2011 finds the Drive-By Truckers banging on all cylinders and unleashing with two new projects on the world. The Secret To A Happy Ending, a documentary by filmmaker Barr Weissman, captures the band during the high point of the period when guitarist/vocalist Jason Isbell was a Trucker – while managing to deal with the hard times of Isbell’s divorce from bassist Shonna Tucker and his eventual departure from the band in a manner that’s open and honest while respectful at the same time.
And then there’s Go-Go Boots, the Truckers’ latest studio album, which has everything you love about the band (yes, boys and girls, don’t worry: there are two songs on this one about men of the cloth turned bad) plus a whole lotta soul that fits them perfectly.
In amongst all the smoke and swagger, the raunch and the rock and the roll, there is an element of grace and strength to what the Drive-By Truckers are doing these days – simply by still being together and creating music. They are survivors.
Truckers Mike Cooley and Patterson Hood were kind enough to share some of their precious time at home with us recently, talking about “country soul,” songwriting, getting older, dead heroes, and guitars. Our conversation with Cooley can be found here. Part II continues with vocalist/guitarist/songwriter Hood.
Part II – Patterson Hood
One rainy day Drive-by Trucker fan discussion is to compare members of the band to their counterparts in another great rock ‘n’ roll band, the Rolling Stones. There are some obvious parallels: Brad Morgan’s dedication to the groove, the whole groove, and nothing but the groove definitely makes him a candidate for this generation’s Charlie Watts, while John Neff’s six-string virtuosity make it easy to compare him to Mick Taylor. (And, with apologies to Ronnie Wood, the Stones have never had a full-time pedal steel player of Neff’s caliber.)
But let’s look at the band’s founders, Mike Cooley and Patterson Hood. For sure, Cooley might be the closer to Keith Richards’ cool demeanor … but does that mean Patterson Hood is Mick Jagger?
No way.
Hood is a combination of the fuzzy-headed big brother that’s sorta badass, damn smart, and totally lovable. He could tell someone to go fry their ass and they’d shake his hand in appreciation; and he can write a lyric that makes you grin and puts tears in your eyes at the same time – or make the hair stand up on your arms in the middle of the night.
So, getting back to the original question: which Stone would Patterson Hood be?
Answer: How about a little bit of all of them.
The fact is, Hood is the embodiment of what made the Stones as a whole a great band over the years: this man has a true rock ‘n’ roll soul.
BR: Right off the bat, I want to run something by you that Cooley and I were talking about earlier.
PH: Sure – go for it.
BR: Well, I mentioned Jack Casady and Jorma Kaukonen from Hot Tuna and how those two have been playing together for over 50 frigging years so far, right? And you guys are halfway there …
PH: (laughs) That’s right; this is our 26th year playing together and it’s hard to believe, man. If we both stay healthy and live long enough, we might make 50 years – it could happen, you know? (laughter) It really could.
That would put us in our early 70s … some of the Stones are right around 70, right?
BR: Sure. In fact, Jorma just turned 70. I’ve heard some tracks off the new Hot Tuna album that’s coming out soon and they’re playing their asses off.
PH: (laughs) That’s cool – that’s really cool. I love hearing that.
BR: So I’ve got a wicked idea for you – and this goes hand-in-hand with the getting older thing and pacing yourself…Cooley and I were talking about Johnny Cash, okay? And it struck me that it would be cool if he went in the studio and did an album of acoustic Johnny’s tunes – and you could play mando …
PH: (laughing) I’m not that good a mando player, though! I’ve played it on a couple of songs, but I don’t think I’m good enough to do it justice in a setting like that. I might play some acoustic guitar or something, though.
BR: Well, it’s a thought.
PH: Cooley does have the voice for it, though. He’s going to age like Johnny Cash if he plays his cards right. That’s what I’m counting on. (laughter)
BR: I didn’t realize until recently that you tuned your guitar down a step. It wasn’t until I saw the video for “Pollyanna,” which I knew was in C. I saw you were fingering a D chord and doing those neat suspensions and stuff.
PH: Yeah – it makes a lot more sense once you know that. If you don’t, you’re thinking, “He sure is working hard to get those crazy chords he plays – plus everything’s in F!” (laughter)
BR: And you’ve been doing it for a while, right?
PH: Yeah, Cooley and I were tuning down back in the 80s. At that time, there weren’t that many people doing it. Back in the 70s, you had bands like Black Sabbath who did, but there weren’t many in the 80s that were. We just kind of stumbled on it as a way for me to deal with the limited range I had as a singer. I was really just trying to find a place where my primitive guitar playing worked with my primitive singing. (laughter) That seemed to be the way to do it.
