Drive-By Truckers
(New West)
As one of the more important bands to redefine the Southern Rock notion for the present millennium, the Drive-By Truckers have staked out a significant place for themselves over the course of the past dozen years or so. Though there's a gaping divide between their rough and tumble reputation and their commercial fortunes - they've yet to achieve the notoriety of, say, a Lynyrd Skynyrd, for example - the band has produced a pair of prodigious figures in leader Patterson Hood and in Jason Isbell (a former member who's now off on his own), not to mention Hood's longtime partner-in-crime, Mike Cooley.
And in listening to this best of, culled from the length and breadth of their vibrant career, their homage to an earlier era couldn't be clearer. Exploiting the clichés and popular mythology about rockers and rednecks, the band created an early indelible conceptual classic with Southern Rock Opera and brought the legend full circle in its telling anthem "Ronnie & Neil." Moreover, the gritty, uncompromising wail they purveyed from then on (early songs "The Living Bubba" and "Bulldozers and Dirt" were forlorn and tattered) established their insurgency and defiance. "Let There Be Rock," also lifted from Southern Rock Opera, sounds like Keith Richards taking a rare vocal turn at the helm of the Stones, while "Never Gonna Change" seethes with the weary drawl of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Then there's "Carl Perkins' Cadillac," which surges as an ode to producer Sam Phillips, namedropping Perkins, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis along the way. In typical roadhouse fashion, the Truckers made no distinctions between winners and losers, the straight up and the disingenuous, and songs such as "Outfit," "Uncle Frank" and "The Righteous Path" reflect that Southern definition of ill-fated pride and determination.
While terming this set a collection of greatest hits is obviously more than a mild exaggeration, it does sum up an admirable body of work, one due far more attention than a mere cursory glance. Hopefully then, it will set the stage for greater appreciation, and along with it, recognition that today's southern sons can soar just as high as those free birds that preceded them.
DOWNLOAD: "Ronnie & Neil," "Carl Perkins' Cadillac," "Let There Be Rock" LEE ZIMMERMAN
