The Drive-By Truckers’ career can be broken into three stages (so far), but one thing has never changed. From 1996-2000, they were a rowdy rock ’n’ roll band that was feeling out who it was, equally unafraid of semi-sentimental narratives and cheap jokes all dealing with the south they grew up in. “Buttholeville” was band member Patterson Hood’s kiss-off to Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where he reached his teenaged years just five minutes too late to be a part of its heyday as a recording mecca.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJbbDRz9QUY[/youtube]

Starting in 2001 with Southern Rock Opera, they became a post-modern southern rock band, using the three-guitar lineup and the Lynyrd Skynyrd/arena rock story to help understand their own experiences growing up southern in the ‘70s. That “three guitars and a life of crime” phase produced three great albums—Southern Rock Opera, Decoration Day and The Dirty South—but by the recording of A Blessing and a Curse (released in 2006), internal strains were showing musically. Guitarist Jason Isbell’s wife, Shonna Tucker, became the band’s bass player for The Dirty South, and the deterioration of their marriage exacerbated problems.

“I think our band had become Congress that year,” singer and principal songwriter Patterson Hood says of the sessions for A Blessing and a Curse. “We were trying to keep all of the factions happy, and nobody was happy. Everybody was feeling compromised instead of compromising.”

The next album, 2008’s Brighter Than Creation’s Dark, marked the start of the current phase of the Truckers’ story, one in which they’ve broadened their reach. They still rock, but not as a matter of obligation. On this year’s Go-Go Boots, they branch out to include country and R&B, the latter most obviously on covers of two songs by singer Eddie Hinton—“Everybody Needs Love” and “Where’s Eddie?”—initially released as part of a series of 7-inch singles paying tribute to him.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxmPWkA761U[/youtube]

“Doing the tribute single for Eddie Hinton was so daunting and intimidating because I hold that song, ‘Everybody Needs Love,’ in such a revered place in my heart as a piece of writing,” Hood says. “I love Eddie and was so scared of doing a shitty version. The performance of that song was kind of a breakthrough as a singer for me; that was part of why it got included on the record.”

Hood is the son of David Hood, bassist with the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, so he has been privy to many of the stories of the artists who recorded at Muscle Shoals, including Hinton.

“One weekend, he decided he was going to cover [the Staple Singers’] “Heavy Makes You Happy,” which he called “Sha-Na-Boom-Boom-Yeah.” He locked himself in the bathroom of Muscle Shoals for the whole weekend with the microphone. He was evidently laying in a fetal position on the floor in the bathroom kind of yelling and kind of caterwauling. And then he had them record him, and he actually sounds like Mavis Staples. It’s phenomenal.”

The Drive-By Truckers’ songs are consistently narrative, and Hood and songwriter/vocalist Mike Cooley sing in voices that are musicalized versions of their speaking voices. This makes Hood’s version of “Everybody Needs Love” a bit of a revelation. He’s sung covers before—live, Jim Carroll’s “People Who Died” was a staple of their set for years, and he sings “Like a Rolling Stone” on The Fine Print as if he wrote it—but for the occasion, he stepped out of himself and became an R&B singer.

“I could never in a million years write that song,” Hood says. “I sure wish I could. It’s ironic because he was so much more of a tortured, troubled person. I’ve had my days and my years, but nothing like what that guy went through. He wrote that song during a period when he was at a mental institution.

“Of course, there is a missing verse, a third verse that we didn’t put in there. It was a spoken word thing where he talks about being out picking up cans, and it sounds like the ramblings of a slightly unhinged, slightly mad guy. We left that out because we felt like it was so personal to him it would just be cheesy to try and do it. Cooley made that call and I totally agreed with it and cringe at the thought of what would have happened if we had tried to do it Eddie’s way.”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEYk0wP5_yk[/youtube]

Though soul and R&B aren’t the dominant sounds on Go-Go Boots—the Truckers are still a rock band first—their time working with soul singer Bettye LaVette and Booker T was formative for the album. Hood produced LaVette’s Scene of the Crime in 2007 with the Truckers as the band, and they backed the Memphis organ legend on 2009’s Potato Hole and the subsequent tour.

The LaVette experience told the band some things they needed to know. Jason Isbell was still part of the band officially, but he chose not to be a part of that album and during the making of it, the rest of the band realized where the band needed to go to next. “It was kind of like a reset button in many ways,” Hood says. “We knew that that era of the band was over, and we hadn’t quite sorted out how that was going to manifest itself or what was going to happen, but we knew that band was over. At the same time, we didn’t want to break up. I still wanted to play with Cooley. I still wanted to play with this band, so we threw all our thoughts and emphasis and everything into making that record and trying to be the correct band to back up Bettye on those songs. Of course, that involved bringing [studio great] Spooner [Oldham] in and that led to having Spooner on Brighter Than Creation’s Dark, and that record to me was our rebirth.”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUdzzBfqYPs[/youtube]

The recording of Potato Hole was a different sort of learning experience.

