Drive-By Truckers - The Big To-Do (March 16)

[Rob]

Waiting

[Friendly Fire]

*holds breath*

[Tim Simmons]

Yes.

[littleamen]

I still have to get their album from this year....and Patterson's too. Crap, I can't keep up!

[Friendly Fire]

Originally Posted by littleamen

I still have to get their album from this year....and Patterson's too. Crap, I can't keep up!

I thought you were a fan....

And you need to hear Screwtopia asap

[littleamen]

I know, I know. But, I'm a really poor fan that didn't have a job for 3 months this year. Really put a cramp in my music consumption.

I heard a couple songs on XM the other night.....sounded really good.

[Friendly Fire]

there is still hope for you

Screwtopia, Walking Around Sense, and Range War are my favs.

[Rob]

What is your favourite lyric you have written? And what is a lyric you wish you had written yourself?
PH: Right now probably a new song (from the next album) called "The Wig He Made Her Wear" about a murder a few miles from where I grew up. I've always been really proud of "Heathens" "The Living Bubba" and "World of Hurt". I wish I had written "Zip City" which is my all time favorite DBT song, but of course no one on earth could have written that except for Mike Cooley. I'm just lucky I got to play on it.

What can you tell us about the new album, A Big To Do? Will it be a change in direction, or what are your main influences for it?
PH: It's very much a Rock album. Very melodic and more Rocking than anything since disc 2 of Southern Rock Opera. We're very proud of it. We actually recorded two complete opposite albums this year. The second one will come out sometime later. It's called Go-Go Boots and is what we affectionately refer to as our R&B Murder Ballad album.

Did you learn anything from working with Booker and Bettye LaVette that you have brought to your own shows or songwriting?
PH: We learned a lot from both of them. I think our last album (Brighter Than Creation's Dark) was heavily influenced by having made Bettye's album earlier that year and likewise I think working with Booker really influenced The Big To-Do. Booker's album being all instrumental taught us a lot of how to nuance things musically in ways that really paid off when we started writing our new one. it made us all better players also.

And should we expect any guests on your own upcoming album?
PH: No, not on this one. David Barbe plays on a few things (like he almost always does on our albums) but otherwise no guests. We would like to do a guest laden album at some point, but this wasn't the time.

http://swearimnotpaul.blogspot.com/2...-drive-by.html

[Rob]

They signed to Dave Matthews label

New York, NY—ATO Records is pleased to announce the signing of Drive-By Truckers and their label debut, The Big To-Do. The album, which will be the band’s tenth in their thirteen-year career, is scheduled to be released March 16, 2010. The Big To-Do features thirteen new tracks from the Drive-By Truckers and was produced by their long time producer, David Barbe (Sugar, Bettye LaVette). “It’s very much a rock album,” says Patterson Hood of the Trucker’s upcoming release. “Very melodic and more rocking than anything we’ve done since disc 2 of Southern Rock Opera.”

The inspiration for The Big To-Do came to the band during their time on the road. “We’ve often set our songs and albums in different periods of time, but this one finds us directly in our present. Riding all through the highways of America (and Europe) trying to make sense of a very different world than the one we grew up in,” says Hood. “I don’t write a lot of songs on the road, but I did more than usual on this album and many more were inspired by or set there, either in a literal sense or something I witnessed or heard about while I was out there.”

Hood and Mike Cooley continue to be the chief songwriters of the group, continuing a musical partnership that has lasted over twenty-three years. Bassist, Shonna Tucker, flexes her songwriting muscles once again by contributing two original songs to the album. Brad Morgan (drums), John Neff (guitar/pedal steel) and Jay Gonzalez (keyboards) round out the current Drive-By Truckers lineup.

The band recently backed legendary R&B musician, Booker T. Jones, on his critically acclaimed, Grammy-nominated album, Potato Hole. The album is nominated for Best Pop Instrumental Album and Best Rock Instrumental Performance.

The Drive-By Truckers will be hitting the road at the beginning of the new year. A full tour supporting The Big To-Do will be announced in early 2010.

