Soundtrack to the New Old South
[A look at the Drive-By Truckers]
Sometime in the early 1990’s, while attending an event called a “song swap” in Athens, Georgia, I met an extraordinarily gifted songwriter named Patterson Hood. The swap itself was essentially a weekly gathering of aspiring tunesmiths sharing their latest creations; we would sit in a circle and each play our songs, the other musicians joining in if they had the chops or the inclination. Everything was going fine—just another evening of pleasant mediocrity—until the slightly pudgy guy with a five-o’clock shadow and food stains down his shirt had his turn. Stomping his foot on the wooden floor in time with the music, he strummed his battered acoustic guitar and sang:
My roommate’s gun got nine bullets in it
Gonna find a use for every last one
One for the girl who chose to betray me
Better aim that sucker true
One for the guy that she betrayed with
A nice enough fella, she’ll betray him too
At that point, we all should have just got up and gone home, but we continued on, the rest of us noticeably subdued and slightly ashamed when it came time for our offerings. Then it was back to Patterson. “Mama ran off with a trucker!” he shrieked, playing a beefy, Stonesy guitar riff. “They got married . . . in Dollywood! / By a Porter Wagoner lookalike.”
Murder ballads and backwoods love—delivered with conviction and humor. Patterson’s music was all the more stunning because, at that time, the Athens music scene was in the throes of a rather odd psychedelic rock revival. A loose patchwork of bands calling themselves the Elephant 6 Collective ambled about town in garish clothes and—in their various hovels and broken-down rented duplexes—banged out a Dadaist racket with all the sweet earnestness of kids who had just discovered their parents’ dusty Beatles LP collections. The scene had attracted the attention of Rolling Stone, and it seemed as if every musician in Athens was busting his britches to be associated with Elephant 6. Not so Patterson. While he was friendly with all of these people, he steadfastly continued to follow his own Deep South muse. Out of this determination, he and childhood friend Mike Cooley formed the Drive-By Truckers.
[amazonify]B000068FUS[/amazonify]Considering the talent that had already been on display at the song swap, it was no surprise that the Truckers picked up a loyal audience virtually overnight and began touring and cutting albums, eventually landing a deal with the prestigious Austin, Texas, record label New West. Along the way, Patterson and Cooley began stringing together increasingly elaborate “song suites”—sequences of two or more songs exploring a single theme from various perspectives. As a lyricist, Patterson had moved beyond his rogues’ gallery of Flannery O’Connor outcasts and was beginning to grapple with the meaning and identity of the South itself, a quest that culminated in a double album entitled Southern Rock Opera. It is safe to say that there has never been anything quite like it in the annals of either rock or country music—a “musical novel” that, among other things, infuses the rise and fall of Lynyrd Skynyrd with the gravitas of a Shakespearean tragedy.
A little over a decade earlier, the band R.E.M. had come out of Athens and had been very closely identified with the South. They certainly did not sound like country or bluegrass or anything demonstrably Southern, but Michael Stipe’s barely discernible lyrics contained just enough folksy turns of phrase and references to colorful local characters (such as artist/preacher Howard Finster) to inspire a number of critics to anoint the quartet the Voice of the New South—a South which, in the hands of that particular post-punk band, came off as a fuzzy and nonthreatening “progressive” place with just enough eccentricity to make it interesting.
By contrast, some mused, the Drive-By Truckers represented the Old South and were a sort of rejoinder to R.E.M. But the label is not entirely appropriate, at least not in the way Old South is generally understood, for there is little antebellum splendor in the band’s lyrics. Rather, most of the Truckers’ songs focus on the farmers and hardworking country folk who got left behind when Henry Grady’s New South really began to take hold—when the smokestacks and factory farms pushed those who had once lived off the land into lives of desperation. Hood, Cooley, and post-Southern Rock Opera addition Jason Isbell present these people as dynamic human beings with strengths and foibles, not as the ignorant hicks they are so often portrayed to be in movies and TV. And yet the songwriters are not afraid to look at the dark side of things. On Southern Rock Opera, Hood tempers his regional pride with an honest appraisal of the South’s shortcomings. The track “Ronnie and Neil” serves as a sort of manifesto, in which he uses the Neil Young/Lynyrd Skynyrd feud as a metaphor for the distorted prism through which many non-Southerners view the South:
And out in California, a rock star from Canada writes a couple of great songs
About the bad sh-t that went down
“Southern Man” and “Alabama” certainly told some truth
But there were a lot of good folks down here
And Neil Young wasn’t around
His view of George Wallace is similarly multifaceted. In an extended spoken-word piece titled “The Three Great Alabama Icons,” he muses:
[Wallace’s] track record as a judge and his late-life quest for redemption make a good argument for his being at worst no worse than most white men of his generation, North or South.