“Our part of that record was all in four days and most of it in the last two of those days,” Hood says. “We cut six songs the fourth day. I don’t think a single song got nailed the first day, but we literally met him the first day, too. That’s him playing us a song, us learning it, us recording it and then on to the next song just boom boom boom boom boom. Really quickly. After the fact, we spent 20, 25 shows playing with him. By the end of the tour, we’re like, ‘God, now I wish we could go make a record with him.’ The way we played those songs around him—even by the third show—was radically better than anything we did on that record.

“The breakthrough we had on the record was that we had been recording a song—it was like the third song we attempted with him—and we hit this wall. We learned the song correctly, but it wasn’t right. We’d play it and we’d get ‘the face’—the I-smell-something-bad-cooking-in-the-kitchen face. We were just like, ‘Oh my god, we’re getting the face.’

“We tried several takes, and I was afraid he was going get frustrated with us. All of a sudden, he stopped everything and he gathered us around. He was like, ‘Put down your guitars and let’s talk about it.’ He gathered us all around in a circle and he told us a story. He described this vivid scene of a homecoming, a Thanksgiving dinner maybe, a family reunion, and he described the table cloth, the way the food smelled, his aunt cooking and what she looked like and what she was wearing. He went into great detail describing this food to us, how it smelled, how it tasted, just everything about it. When he finished, he was like, ‘Okay, now play it.’ It’s the song ‘Reunion Time’ on the album—that’s the take. From then on for the rest of the record, that’s what he did. He would tell us what the song was about and a few details that were pertinent, and we’d record it and we’d nail it.

“That was such an epiphany for us, and the fact that he was such a fucking brilliant guy—instead of getting mad and frustrated that the kids were slaughtering his songs, he intuitively figured out what we’re about before we did and taught us what we were about. That’s become the way we’ve worked ever since. He made us a dramatically better band in 10 minutes. It took a year to process that. It was Booker’s gift to us; I hope one day I can repay the favor.”

The Booker experience and the stabilized lineup led to more peaceful, productive, fun recording sessions. The band recorded 2010’s The Big To-Do and Go-Go Boots more or less at the same time, with the Eddie Hinton songs in the mix as well. In general, the band doesn’t labor over songs. “Once we get to something that feels good, we tend to move on,” Hood says. “We tend to gravitate toward early takes.” Cooley, he says, is a first-take guy. “Most of his vocals tend to be scratch tracks, the live vocal take of the take we recorded,” Hood says. “If the band gets to about four takes, he starts getting pissed off because he feels like his take isn’t as good after that.”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8b7zKLla-g[/youtube]

On the other hand, Hood takes more time recording his vocals than he once did.

“I consider myself a writer first and foremost,” he says. “Everything else I’ve ever done pretty much in my life has been at the service of the songs I write, or whatever I’m writing. I can write a whole lot better than I can sing or play, but I’ve been working really, really, really hard for a long time and closing that gap. I feel like every now and then you have a breakthrough, and working on this record was one of those for me.

“When I write a song, I hear a voice, but it’s not necessarily a voice I can do. If I had to pick one singer that I love the most, it’s probably Howlin’ Wolf. I’ll never be able to [sing like him], but that’s the sound in my head when I write a song. What I end up with is the best I can do.”

As is often the case, Hood’s inner Howlin’ Wolf sings some noir songs on Go-Go Boots, starting with the title track. “I Used to Be a Cop” tells the story of an obsessed police officer stalking his ex-wife, and at least part of the story comes from real life. “I used to work at a pharmacy, and my boss was the head of the civil service board,” he says. “[Cops and firemen] could come in and get to know the guy who was going to vote on his pay raise. I got to know a lot of cops, and like any other segment of people, there’s good ones and bad ones. I met a couple that the idea of them walking around with a gun and a badge was what nightmares are made of, and that song came from that. It’s a fictional story, but there’s a lot of truth in it, almost enough where I want to watch my back when I go home to visit. I’ve had people actually email me about that guy since that song came out.”

Death is a regular feature in Hood’s songs, but he’s not sure why. He throws out possibilities—the universality of death, the dark history of the south—but he’s not convinced that any of those quite explain it. “The stories I’m drawn to tend to be kind of dark,” he says. “I’ve never really been that dark a person. I guess I get it all out in my writing, so that I’m able to be a fairly upbeat kind of guy on the day to day.

“This [album] goes to both extremes for me. It’s got some of the most positive stuff I’ve ever written on it. ‘I Do Believe’—granted, it’s about my grandmother and yes, she is gone, but it’s kind of an idyllic moment in time that I try to capture in the song. It ends there too with ‘Mercy Buckets,’ which is about as positive of a long song as I’m capable of writing. But sometimes love’s not a redeeming thing. Sometimes love turns into a guy with a badge and a gun stalking his ex-wife.

“Living in a small town, it can be a very damaging thing. One guy can make a difference in a real negative way. Hopefully, sometimes one guy can make a real positive difference too.”

Drive-By Truckers play Tipitina’s Saturday and Sunday nights with Centro-Matic opening.

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