Things have improved since then, I hope. (laughs) I can actually sing in standard tuning now if I need to, but I kind of like that sludgy sound you get with the dropped tuning. With the three guitars and all – I like the sludge.
BR: To me, Go-Go Boots combines that sludge with a whole lot of soul. That soul was in your bones anyway, but did the time the Truckers spent with Booker T recording Potato Hole and touring affect the sound of this album?
PH: It absolutely did. Actually, Go-Go Boots and The Big To-Do were both influenced by that experience. During the time we worked with Booker, I learned so much – not only about music, but about us.
We only spent four days in the studio recording his Potato Hole album, but those four days were like taking a doctorate course in music composition and playing music all at one time. We’d never met Booker prior to making that record – the first day of recording was when we met him. We came in cold with just four days to make an album.
BR: Oh, man.
PH: Oh, yeah. (laughs) The first day we never did a single cut – didn’t get a single keeper take. On the second day, I think we got one. By the third day, I think we had another song done and were working on a third, but Booker just wasn’t liking what we were doing … we were playing it correctly, but we weren’t playing it right.
Booker stopped everything, gathered us all in a corner, and told us a story – the story that inspired the song that we weren’t getting. “Don’t think about the music,” he said. “Think about the story.”
He created the scene for us – this vivid scene of, like, a Thanksgiving dinner or a family reunion – when you haven’t seen your family in a long time … there’s all these cousins and uncles and aunts and everybody that you haven’t seen, okay? They’re all there and there’s all this food laid out and it smells so good … Booker was describing the smell; he was describing the tablecloth. He had everything right to the T. And at the end of the telling us that story, he said, “Now don’t think about the song – think about what I was telling you. And just play.”
And we got it in one take.
BR: Oh, cool.
PH: From then on, for the rest of the record, Booker would tell us the story that had inspired him to write each song, and then we’d play the song. The 10 cuts on that album were essentially recorded in a day and a half – and that’s the way we did it.
Booker figured us out in his head – even though he barely knew us: “These guys’ songs are built around the lyrics and the way they play is built around that imagery. Having these instrumentals without lyrics is fucking them up, so I need to provide them with the imagery. Then they’ll be able to play the songs right.”
He figured that out – and he was exactly right, of course. And that whole experience taught us something – I’d never thought about it that way before. It was always I’d write a song; we’d learn to play it; we’d record it and move on. I never really conceptualized the process before – but Booker having us do that was like having a light come on in all of our heads. He taught us something about ourselves.
That approach really helped us with this project – it revolutionized the way we do things, honestly. So The Big To-Do and Go-Go Boots were the first things we did after recording Potato Hole and our whole technique kind of morphed because of what Booker taught us.
BR: There’s a feel to this album that I can’t come up with a better description of than “country soul.” I’m stuck on that.
PH: That’s probably the best thing to call it. That’s what I’ve been calling it – and that’s after years and years of trying not to call our music anything but rock ‘n’ roll. But I think Go-Go Boots is our “country soul” record, you know? I mean, that’s the way to describe that Muscle Shoals sound – white country boys playing the music on those great black soul records. Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, Bobby Womack … Bobby Womack in particular could be called country soul – he even made a country record once upon a time, a really great country record. And then, of course, there are people like Tony Joe White and Dan Penn …
BR: And, of course, Eddie Hinton, who you cover twice on this album with “Where’s Eddie” and “Everybody Needs Love”.
PH: Oh man … we make a point to talk about him at just about every show, you know? For a while now, we’ve been playing Eddie’s music over the PA before and after our sets. I try to make a point out of letting people know, “If you like that music that was playing before we came out, at least half of it was Eddie Hinton.”
It’s well worth seeking out – all his records were so amazing. His music has been such an important part of our band – if nothing else, just the amount that we listen to it. Eddie’s music is something that we all agree about no matter what kind of mood anybody’s in. Put that on aboard the bus and everyone is happy with it – that’s saying a lot with our crowd. (laughter) We all respect each other’s tastes, but it definitely goes in a lot of different directions.
I imagine that I like everything Cooley likes for music, but he probably likes about 10 percent of what I like. (laughter) I like a lot of different stuff, where he likes about five bands. (laughter)
BR: Well, this feel almost sacrilegious to say to you…
PH: (laughs) Yeah?
BR: But of all the fine, fine original tunes the Truckers have recorded, the cover of Eddie Hinton’s “Everybody Needs Love” on Go-Go Boots is the song that the whole world ought to be holding hands and singing together, man – it’s a great piece of work.
PH: Oh, listen: I feel exactly the same way. Not counting The Fine Print, which was different – that was a collection of oddities and outtakes and all that – we’ve never put a cover song on one of our albums. But I just felt so strongly about that song – it just made sense, you know?
