The DBT Experience

Had you never visited northern Alabama, a few hours with the Drive-By Truckers’ catalogue could bring it to life. This region at the end of the Appalachia has a broad, sometimes uncomfortable history and a rich musical tradition.

The Truckers illuminate its inhabitants, populating their songs with hard-luck people of all stripes. The songs are drawn vividly, making it impossible not to picture the depicted struggles. Other DBT albums already made my annual Keepers lists, but this one deserves a special mention.

 It’s Great to Be Alive introduces the band, gives a taste for the entire career and points to what makes them work so well. DBT culled the best of a three-night stand in San Francisco’s American Music Hall. Its sequencing makes it feel as if it came from a single night.

The deluxe edition, all of 35 songs and 3-plus hours, comes close to simulating a Truckers show. Ad-libs and behind-the-scene stories flesh out some songs. Who doesn’t need a 13-minute version of Grand Canyon, one of their best epics, to wrap it together?

Few bands needed an epic live record as badly as DBT. Too often their studio records are a little overstuffed (some records have songs from four or more members) or long in general (Southern Rock Opera has great moments but too much George Wallace).

On these nights, DBT starts at Lookout Mountain, named for a ridge of the Appalachian Range that runs from Chattanooga to Gadsden. Of course Patterson Hood’s narration is contemplating a jump off its steep bluffs, musing “Who will stand there taking credit, who will lay there passing blame?” he leaves it unresolved, and it’s a better song for the ambiguity.

For people spend some time with Uncle Frank. Mike Cooley weaves a tale of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s promises and realities, about an uncle who served his country in World War II and bought 15 acres only to have his dream flooded away behind a dam and the shores dotted in palatial vacation homes. “All that backed up water had to have some place to go,” he sings wistfully before revealing Uncle Frank's fate a few verses later.

Uncle Frank isn't the only one. Putting People on the Moon tells a story that could only come from northern Alabama. Told by a man living downstream from Huntsville and NASA facilities, it’s a brutal takedown on the limits of prosperity and the lives outside its bubble. Hood throws in a Tea Party dig, but the story cuts hard in a region that lost its industry, leaving people to work retail or work outside the law. The auto plant and other businesses shut down while Huntsville’s rock business hums along.

The good fortune of others doesn't always smack their characters. In Tornadoes, nature takes a whack.  Nor does the bands solely chronicle hard times. Girls Who Smoke certainly doesn't. Later, the crazed guitar-piano interplay of Get Downtown can't be brought down.

With their ties to Muscle Shoals, it's no surprise that the music of the South runs thick in DBT’s veins, from the The Living Bubba (a singer of AIDS sustains himself on drugs and always playing one more show), Carl Perkins’ Cadillac and Ronnie and Neil, which ushers the Lynyrd Skynyrd-Neil Young spat into a new generation.

The Truckers stand polar opposites to the mainstream, their brand of Southern rock built on an unshakable foundation. The guy they booted for being too drunk (Jason Isbell) sobered up and has become a bigger star than the Truckers will. That takes nothing away from DBT, who soldier on without need to prove themselves to anyone.

These songs shout from the margins, shining lights on parts of the South where the rays rarely reach. They find a rich, troubled world that most people drive through as fast as possible. DBT goes further than slowing down to gawk – they build empathy for people we might otherwise disregard.