Drive-By Truckers Sept. 13 at Revolution Live
Two weeks before this concert, Drive-By Truckers frontman Patterson Hood played a solo show at the Decatur Book Festival in Decatur, Ga. Backed by a band that included Truckers drummer Brad Morgan and bassist-producer David Barbe, Hood was warm and funny, providing back stories to a batch of new songs, most of which are informed by his becoming a father for the first time after 40. The audience, which was overwhelmingly collegiate and proudly hairy—this was a book fair, after all—could not have appeared more attentive. No one in the crowd that night would have been faulted for wondering what it would be like if Hood became a full-time solo act. Likewise, no one who saw his day-job band at Revolution Live would ever want that to happen. No matter how impressive Hood's solo material, the man was born to lead the Truckers, a group whose raw, insolent power is matched only by its bare-knuckle literacy; no other "roots" band is as concerned with or defines Southernness in the 21st century as much as this one. But above all else, the Truckers know how to rock, as they proved during a show that not only bristled with tracks from its seven-album catalog, but also included brawling covers of Van Halen's "Ain't Talkin' Bout Love" and Jim Carroll's "People Who Died." And judging by the huge grin that never left Hood's face, the man felt right at home. (Jake Cline)
