The impeccable quality of Drive-By Truckers’ artistic arc now spans 20-plus years. Their blistering two-night Tipitina’s stand the weekend of Katrina’s arrival is the stuff of local legend. And the albums composed with Jason Isbell (today’s country music savior of staggering genius), Decoration Day (2003) and The Dirty South (2004), are timeless.

However, the inspiring achievement of these Alabama-born, Georgia-based boys is their collective body of work, from core duo Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley’s 1987 start to the present moment, collectively registering like Flannery O’Conner set to music in tales of “greed, fixed elections, guns, drugs, whores and booze,” as declared Cooley’s beautifully twisted murder ballad, “Cottonseed.”

That tune sits among countless other gems simply too ample to make the cut on It’s Great to Be Alive!, the Truckers’ magnificent, career-spanning 35-song marathon live release slated for release October 30 (ATO Records) and culled from three nights last November at San Francisco’s fabled Fillmore. Hitting you with the alternating 1-2 punch of Hood’s punk preaching and Cooley’s working-man’s poetry, It’s Great to Be Alive! creates razor-sharp rock lifted on psychedelic swells.

The Drive-By Truckers perform Saturday, October 17th at the Joy Theater (1200 Canal St. joytheater.com) Former guitarist/vocalist of Slobberbone Brent Best opens. Doors open at 8 p.m. Tickets are $27.50-$39.50. You can also enter here for a chance to win a pair of tickets to the show.