We spoke to Drive-By Truckers frontman Patterson Hood last week in advance of his group’s two-night run at the Georgia Theatre, which begins tonight. Below, read the interview in its entirey.
Flagpole: I know that you’ve been busy recording your new solo album, but the Truckers have been a little bit incognito over the last year or so. Was that a conscious decision, to kind of lay low for a while?
Patterson Hood: Oh yeah. About a year go, we made a conscious decision to try to take as much of this year off as we [could]. We kinda got a late start on it, ’cause the Go-Go Boots tour ended up extending into, like, March of this year… We’re only playing a small handful of dates between now and—I don’t know when we’ll be playing again, we really don’t have any plans for next year, either. I don’t really wanna tour much until we make another record, and I don’t know when that’s gonna be.
FP: Where did that decision come from?
PH: We’ve been on the road, essentially nonstop, since ’96. I mean, we’ve tried two different years to take hiatuses, and both times we ended up, mostly due to money situations, having to tour a bunch. And so this is the first year we’re kinda just like, trying to make it stick a little better. We all have families, and—we’ve just been on the road too long. I don’t want it to get where it’s not fun, and not special… It’s something we definitely kinda planned for, for a long time last year. We’re trying to do the best we can with it (laughs).
FP: You guys have done a good job keeping things fresh—Go-Go Boots was obviously a little bit of a departure, a very deliberate record where you were looking backwards, to your musical idols. Were you worried at all about the reaction it would get from fans?
PH: Not too worried about it. I try not to really think about that end of it too much. Especially in the writing process, I don’t think about anything like that. It’s strictly writing the song, and trying to be true to the song. And when we record it, we’re just trying to be true to what we wrote, and where the band wants to be. That other part just kinda has to sort [itself] out. I learned a long time ago that you really can’t second guess that. If you do, you make a mistake. You end up selling your fans short, your band short, yourself short. It’s better to write what you’re gonna write, and be true to it, and hope for the best. Everybody’s not gonna like everything, that’s for sure.
It’s funny, ’cause the last time we went in to make a record was in ’09, which is, in its own right, kinda strange to me, ’cause that’s a lot longer than it usually has been for us. But we went in and we ended up recording two albums at once… We knew we were gonna put out The Big To-Do first, because it was the logical one to put out first. Our assumption was that [it would] be the crowd-pleaser. And… the darker, weirder, kinda more different Go-Go Boots record would follow in its wake, and would just kinda find its audience and be OK. But it ended up being, by a pretty good measure, the more successful record… And it seemed to be the one that the fans embraced the most. So you just never know.
I tend to kind of like all of [the records] pretty good… I used to say they were like our kids, before we had kids. I can’t really say that anymore. They’re the next best thing after that (laughs). Even the ones that are troubled and don’t quite work, I have a certain fondness for. I’m not necessarily saying that about The Big To-Do, ’cause I like that one a little better than that. But we’ve definitely had one or two along the way [where] things didn’t work quite like we hoped. But I still see what we were trying to do. That’s the danger of making a bunch of records: sometimes things work better than others, I guess.
FP: Are you guys working on anything new right now, or is that still a ways off?
PH: I’m writing—I’m writing a good bit right now, for I guess what will be the next Truckers project. But there’s not any kind of a timeline on it… I kinda put that ball in [guitarist Mike] Cooley’s court—I told him, when he’s got a bunch of songs and wants to make a record, let me know and we’ll make a record. I’ve got a solo record coming out in September, so that’s been a lot of what I’ve been doing this year—getting the band I’m taking on the road ready to tour with that, and all the stuff you’ve gotta do to release a record. I’ve been actually pretty busy. But I don’t know when the Truckers will be making another record. But we will. We definitely will. I’ve got some pretty good songs here.
FP: Y’all have done these multi-night stands in Athens for years now. What’s your favorite part about these hometown shows?
PH: I love playing here, ’cause it’s here. I’m home. I get to sleep in my own bed. I never get tired of playing shows, but I get real tired of the road. I wish we could do the Branson [Missouri] thing, and just play here. Build our own theater (laughs). The Drive-By Truckers Theatre. People would come to us. I’ve been on the road for so long that it’s lost a lot of its luster. Other than the show part—I love the show. I love the Truckers show, because it’s fun, and it’s a little athletic. It’s like running a marathon while you’re singing, ’cause it’s pretty high-energy. Once you get up there, it’s like an explosion of chaos. We don’t do a setlist. You never really know where it’s gonna go, or what it’s gonna do.
