The new Drive By Truckers’ album was released on March 16th and I was pretty excited about this one. It’s a full-blown PRODUCTION kind of album. How big is Big To-Do
? Well, that depends on whether you bought the vinyl
or the CD, see? ("Girls Who Smoke" was only released on the vinyl.) Wait, what? Why?
I’m a big Drive By Truckers fanatic and I can never wait for the next show or the next album. A live Trucker show is like a shot in the arm, and not in that bad way . . . The new CD is like reading a good book. Lots of story-songs on this one. Patterson tells smutty tales of some bad-ass characters and Cooley sings about hookers and being jobless. You know, everyday life stuff.
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(or What I Spent My Grocery Money On)
You all know by now my penchant for owning the physical disc. Even when times are hard. I’d love to tell you it’s because my high morals won’t allow me to copy OPD’s (other people’s discs) but, well, I just really like to peel off the wrappers and pop out the pretty inserts and stuff.
And, I do like to cuss the postal system when it’s late, cuss the state of our society because there are no independent music stores – you know, get myself a little worked up. Then, when I finally get my hands on the actual item, I run my fingers over the lyrics booklet, read the dedication and thank yous and all before I listen from track one to the very end.
From the moment I sussed out the info that Steve Earle was releasing "Townes", I knew I’d have to have that one. It’s a forever keeper. And, Guy Clark’s "Sometimes the Song Writes You" was getting multiple rave reviews before I’d ever heard of it, so I internet-ordered that. Kris Kristofferson’s "Closer to the Bone" kept me camped out by the mailbox for a while. Well worth the frostbite, though.
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A Collection of Oddities and Rarities 2003 – 2008
So the Drive-By Truckers have another release and another triumph. The Fine Print (A Collection Of Oddities And Rarities 2003-2008)
is a collection of alternate takes, covers made for tribute albums, and stuff that just plain never made it on a legitimate DBT disc. If you are like me, you may have already heard some of this stuff in your tremendous collection of live DBT shows generously made available on the internets but there were a couple of very pleasant surprises for me. Plus, this is worth buying just for Patterson Hood’s liner notes. . . I won’t spoil the surprise by quoting too extensively but they had me laughing and thinking at the same time.
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We here at SlackerCountry.com just updated our blog technology and noticed something interesting. See that tag cloud over on the right? The tag size is in 
proportion to how often we write about each artist and the Drive-By Trucker tag is suspiciously small.
This caused us to do some serious soul-searching because, really, we slackers (especially me and Gracey) are borderline obsessed with DBT and play them pretty much ALL THE TIME. We’ve all been to see them at least once (twice, three times) in the past year – basically anytime they are in the neighborhood. Much of Gracey’s conversation revolves around things she has read on the DBT fan board. . . . And then there is the whole problem of keeping Gracey from stalking the tour bus.
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If you haven’t heard all the raving about the newest Drive-By Truckers’ release, Brighter Than Creation’s Dark, then you haven’t been paying attention! This one’s getting lots of positive press. Patterson Hood, Mike Cooley and Shonna Tucker have written the 19 songs on this 75 minute long album, which has exceeded even my expectations and I expect a lot.
I’ve been pretty much obsessed with this band since I first heard them on a scratchy cassette tape on a road trip in ’04. Got home and quickly educated myself on Southern Rock Opera (I grew up down there; it wasn’t hard to grasp!). I marinated in The Dirty South
and Decoration Day and all those educational little ditties for a year or two until I emerged to A Blessing And A Curse, two nervous breakdowns, only one of which was mine, then a Rock Show, The Dirt Underneath Tour, a couple of t-shirts and I’m okay now. Continue reading »
