there's three generations right there.

Generally the people who like our band are the people who hear our band, unless they just don't like guitars or, y'know, music that gets labeled as rock and roll. I think it's pretty likeable to people who don't mind the volume and belligerence.

It cuts across political lines, too! There's a lot of Republicans that come to the show, and I'm glad for that, because I don't want to be just preaching to the converted. I like the fact that there's people who like our band who have nothing in common with me or any of us, but they still respond to something in our music. I think that's a great thing, and I'm so grateful for that. I'm as big a music snob as anybody, and I don't like that about myself sometimes, but I do like that our band is more inclusive than exclusive, and there's a place for that. It's the Willie Nelson factor, 'cause his shows have the widest audience you could ever imagine.

Flagpole

In an interview in Rolling Stone recently, Bruce Springsteen said something to the effect of needing the fans and being unable to continue without them, doing what he does for them. Could your band keep going if the fans stopped showing up in the numbers they are now?

Patterson Hood

I did it before they were coming, so I guess! I can't really afford to starve any more because I've got a family that depends on me, and a daughter, so I can't just take off on a tour if I can't pay the bills. But hell, I'd still find a way to make records in my basement or living room, press up a thousand or two copies and I could maybe talk my wife into letting me go out for a week or two.

Flagpole

Is it tough, now that you have a family, that your main source of income is going out on the road?

Patterson Hood

It is tough. It's a little better now that the band is out of debt. Through some bad managerial decisions a few years back, and some things that were done wrong, it got to the point where we had to play and tour so much just to pay the monthly bills that we had, and we couldn't take time off. We were forced to play just to pay the bills. I think sometimes unscrupulous managers do that on purpose so that they have control over you, because they're only earning money when you're earning money, and then you owe them money.

Flagpole

Musical sharecropping?

Patterson Hood

Yeah. It's like you find yourself with a major label deal, God forbid, so then you've got to find management who's big and strong enough to deal with the label because otherwise you're completely bullied and at the label's mercy. So you get big-time management, and big-time management gets you doing all these things that run you at a deficit and you can't pay your fee to them that month, but you're running a tab and next thing you know you owe your management, say, $75,000, your business manager $30,000, your label God-knows-what for tour support and all that kinda shit, and it's a trap!

And you're so busy touring that you don't keep up with it all day to day, and that's how you end up screwed. We're fortunate that we kept up a little bit more than some people do, and we did the math at some point, and that's when we discovered, shit, we're $100,000 in debt, we're fucked, now we've gotta work all the time just to crawl back out. Plus we're still trying to support our families.

Flagpole

Are you all at a point where you're able to make a living as full-time musicians?

Patterson Hood

Yeah, more or less. This year's been a little tight because we haven't toured as much, but we had to take some time off. And we do have really good management now that looks after our long-term goals and our best interests, instead of their short-term interests. It's Madison House, which started here in Athens, and we've had the same booking agent since early '02. We have our own publicist instead of the label publicist now, which I prefer, because their job is to promote the band and the band only, and not also put a good face on the label.

We did that damn Black Crowes tour last year, and the only reason we did that was to get out of debt. It's the only thing we've done in the history of our band where we did it for money alone. And it was a miserable, miserable experience doing it. It's everything we didn't like doing, and everything the Truckers aren't. We were gone from our families. We were playing big shows, early, short sets, playing those shed arenas, and going on so early that people weren't even there. So we're playing for essentially nobody for two months away from our family, after being on the road on our own for three or four months straight prior to that playing smaller places that were good crowds. That was last summer, '06. But we were very well paid for it, and that money didn't go in our pockets, but it got us out of debt. So then that fall tour allowed us to take off most of this year and spend time with our families.

Flagpole

What are the band's plans after the three shows at the 40 Watt?

Patterson Hood

We just canceled our European tour, which was supposed to be right after the 40 Watt shows. We just can't do it right now; we can't afford it. There's some money that's kinda owed to us, so we're having to cover for all that, and Europe tours are money losses at this point, so we're going to reschedule that for after the record's been out there for a little bit. But I'm hoping we get to go to Japan, and I'd love to visit Australia on this record. We're touring America in all of February, March, most of May and a good bit of June, and we'll probably do some festivals and one-off things in the summer. Maybe work in Europe or Japan then, then tour the States again in the fall.

One of the best things I'm looking forward to is that we're all getting along really well, and that's just great. And we've got a ton of new songs to play, so the show can really morph and change a whole bunch this year. We never have a set list, except for this Thursday Nuçi's benefit show when we're doing the new album, so we have a lot of flexibility night to night. We've had enough of a breather where everybody's looking forward to touring, and it's been a while since I could honestly say I'm looking forward to touring. Of course, it'll be hard to be away from my family, but not like it was when we were always away from them. Now we're choosing to, whereas before we had to.

Flagpole

Could you ever imagine bringing your family along with you on a tour?

Patterson Hood

No, at this point, it just wouldn't work out. There might could be a day or weekend when [my wife] Rebecca could fly out to visit, but [our daughter] Ava's only three, so it just wouldn't work. It's funny, Cooley and I used to joke about how one day we'd get to the point where we'd have the band bus and the family bus trailing right behind, but I just don't think that'd work out at this point.

Flagpole

What about being a Trucker is most satisfying for you? Sitting in here writing songs? Being in the studio? On stage?

Patterson Hood

I love the show. Even at our darkest hours of last year, it was rare that I wasn't enjoying the show. It was getting by fall of 2006 where it wasn't even fun, and that's when it's time to quit. We all came to that in turns. Cooley and I sat up one night in Louisville. We had a couple of days off there, and the venue there was this cool old theater attached to a hotel, and they put us up there for a few days. We all got to stretch out in the middle of a long tour. He and I sat up one night in the bus drinking whiskey, deciding if it was time to break up or not. And it literally came to that.

We sat there and drank and discussed it, and I said to Cooley, "Okay, if we break up, what'll I do? As much as I've swore I'd never have another band besides the Truckers, I'd probably put together another band. And hell, the first person I'd ask would be you. And hell, Brad [Morgan] plays in the band and is the perfect drummer for what I do and what you do. And damn, I really like playing with Shonna…" We worked ourselves through it step by step that way. We took some time to decompress, fix a few things that were broken and start over, but, more or less, it's still this band. Because there's a lot that's really good about this band. So then it was just making it through the tour without killing each other.

And if making a record could be as easy and fun as making Brighter Than Creation's Dark, then fuck yeah, I love making records, too. As far as writing goes, it's getting harder and harder to find the mental space at home to do it with a three-year-old and a wife and responsibilities, and I'd be gone on tour so much that it'd be pretty bumpy to try and then lock myself away to write. I haven't wrote anything since "The Righteous Path," and I wrote that at the very tail end of recording that record. It's been by choice that I haven't been writing since then, but I'm about ready to start up again. I've been thinking of some ideas, got some stuff brewing. I hear stuff in my head. But for now, it's back out on the road!

Chris Hassiotis

WHO: Drive-By Truckers, Don Chambers + GOAT, Bo Bedingfield & The Wydelles WHERE: 40 Watt Club WHEN: Thursday, January 10 HOW MUCH: $20

WHO: Drive-By Truckers, Glossary WHERE: 40 Watt Club WHEN: Friday, January 11 HOW MUCH: $20

WHO: Drive-By Truckers, The Dexateens WHERE: 40 Watt Club WHEN: Saturday, January 12 HOW MUCH: $20