And yet he rues the long-term effect of Wallace’s 1960’s legacy:
You know, racism is a worldwide problem, and it’s been since the beginning of recorded history, and it ain’t just white and black. But thanks to George Wallace, it’s always a little more convenient to play it with a Southern accent.
[amazonify]B0002E5OIW[/amazonify]Certainly, there are aspects of Southern Rock Opera and the equally adventurous follow-up, The Dirty South, that some Southerners may take issue with (the notion that George Wallace is now drinking sweet tea in Hell being just one), but no one can deny Hood the authority to explore these topics: He and his band mates are native sons of Alabama. In assessing Wallace, Patterson is simply sizing up the man who governed his state (both directly and through the proxy governorship of wife Lurleen) for most of his life. Hood is no “rock star from Canada” passing judgment on a region in which he has never set foot.
On the whole, what is most striking about Patterson’s ruminations is that they are almost entirely without precedent in popular music. While novelists have long explored the nuances of the South—many to great acclaim—songwriters have tended to render the region in black and white, offering up hackneyed clichés in an attempt to explain it. Even Bob Dylan could not resist penning the screed “Oxford Town,” in which his usually stately lyricism gives way to a sort of “See Spot Run” banality:
He went down to Oxford Town
Guns and clubs followed him down
All because his face was brown
Better get away from Oxford Town
The South has certainly seen its share of great pop songwriters—Johnny Mercer, Ray Charles, and Johnny Cash spring immediately to mind—but they often tend to write either in universal terms (Mercer’s songs were rarely region-specific) or about individual characters. And although Hood’s beloved Lynyrd Skynyrd gave us “Sweet Home Alabama”—a fine effort, to be sure—the Truckers, in articulating and defending the legacy of that earlier band, have done them one better; in presenting Skynyrd, Bear Bryant, and George Wallace as a sort of regional holy trinity, they have tied together the disparate threads of “the Southern thang” in a way that is unique.
The Truckers have released three albums since Southern Rock Opera, the best of which is The Dirty South. What really strikes me is the ascendancy of both Mike Cooley and Jason Isbell as songwriters par excellence. Indeed, “Carl Perkins’ Cadillac”—Cooley’s paean to the 1950’s Memphis label Sun Records—contains more quotable phrases than any other song in recent memory. Like Hood, he is obsessed with the South—the myth, the reality, and what it means to be Southern. The Dirty South finds these two songwriters (along with Isbell, who would subsequently leave the band to embark on a successful solo career) working closely together to take the concepts of Southern Rock Opera even further. By the final ringing guitar note, the manifesto is complete.
After The Dirty South, there was nowhere to turn but left, and so the next album, A Blessing and a Curse, consisted of stripped-down, melodic songs with decidedly less twang. Some fans have not been happy with this new direction, but the band is simply doing what good bands are supposed to do: stretch, explore, evolve. Perhaps the title of the album reflects the complexity of the Drive-By Truckers’ own reputation.
After all, once you have been anointed the Voice of the New Old South, it is hard to set that aside and just rock. At any rate, over the course of several challenging and rewarding records, Patterson & Co. have given us all a lot to think about regarding region, history, personal identity, and outside perceptions of such.
After that first meeting at the song swap, Patterson and I sent letters and tapes back and forth for a time, keeping each other updated on what we were up to. I am sure he had many such pen pals back in those days, as he liked to carry around boxes of demo tapes and hand them out to whomever would accept them. And I will bet that anyone who listened to those tapes immediately dashed off a note to the P.O. box listed inside the case, requesting more. As for me, I drifted off into that psychedelia I mentioned earlier; consequently, it took me a while to appreciate the simplicity and elegance of the Truckers’ music. In fact, it really did not click until I left the South, at which point they became a lifeline.
[amazonify]B000ZKRFDA[/amazonify]No one talks about the Elephant 6 Collective anymore. But I have a hunch that, many years from now, people will still be listening to Southern Rock Opera and The Dirty South. Maybe those albums will inspire folks to read up on such colorful characters as George Wallace, Bear Bryant, Ronnie Van Zant, Buford Pusser, Sam Phillips, and Carl Perkins, or to research Patterson Hood himself. The music is loud, lewd, relentless—the songs, giant shards of electrified Southern rock only rarely giving way to the occasional bluegrass-tinged ballad—and the sustained sonic assault can be tiring at times. Yet amongst all that sound and fury is soaring poetry and an unerring portrait of a distinct time, place, and people.
