Drive-By Truckers Bring Fantastic Filthy & Fried Southern Rock to Rev Room

by Julian Spivey
The Drive-By Truckers brought their fantastic version of filthy and fried Southern Rock to The Revolution Room in Little Rock, Ark. on Tuesday, Nov. 13 with a bombastic performance of songs throughout their entire career, including some new unreleased ones.
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The truly unique thing about the Drive-By Truckers is they feature two supremely talented songwriters and vocalists that could have been successful recording artists in their own right in Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley but put together are a force to be reckoned with. The two alternated vocals the entire night sharing the spotlight on a multitude of beloved Truckers tracks and fascinating newer songs that take on a political tone providing a much needed musical voice helping us through this messed-up world.

DBT kicked off their show with “Shit Shots Count,” which pretty much summarizes the grittiness of the band. Some would call them crude – my wife has before, though she also enjoyed herself at Tuesday night’s show – but, they’re just matter of fact.

One of the first songs that really caught my attention during the show was a new composition “Thoughts and Prayers” by Hood that takes on the ineptness of politicians sending out their thoughts and prayers instead of actually trying to solve any of our nation’s problems like gun violence. Another new song played late during the band’s set was “Babies in Cages,” a direct result of President Donald Trump’s controversial immigration policies that have seen families torn apart on the U.S./Mexico border and resulted in actual babies placed in cages. These two songs are in line with what was recorded on the band’s fantastic and critically-acclaimed eleventh studio album American Band, which was released just over a month before Trump was elected in 2016, being politically charged and full of hard truths.

I think American Band is DBT’s best all-around album to date and was thrilled with the five tracks they chose to perform off it on Tuesday night. The first song performed from the latest album was the hard-charging “Ramon Casiano,” telling the story of a killing on the U.S./Mexico border in 1931 by a shooter who would go on to become a leader of the National Rifle Association. The other tracks included Hood’s “Darkened Flags on the Cusp of Dawn” and Cooley’s “Surrender Under Protest” and “Kinky Hypocrite.” The best performance from American Band was Hood’s “What It Means,” written during a spate of killings of young black men by police and citizens “standing their ground.” It was a touching performance with Hood explaining the song and saying that after writing it he kind of felt it was a bit of a cop out because he asks these questions but didn’t really have the answers. He said he found the answer at a Patti Smith concert in Portland, Ore. when she stopped a song and shouted, “love one another, motherfuckers!”

The Truckers performed great songs from their entire discography on Tuesday night spotlighting tracks from nearly every one of their albums and even performing a song “Runaway Train” from Hood and Cooley’s first band, Adam’s House Cat, that was set to be released in 1990, but never was. That album called Town Burned Down was finally released in September. The song shows that these two have had great talent all along.

While both Hood and Cooley are incredible performers and songwriters in their own right it was Cooley’s performances of older DBT songs on Tuesday night that I found myself enjoying more. Gritty rockers like “Marry Me,” “Three Dimes Down” and “Gravity’s Gone” are all among my favorites of the band’s past releases. My only disappointment from the show was they didn’t get around to playing my all-time favorite DBT song “Zip City.”

Some of the highlights of Hood’s turn at the mic were “Sinkhole” and “My Sweet Annette,” both from 2003’s Decoration Day.

Bassist Matt Patton also got a moment to shine toward the end of the show taking lead vocals on a cover of The Ramones’ “The KKK Took My Baby Away.”

The band ended the terrific two hour, 27-song set with a rocking performance of fan-favorite “Let There Be Rock.” Let there be rock indeed. 

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