Page 8
News
Street Roots • Jan. 26-Feb. 1 ,2 0 1 8
Street Roots • Jan. 26-Feb. 1 ,2 0 1 8
News
Page 9
talks about the band’s political stripe,
losing his artistic heroes and setting
down new roots in Portland
BY JASON COHEN
STAFF WRITER
he songs for “American Band,” by Southern-
rockers Drive-By Truckers, were mostly
written in 2014 and 2015, and recorded in
the first half of 2016.
By the time it was released that fall - but
especially by Nov. 9 - lead singers Patterson Hood
and Mike Cooley’s story-songs and meditations
about race, gun violence and the border made
“American Band” feel like a Trump’s America
record - much like Wilco’s “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”
felt like a 9/11 record after-the-fact. The Athens.
Ga.-based, Alabama-bred group already had a “Black
Lives M atter” sign onstage in early 2016. After the
election, “DBTs” came to stand (if somewhat
imprecisely) for “Dance Band of The Resistance.”
Hood, who moved to Portland from Athens, Ga.,
in 2015, is now a stalwart of the local music scene,
whether he’s playing solo at Doug Fir or in an
audience himself. One of his epiphanies about
“American Band” came when Patti Smith played at
the Arlene Schnitzer Concern Hall two years ago.
Hood knew that songs like “What It Means” (his
reaction to police shootings and Black Lives
Matter) and “Guns of Umpqua” (about the 2015
school shooting) were asking the right questions,
but he didn’t feel like there were any answers.
Smith gave him one with a simple onstage
proclamation - “Love each other, motherfuckers!”
On the band’s latest release, a seven-inch single
benefiting the Southern Poverty Law Center,
Hood’s song “The Perilous Night” dispenses with
metaphor entirely, a blunt instrument for brutal
times, albeit with a riffy, gospel-tinged
accompaniment. Hood said he wrote it in response
to the events in Virginia and what he called the .
“White house’s shameful response.”
P H O T O B Y D A N N Y C L IN C H
“Dumb, white and angry with their cup half filled/ Drive-By Truckers, left to right, Matt Patton, Brad Morgan, Patterson Hood, Mike Cooley and Jay Gonzalez. The band will be playing at the Roseland Theater, Feb. 1
Running over people down in Charlottesville.”
Hood spoke to Street Roots in his Southeast
neighborhood shortly after he played the two-night
majority of it was written, and have it be more
gonna do.
J.C.: You’ve got Prince and David Bowie candles on
Help the Hoople benefit for local musician Scott
timely is weird. And kind of unnerving and
your mantle. It’s hard not to think about mortality and
McCaughey, who recently suffered a stroke. Next
J.C.: It sounds like you struggled initially with “The
depressing.
rock ’n roll these days.
up, the Drive-By Truckers play the Roseland
Perilous Night” being maybe too on the nose, ancPthen
Theater Feb. 1.
after Charlottesville, among other things, it was like,
J.C.: You and Cooley did an interview where he
P.H.: Yeah, we’ve hit that tipping point, man,
well, this is the time to be on the nose.
suggested that, as bad as it is, it also shows the
where they’re all at that age. There’s several names
Jason Cohen: So let’s go back a couple of years -
progress was real. That it’s a backlash.
on everyone’s list that we’re all just bracing
you’re making this record about a time in America
P.H.: And I’m happy with how that turned out. I’d
ourselves for. It’s inevitable. That first rock ’n’ roll
that was troubled and disheartening, but it also felt
also be really happy to let that be it, too. But I don’t
P.H.: It’s all related, that’s for sure. It’s part of
generation is almost all gone. Jerry Lee Lewis, I
like there was progress. And then all of a sudden...
get to choose what the next song is. At least, not if
the zig-zag of progress. It’s just a matter of how
guess. And that second and third generation, so
it’s going to be worth a shit. Generally, they choose
much damage they can do in the meantime. I’m
Patterson Hood: All of a sudden, there wasn’t.
many died young, but the ones who survived that,
me, and I just try to be receptive to it. So I’m trying
ready for the nightmare to be over, and it ain’t
Yeah. I really was hoping that our record would be
those numbers are starting to come up, and that’s
gonna
be
over
anytime
soon.
For
my
New
Year’s
to
keep
an
open
mind
to
whatever
happens
up
dated and passé by now. And I’ve never said that
unnerving. Hell, I’m not that much younger, y’know?
there, and whatever it is, wherever the radio signal
resolution, I’m trying to be more positive, and just
about a record before. I’ve always really wanted our
comes
from.
I’m
just
trying
to
get
my
antennae
back
push
from
a
better
frame
of
mind.
We’ll
see.
J.C.: That grief of losing an artistic hero is real.
records to hold up over time, and this one,
up.
That’s
the
struggle
right
now,
because
there’s
hopefully, the songs are good enough to where it
J.C.: You’ve said your wife, Rebecca, encouraged you
P.H.: It’s very real. Tom Petty hit me hard. We
too many things hanging on to that antenna. There’s
would anyway, but the topic of it, unfortunately, has
to be more political in your songwriting.
toured
with them. I never met him. I hung out with
dogs to walk, and kids to pick up at school, and then
become much more timely than when we made i t
the Heartbreakers, but never met Tom Petty. I ran
I’m
gone
on
the
road.
I
can
write
on
the
road,
but
I
P.H.:
Oh
yeah.