The Drive-By Truckers’ latest album, Brighter Than Creation’s Dark, is available at the iTunes Music Store. Robert Lurie is the author of No Certainty Attached (forthcoming from Verse Chorus Press).
This article first appeared in the June 2008 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.
Entries(RSS)
I have mixed feelings about the Truckers. But "Lookout Mountain" is a Southern gothic tour de force,
"who's gonna mow the cemetery
when all of my family's gone?"
and "Cal Perkins' Cadillac" takes the listener from the Old South of Sam Phillips to the New South of Colonel Tom Parker and all the banality that came with it.
I love the Drive By Truckers because they are one of the closest things there is these days to Southern Rock. And I am admittedly partial to anything from Athens, Georgia. (Go Dawgs! Beat Fresno State!)
Their songs are full of social commentary (both positive and negative) that is easily missed by the casual listener. I think the song Outfit is one of their best.
Old South vs New South
Plantation vs Upland
South vs North
So on and so forth.
Of course the South was never, and is still not, culturally monolithic. There never was only two Souths either. There are and have been as many Souths as there are localities that are tied to them all, which would include such cities as Cincinnati, OH, Philadelphia, PA, even Bakersfield, CA. No, the South isn't a "state of mind", it is concrete, identifiable "folkways". The South is "one", but there isn't only one South.
The hillbillies of Northern Alabama and Eastern Tennessee and North Georgia and Western North Carolina all took an active participation against the Confederacy during the Civil War and the War Between the States. The Drive By Truckers are a modern manifestation of this hillbilly culture, which is unlike the plantation culture of both rich(er) Whites and poor(er) Blacks. This hillbilly culture, being American, isn't about "self sufficiency", but about turning a profit; the difference is, the culture itself and the land upon which it resides isn't very generous in regards to making money. Hillbillies want money, it's only that their culture doesn't emphasize "book learning"; similar to the poor fishing villages of New England and New France.
This brings me to a point: on the topic of music, who are the most talented "Lower South"/Plantation South musicians/songwriters? Tom Petty? I would say Lynyrd Skynyrd, but they seem to have more Lower Alabama ("LA")/Piney Woods/Swamp roots than roots in the old Plantation Lower South. Hank Williams was from "LA", but that is of a totally different culture than the "Lower South".
It is fitting that the Upland South has come to be identified as "Southern culture" (on the skids, I might add), as well as American Culture as a whole. America is increasingly less and less Midwestern, and more and more Upland Southern (e.g. the popularity of NASCAR over Indy). This triumph is fitting because the Upland South, the "New South", provides a Hegelian synthesis of Old South and Old Yankee cultures; it takes the worst from both to combine them into a dangerous mix: we end up with a nation of prohibitionists sneaking drinks in a back room that insist on being closeted racist multi-culturalists, wanting to spread egalitarian democracy and gay rights around the world.
Patrick Hall,
What do you think of Carolina Beach Music?
Mr. Hall,
Your thougts are loaded with over-generalizations, especially regarding upland Southern culture. All of my ancestors to a man from the mountains of western North Carolina fought for the Confederacy: 25th, 58th, 61st Regiments and the Thomas Legion, all comprised of hillbillies (and anti-Union Cherokees). In fact, the upland Southern culture did most of the fighting and dying for the CSA. The only state that approximates your "Hegelian" synthesis is West Virginia, and even there you are talking about the western and northernmost counties. East Tennessee certainly had strong pro-Union pockets (e.g. Sevier County, where to this day Yankees and Midwesterners flock to enjoy that tourist mecca, Dollywood), but so what? It also had hardcore Confederate strongholds, like Sullivan and Polk Counties.
As for "getting money," no, not my people; they really wanted to be left alone.
Tom -- Carolina beach music is awful in my humble opinion. Bluegrass over beach any time.
Rublev's Dog,
Yes, Western North Carolina was a "hotbed" of Confederate support in the Mountains. Likewise, all of my ancestors fought for the Confederacy (hailing from Macon County here! Charles Frazier of "Cold Mountain" fame is my 2nd cousin). But one can not deny the strong pro-Union component of even Western North Carolina. The only state in both Union and Confederacy that didn't field a regiment of volunteers for the Union was South Carolina, the only state with only a sliver of the Upland. That is why it was a Civil War as well as being a War Between the States. Alabamians, for example, were truly fighting Alabamians, as well as Connecticut Yankees.