The Big To-Do Track Listing:
1. Daddy Learned to Fly
2. The Fourth Night of My Drinking
3. Birthday Boy
4. Drag the Lake Charlie
5. The Wig He Made Her Wear
6. You Got Another
7. This Fucking Job
8. Get Downtown
9. After the Scene Dies
10. (It’s Gonna Be) I Told You So
11. Santa Fe
12. The Flying Wallendas
13. Eyes Like Glue
14. Girls Who Smoke (Bonus track – vinyl only)

Drive-By Truckers on tour:
1/28 Huntsville, AL Crossroads Music Hall
1/29 Mobile, AL Soul Kitchen
1/30 Tuscaloosa, AL Jupiter Bar & Grill
2/11 Greenville, SC Handlebar
2/12 Raleigh, NC Lincoln Theatre
2/13 Raleigh, NC Lincoln Theatre
2/14 Knoxville, TN Bijou Theatre
2/25 Charlotte, NC Neighborhood Theatre
2/26 Charlottesville, VA Jefferson Theatre
2/27 Charlottesville, VA Jefferson Theatre

[Friendly Fire]

brings tears to my eyes.

[Rob]

Amazing track titles.

[Friendly Fire]

I want to know the song writing ratio...looks like Shonna has two

[wonderwheel]

that's right around sxsw. and patterson said at his in store they'd be touring pretty much all year. i hope that translates to an album release show here.

[Rob]

Of course the P4K headline is:

Drive-By Truckers Sign to Dave Matthews' Record Label

Venerable country-rocking machine Drive-By Truckers do not know how to stop making heartbreaking and/or life-affirming songs about the South, the undeniable myth of rock'n'roll, and just trying to make it in this world without completely breaking down. Their tenth LP, The Big To-Do, is due March 16 on new label ATO (you know, the label that' was co-founded by Dave Matthews).

According to frontman Patterson Hood, the record is "more rocking than anything we’ve done since disc two of [2001's] Southern Rock Opera." Good news for everyone-- especially the Jack Daniel's-downing guy in the American flag bandanna who I stood next to at that one DBT show (nice guy).

Based on song titles like "This Fucking Job" and "The Fourth Night of My Drinking", this could very well be another winner from one of the more consistent (and prolific) groups out there. Click on for the full tracklist along with a first round of U.S. tour dates, which start at the end of January:

http://pitchfork.com/news/37352-driv...-record-label/

[Tim Simmons]

[Friendly Fire]

I'd like to see some more tour dates plz.

[Rob]

Cooley bird

[Friendly Fire]

I LOVE Wes Freed.

[Rob]

Quick review:

"This one's a winner-- a fine addition to an already sterling catalog, though exactly where it will rank within that catalog I'm not sure just yet. I will say, though, that in many ways, it's the polar opposite of Brighter Than Creation's Dark. That album was expansive, eclectic, and largely acoustic. This one? Well, let's just call it their Rock Record. (There are some interesting thematic parallels with the last album, too-- but more on that later.)

In "Birthday Boy," I think I may even have a new favorite DBT song-- or at least a new favorite Mike Cooley song. "

[Rob]

Songwriting breakdown

looks like 9 Patterson tunes, 2 Cooley tunes, 2 Shonna tunes and one that hasn't been played yet: "Eyes Like Glue."

[Rob]

[Rob]