She
would
like
the
next
record
to
We finished the record before Trump had won a
into him on the street in Malibu about three weeks
have a hard time writing songs, which is a lot of why
be as political as the last record. I don’t know if I
single primary, y’know? So to be sitting here two
before he died and didn’t stop him. “Hey man
I
started
writing
so
many
essay
type
things.
feel
up
to
i
t
But
I
don’t
know
what
the
next
record’s
years after we made it, and three years after the
remember me?” I didn’t do that. I wanted to, deep
a
down. But yeah. That was like family. My first band
was called Breakdown, when I was in ninth grade. I
was 14. So, as much as you can mourn someone
you’ve never met... I learned a lot about how to do
what I do from watching how they did what they do,
that’s for sure.
J.C.: Because of your father (Muscle Shoals’ bassist
David Hood), did you have a sense that music could be
a craft and a discipline, as well as a party and art?
P.H.: Yeah, probably. Without realizing it. I don’t
think I was necessarily conscious of that. ‘Cause my
dad’s on that far other extreme of it. He’s a session
guy. That’s disciplined as shit. He had a whole other
discipline in his 20s that I only have now in my 50s.
I definitely inherited that work ethic from him and
from some non-musical people in my family.
J.C.: And you’re not the Stones, with tons of money
and the ability to only play 20 shows a year. It’s
grueling physical work. A blue-collar profession.
P.H.: Yeah. I still play 100 shows a year. And even
as the band is starting to play a little less, I’m
making that up and going out and playing solo
shows. Because I have to. It’s expensive as shit to
live out here! It was all I could do to make ends
meet in Athens - what was I thinking? But I love
playing. I dread - besides not knowing how we’ll
survive - when I can’t play that many shows a year.
I’m gonna miss it. I get tired on the road, and some
of the travelling gets to me, and being gone from my
family so much gets to me, but I love the rush of
playing as much as I ever did in my 20s and 30s.
And maybe in some ways more, because back then,
there was all these other aspects to it: a lot of
partying, all that kind of stuff. Now we’ve really
stripped it all back to where it’s really all about the
rock. I’m maybe enjoying the actual playing more
than ever because I’m really there for it.
J.C.: Has moving to Portland affected your writing,
and your relationship to your subject matter?
P.H.: “American Band” is my favorite record
we’ve made since “Decoration Day,” at least. It’s
’definitely one of my favorite things we ever did. And
I wrote the majority of that in the first four months
of living here. I had a good bit written, but that
really opened the floodgates, being in this new
place. So I think it’s been great for me artistically,
and I think it’s been great for the band, on every '
level. From the second I broached this to them,
Cooley was like, “I think that’s a great idea! I think
you’re crazy, but I think it’s a great idea!”
J.C.: The idea of a band as a gang that is together
all the time usually falls by the wayside if you stay
together long enough.
P.H.: Those days were long ago, yeah. But we’re
closer friends as a gang than we were then. I think
when we started having kids, (Cooley) and I got
closer. And our band’s had a lot of struggles. We’ve
gone through a lot of shit, and whenever the shit
comes down, he and I and (drummer Brad Morgan),
we’ve always been really good about banding
together to get through it. And the payoff is now,
when there’s no upheavals. There’s no drama,
there’s no bullshit, we’ve got the magic line-up,
we’re happy with our label. All the parts work the
way they’re-supposed to. We get together and we
either get to talk shit about nothing of any
importance or buckle down and really talk shit about
what is important: about the music.
J.C.: You’ve written a lot about race and Southern
culture. Now that you’ve been
here a while have you picked up
on Portland’s own troubled
history?
The thing that happened In
P.H.: Sure. I’m still
Alabama I'm aw ful excited
learning. But I’m seeing it,
It happened? but at the same
and I’m hearing it. I wasn’t
time? there's s till a lo t of old
naive enough to think there
weren’t problems. Some of the whit® men that thought it was
-racial stuff definitely took me
perfectly OK to vote for that
a little bit by surprise, but it
pedophile piece of shit,
probably shouldn’t have.
y'fcnow? So we got a long way
Because our country as a
to go down there. X feel lik e X
whole - the whole world as a
did
my tim e."
whole - has problems with
people who look think, fuck or
pray different. And skin color
is a big one. Our evolution as
humans is gonna be slowed
down and thwarted by that, forever, until we
overcome it. I guess in the grand arc of history, it is
getting better, but slowly. I won’t live to see it. My
kids could. But they probably won’t. The most we
can hope for is for it to keep getting a little better,
enough to compensate for every time jt zig-zags the
other direction, like it is right now.
J.C.: You were here after the inauguration?
P.H.: Yeah. We went out in the freezing rain. Did
the march. The kids all made signs. I can’t say it
was a good day, but at least I felt like we were doing
what we should be doing. I’m glad that my kids are
extremely aware about things - much more so than
I would probably choose for them to be. But I was
that way as a kid too! I used to come home and
watch the god-damn Watergate hearings. Third
grade, cursing Richard Nixon! So I guess I come by
it honestly, and Rebecca is probably more political
than I am.
J.C.; I came back to Portland from Texas in 2014,
and after 2016,1 felt that urge to go back to somewhere
where my vote might make more of a difference.
P.H.: I’ve gone through some of that, for sure.
They keep saying Georgia’s gonna swing. I don’t
know. The thing that happened in Alabama - I’m
awful excited it happened, but at the same time,
there’s still a lot of old white men that thought it
See TRUCKERS, page 13