Music / American
Review: Drive By Truckers, Anson Rooms
The heart of ole’ Dixie is never far away from the guitar-driven southern rock of the Drive By Truckers, but, like a liberal outpost in a redneck sea, their stories and characters, pains and glories of America’s southern states have always spoken for the outsider and been blessed with a lyrically intelligent political slant.
Their 2016 album American Band is their most political to date: a melodically raunchy treatise on the plight of the southern underclass in the era of the ugly politics of Trump-ton.
At their Bristol gig, following Portland support band Eyelids’ REM-style psychedelic country, the Truckers give an hour and a half of southern fried alt-country rock at its best. Gorgeous, strong, melodies, chiming guitars and honky-tonk piano are their forte, and here they lay on the pathos and the grit in some style.
is needed now More than ever
They opened with Filthy and Fried from their latest album: that trademark build-up of guitars unfolding into the meat and bones of the story. What followed was a seamless and wonderful mix of old songs and others from the same album.
Photo: Elfyn Griffith
They’re a story-telling band in the classic southern states tradition: original members Paterson Hood and Mike Cooley swapped and shared vocal duties and guitar licks, their voices conjuring up Neil Young and Tom Petty, while their rhythms and rock verve evoke the likes of the legendary Lynyrd Skynyrd – who they paid homage to in their 2001 double album Southern Rock Opera.
Jay Gonzalez joins in the guitar duties when he’s not supplying the gutsy piano leads, and the ever-grinning bassist Matt Paton and big bearded drummer Brad ‘EZB’ Morgan are the solidly reliable rhythm section.
Photo: Elfyn Griffith
This is a band who tour relentlessly and whose music reflects that in its tight, finely-tuned delivery. The Alabama/Georgia groove comes through with power and finesse. There’s a Stones Honky Tonk-Woman feel to Kinky Hypocrite, a poetic strength to the tale of US black shootings in What It Means, a chiming beauty to Ghost To Most, and an epic classicism to Ever South.
Hood eschewed an encore, as “we don’t do cocaine any more”, but instead they blasted into their last three numbers with the addictively compelling Ramon Casiano from American Band, and their faithful standards Let there Be Rock (complete with Thin Lizzy-style synched guitars, I kid you not…) and a raucously ecstatic Hell No I Ain’t Happy.
But after that lot, hell yes we were….
Read more reviews: Husky Tones, Crofter’s Rights
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