For me, it’s Eddie’s songs and where they came from. I remember Eddie Hinton being at my house when I was four years old. He was always sort of right there in the shadows during my time of growing up.
BR: Eddie and your dad (legendary Muscle Shoals bassist David Hood) not only played music together, but were friends as well, right?
PH: Oh, yeah – my dad was a pallbearer at his funeral. Eddie’s always been like a distant part of the family and such an influence on our band that it just felt right to record that song and have it be part of the album.
It would make me about as happy to have a hit single or a song on the radio with “Everybody Needs Love” as if Cooley or me had written it ourselves. It’s the same soul – it feels right.
BR: And it sounds right. The first time I put an ear to the album, I wondered why “Everybody Needs Love” wasn’t the closer – then I heard “Mercy Buckets.” That’s the perfect ending, man. That’s your “Moonlight Mile”, right there.
PH: Well, thank you. “Mercy Buckets” would never have ended up on Go-Go Boots if it hadn’t been for “Everybody Needs Love”. One opened up the door for the other – along with “I Do Believe”.
You know how things get interrelated when you’re working on a project or a record? That was definitely the process – successfully getting “Everybody Needs Love” like we did led us to saying, “What else can we do along those lines?”
I remembered “Mercy Buckets” – I had written it years earlier but had never liked the lyrics. I liked the chorus, the melody, and the structure of it, but I didn’t like the verses. I pulled it out after all these years because of “Everybody Needs Love” and rewrote the verses and we recorded it. It all interrelates.
BR: You mentioned “I Do Believe” – if “Mercy Buckets” is the ideal closer, “I Do Believe” is the perfect opener. Again, I remember being impressed right from the first listen: the a capella intro and then that big, big “Truckers go surfing” sound. There’s a neat atmosphere throughout the whole album.
PH: Well, thank you – thank you very much. We just love working with David Barbe. He’s got a great-sounding studio and he’s just such an amazing engineer and producer. David’s definitely part of the band.
BR: In writing about David, I’ve compared him to Tom Dowd.
PH: The philosophy David has in the studio is very much akin to that Tom Dowd-style of producing. There are some producers who have a set sound that they go for – like Jeff Lynne or someone like that – and then there are others who don’t have a trademark sound as much as they records always sound good, you know? They take what the band does and make the most of it.
In David’s case, I think when he produces a record, the band comes out of the studio as a better band than when they went in – he literally improves the band. I’ve seen it over and over living here in Athens; I’ve watched David produce dozens of bands in this town. It might be a band who has some cool songs, but they don’t quite have their shit together and they go in to David’s studio and come out two weeks later as a much more kickass band. David refines what they’re good at and accentuates the positives. I watched that happen for years before we ever worked with him. I’m such a huge fan of his.
BR: You know, I haven’t done the math to add up the minutes, but there must be close to a compilation album’s worth of stories about men of the cloth who have gone wrong, counting “The Fireplace Poker” and “Go-Go Boots” on this album.
PH: (laughs) Yeah … I’m gonna need to find something different to write about now.
BR: Oh, they’re all good stories …
PH: Yeah, well … I think I’m through with that. (laughs) I think I’ve picked on The Church of Christ long enough.
BR: Well, they’ve got to get their act together, right? (laughter) If all the twisted preachers disappeared, there wouldn’t be any more to write about, but the world will be a better place, right?
PH: Maybe so, maybe so … (laughter)
BR: There are some lovely acoustic-based numbers on Go-Go Boots. Are you planning on more acoustic stuff in your live shows with the full band?
PH: Yeah, we’ve been working on that, actually. It’s a little daunting to think about in the live setting. All of us having to change instruments would kind of beak up our momentum a little, but we’ve been making it a point to do it every day – even if it’s just for two songs about a third of the way in, you know? So many of Cooley’s new songs are acoustic-based and they’ve become the carrot to make us want to do that. “Cartoon Gold” is really, really sounding good live.
BR: Oh, man – I love that frigging song.
PH: Aw, it’s such a great lyric.
BR: Now, see – that would be a chance to show off those cool Baxendale acoustic guitars you guys have.
PH: Right – aren’t they amazing?
BR: They’re beautiful. And, you could play some more mando …
PH: I’ll work on that. (laughter)
BR: Patterson, I really do appreciate you taking the time for this – thank you.
PH: Thank you, man. Thank you so much.
BR: Take care out there – and let’s not have Cooley hitting the wall any more.
PH: Nooo – no more of that.
BR: Remember – 50 years, right?
PH: That sounds like a good plan. (laughter)