The Big To-Do (ATO Records)
Release date: March 16, 2010


It seems simplest to understand Patterson Hood as the director and/or producer of low-budget films, which is maybe what he thought he was doing when this all started. Each is released in record album form under the name Drive-By Truckers and features a closely held assortment of friends and combatants.
Ten of those, so far, going back to 1998's Gangstabilly, plus two more under Hood's own name, have delighted the critics and enthralled fans. Each release filled with carefully told, fiercely rendered short subjects. Cinematic songs. Not Ed Wood films, by the way. More…well, did you see John McNaughton's Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer? Or, perhaps better, their friend Ray McKinnon's short, The Accountant?
The new one, the one we're meant to enjoy just now, is called The Big To-Do and ushers in a new relationship with ATO. And it offers up the curious, abiding peace which only great rock can still bring.
Which is not to say that Hood and his long-time fellow-travelers - Mike Cooley (vocals and guitars), along with Brad Morgan (drums), Shonna Tucker (vocals and bass), John Neff (extra guitars, as if there could be such a thing), Jay Gonzalez (keyboards) and studio facilitator David Barbe - travel only on the darkest side of the street. But they do know the road tolerably well.
Well-traveled, they have become a family band: Patterson has a new son, and a daughter; Cooley (nobody calls him Mike) has a trio of little ones, both men betraying more optimism than their songs might hint at. They took most of 2009 off from the road, in part because there was a child on the way and in part because Patterson ended up finishing their last tour on the sidelines with pleurisy. Dog sick. Way worse than hungover.
Somewhat to their surprise they've stumbled into a stable ensemble - not that the Truckers have been anything like Savoy Brown - which confuses even Patterson. "I've loved all the different line-ups, at various times," he says with genuine affection. "They've all had their special things they've done. But this time it seems like our possibilities go a lot further, because there's no drama, no bullshit, and everyone seems really glad to be there all the time. Which is a nice thing. And we really just work well together."
Well, it is suggested, it's about time.
"Yeah, no kidding. That Alabama thing, man."
You have to grow out of doing everything through conflict, right?
"Yeah, no kidding. And…I fortunately don't feel like I have to get divorced again to write a decent song. Thank god."
The Big To-Do was recorded in three concentrated sessions during the first part of 2009: ten days in January, five days in March, ten days in May. That added up to 25 songs, a dozen of which sequenced into The Big To-Do. "We had it mixed, mastered, and completely done, and Cooley wrote the best song that just needed to be on it," Patterson says with his raspy chuckle. This happens a lot with the Truckers, and it's always a good sign. "So we went back in and recorded, mixed, and mastered 'Birthday Boy' pretty much in one fell swoop." Thirteen songs, then.
The balance of the remaining tracks, plus five more they've cut in the interim, will make up the Truckers' next album, which Patterson projects as a quieter affair.
This is, in large part, possible because the Truckers have such a long-standing relationship with David Barbe (ex-Sugar, etc.) and the Athens, GA, studio he calls Chase Park Transduction, which long ago Patterson helped to build so as to earn the right to record there.
"It's gotten to where, that day of set-up time to get sounds and levels and all of that takes us about two hours," Patterson says. "We can pretty much walk in the door, and we know exactly where to put everything to get that sound, so that's just one less thing to have to think about. I wanted to eliminate the distractions."
That clarity of purpose translates into a delicious assortment of Trucker songs themed loosely around crime and (self-) punishment. "The Wig He Made Her Wear," Patterson says, is both a true story (as seen on Court TV) and the closest he's come to making the movie he started out to make a decade or more back. "The Fourth Night of My Drinking" will speak for itself, and "This Fucking Job" (paired thematically with Cooley's wry "Get Downtown") is arguably the most political song the Truckers have made since "Living Bubba." Which leaves the deceptive, airy simplicity of Shonna Tucker's "You Got Another" and "(It's gonna Be) I Told You So" to reckon with.
"We always knew she had that in her," Patterson says, delighted with the emergence of another strong songwriter in the band. "It was never a secret. She was writing songs all along. But watching it come out has been a really amazing thing to behold."
Off the road, incidentally, didn't mean out of work. First off, there was the matter of cutting an instrumental album with the legendary Booker T, having previously served as the backing band to the equally legendary soul singer, Bettye Lavette. Potato Hole turned out all right, got a Grammy nod, and Neil Young added his touches separately even though it's pretty much a Truckers effort. But it's what they learned making Potato Hole that counts most.
"I think doing the Booker album really, really paid off a lot on the musical end of this record, even though stylistically it might not sound anything like that record," says Patterson, and then tells the story.
"We made that record in four days, and that included the first day when it was, 'Booker, it's wonderful to meet you!' Maybe the third song we tracked just wasn't going the way he wanted it to go. We weren't quite understanding what he wanted. We were playing it right, but it wasn't right. All the sudden he just stopped the session. He gathered us around, and he told us a story about a Thanksgiving dinner, and the way it smelt in the house, he'd been on the road a long time, and they were all in - cousins and aunts he hadn't seen in several years. He said, 'It's just a day where nothing happens, but it's all really good.'
"And we sat down and we played it, and we nailed it. It was like a revelation. We're a lyric-driven band, and our songs generally paint scenes and tell stories based on scenes. He instinctively knew that was how we operated. And I think it taught us a lot about how we operated. Going in and making this record, I could tell a real difference in the way the songs hold up musically. We put a little more care into that side of it than I think we ever did before because of what we learned from him."
As for the movie Patterson started writing all those years ago, well, he's no closer to being done with it. "That might just be part of the drive to the songs I'm writing," he admits. And brightens. "I placed a couple of songs in a movie that just came out, shot outside of Knoxville, called That Evening Sun. It's Hal Holbrook's new film, produced by Ray McKinnon."
And then he's off again, headed home to see his family and wondering if maybe Tom T. Hall needs a backing band. It's a beautiful thing to behold.

- Grant Alden
January 2010
Morehead, KY

[Rob]

Download "This Fucking Job": http://stereogum.com/mp3/Drive-By%20...king%20Job.mp3

Story:

http://stereogum.com/archives/mp3/ne...0681.html#more

[Rob]

Pretty standard. Nothing too special, but solid nonetheless.

[Rob]