Us having a little bit of time off has only really made it better. The handful of shows we’ve played this year have been like, extra good ones, ’cause we’re all kinda glad to see each other and ready to do it. Matt Patton’s working out real good on bass, and this will be the first time we’ve played Athens with him. This will be his Athens premiere. He’s a lot of fun on stage, and he brings a real cool energy to it all.
I also enjoy the other show I’m doing, ’cause it’s totally different, with the solo project. It’s a different band, a different energy. In a lot of ways, it’s harder work for me, ’cause I’m doing more heavy lifting—I don’t have Cooley on one side and [guitarist John] Neff on the other… It’s a challenge. It’s a quieter show, and sometimes it’s harder to play quieter. With the Truckers, it’s big and loud and has its own energy to feed on.
It’s been a good year, art-wise. And I’ve had a good summer spending time with my family. We’ve gotten to do some traveling—a little too much, maybe (laughs). But it’s been nice. It’s good for the kids, to take them places. Now school has started this week, for my daughter. So, back to the grind.
FP: Time to get back out on the road.
PH: Yeah.
FP: Your song for Protect Downtown Athens [“After it’s Gone”] got a lot of attention earlier this year. Why did you feel it was important to step up and put that together?
PH: ‘Cause I love Athens. I love downtown Athens. We’ve got something really special and really unique here, and I think putting something of that size and that scale right in the middle of what we’ve already got [would] really disrupt a delicate balance. Doing all the traveling I do, and going to so many towns—most of ’em look alike. Especially smaller towns—small-town America is just a fast-vanishing thing. Because everything has become so homogenized and chain-driven, and big box-driven. Downtowns are boarded up everywhere you go. Here, we’ve got something really unique. The other small towns this size—in the South, or anywhere in America—they don’t look like Athens anymore. Athens is special. We should hold on to that. We should treasure that. We’ve got plenty of big box stores. But we’ve managed to still [give] our downtown kind of a unique flavor and feel. I can’t imagine not appreciating that, and taking that for granted…
When I brought it up and asked around if people wanted to participate, I was kind of overwhelmed by the enthusiastic support and reaction I got. It was really quick. I wrote that [song] on a Wednesday, and we recorded it on a Saturday. The following weekend is when everyone came over and did all the guest appearances, and then we mixed it, and it was up online and out there with a video and everything by the following Wednesday… Jason Thrasher and Eddie Whelan just outdid themselves putting together that video. Mike Mills flew in from Mexico and drove straight to the studio and did his part. I’d never worked with him before. I knew him a little bit, on the periphery, but we’d never hung out together. He just came in and was very creative—he brought a lot to the table. Very cool stuff.
And Widespread [Panic], they were all packing to leave the following day to go to Mexico to do their big residency thing there. So they were all busy as hell, but Todd [Nance] and [John Bell] dropped what they were doing, came over and participated… Futurebirds were working on mixing an EP or something next door, and they all came over and sang. Claire [Campbell] came over with Lera [Lynn], and it was cool. It was a really special weekend.
FP: I think it’s great that y’all did that—to have some of the highest-profile people in the music community at least drawing attention to it. But, we’ll see what happens.
PH: Yeah, if anything, it rallied the base, and it got people talking about it. I’ve had more people come up to me, people I see on the road that used to live in Athens, and they’re like “Man, I was watching that video, and I was like, ‘Oh, I know that place!” Loving seeing pictures of the trestles, stuff like that. People feel really strongly about it. We do our annual residency thing—probably 75 percent of the audience at those shows comes in from out of town. It’s very much a road trip destination… and those people fall in love with our town. We’re the excuse for coming, maybe, but it’s become more than that. They come because they love spending the weekend in Athens. There have been people who have met at that weekend who’ve since gotten married. So now they come together as a couple (laughs). It’s become that kind of thing.
People really have deep emotions about this town, and downtown Athens. It’s what keeps me living here. There have certainly been times when I felt like there were probably some opportunities I could have if I moved to certain places… Some of the things that bigger cities could offer me have certainly been tempting, but I keep living here, because I love Athens so much. It’s such a unique and special place.
The Drive-By Truckers play the Georgia Theatre this Thursday and Friday, Aug. 23 and 24.
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