As for "getting money", the myth of the yeoman farmer of the Upland South is just that: a myth. I'm sure you've read Inscoe's "The Heart of Confederate Appalachia: Western North Carolina in the Civil War". Do you dismiss it? Clearly, from Dr Inscoe's research, even the smallest farms of Appalachia were capitalist industries, thus the predominance of Whig politics in the region.
As for West Virginia being the only state that fits my "Hegelian synthesis", well, yes, of course. But Southern state after Southern state have large components of that same synthesis. Everywhere you turn in the Upland South there are a number of outward signs that show this synthesis: four-lane highways, dry counties, Baptist and Methodist churches, and industrial "parks". The South is no longer the Old South since Reconstruction.
As an example, here in my newly adopted hometown of Jacksonville, Alabama, local son and hero Lt Colonel John Pelham wouldn't recognize it if he were to return today. For one, a Hardee's "Restaurant" has replaced his Presbyterian church. Second, the dominant religion are the Whiggish Baptist and Methodist faiths; the only Presbyterian church in town was re-introduced some time after the War. Third, local politicians over the years have done all they could to recruit "industry"; only recently has that industrial base (thankfully) started to shrink, nonetheless, agriculture continues to decline.
The Whigs of the Upland South, along with the Redeemer Democrats, brought the South in line with the goals of the Reconstruction. And this "New South" has permeated it's culture throughout the United States, and the world. The Drive By Truckers are an excellent case of the New South being dominated by Yankee influence; once again, a synthesis of authentic Upland Old South culture and the "conquering" Yankee culture. One could make the point that the War Between the States was fought for who would control the Upland South; and the Yankees won - and that's why I can't buy a beer on Sundays here in Jacksonville, Alabama!
As for Carolina Beach "music", yep, there you go. That very well may be the greatest popular music achievement to come out of the Lowland South.
Thank you, Mr. Hall. Most of what you describe regarding the present-day upland South is painfully true. Looking back, yeoman Whigism was not incompatible with the better goals of the Confederacy (later elucidated by the Southern Agrarians), but that's another discussion under another topic.
I would say the blues is the greater musical achievement of the lowland South; it informs everything, from bluegrass to beach music to the Truckers.
Hank Williams was from Alabama, not Louisiana...
I wonder if I was the only thirty-something who got a bit misty eyed seeing DBT in the pages of Chronicles.
Hank Williams was from LA.
Lower Alabama.
As opposed to South Alabama, which is the immediate vicinity around Mobile Bay.
Anyway, Rublev's Dog, about the "blues":
That genre of music has more to do with the African slave experience with genuine European folk music than their own; and that genuine experience wasn't down on the plantation, but up in the hills, where a slave knew and worked right alongside the various cultures of Europeans. There is a definite difference in music between, say, the field hollers of the Mississippi Delta, and the guitar driven "blues", which was an import from Appalachia. Yes, I am claiming the "blues" as we know it today is an import from Appalachia.
It was commonplace for plantation owners to either have property in the Upland South, where his slaves would work sometimes, or even rented out to farmers in the Upland that needed labor. Think of slavery as a kind of forced-temporary employment service. These slaves in the Upland would work right alongside the European farmers and their family, so it is only reasonable that they would also pick up some of the same old European folkways. Hence the fife and drum bands of the Hill Country of Mississippi, or the formation of the "Piedmont blues" of the east, and best shown in Appalachia itself, where both Black and White musicians would play the same music, the same "blues", the same instruments - including an African import: the banjo. The minority African population didn't culturally overwhelm the majority European population in America; quite the opposite. As a matter of fact, from the very beginning, the differences between Black "blues" musicians and White "hillbilly" musicians was their race. The music is essentially the same.
'Papa's just like a horse thief they never could find to hang
And mama she loves him dearly calls'm the big ol'bang'
'I kid I kid then daddy recited Shakespeare and mama's heart began to sing she said see he's more'n just a maypole he can do
just about any old thing...
'Oh darlin: Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet'st,
And do what'er thou wilt, swift-footed time,
To the wide world and all her fading sweets;
O carve not with the hours my Love's fair brow
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;
Him in thy course untainted do allow
For beauty's pattern to succeeding men.'
'We weren't sure what it meant,
But life around our house ain't boring
Especially in Sunday's tent...'
[sorry, guess i ain't cut out for country-?-nor city, nor space, I kid, I kid sorry, i'm 'alien' or am i?]
Cultural studies are always interesting, and Robert Lurie’s fine essay doesn’t disappoint. I would urge that he get a deeper historical knowledge, a knowledge which would enrich his perspective.
As a lyricist, Patterson [...] was beginning to grapple with the meaning and identity of the South itself .
Respectfully, no. Patterson was beginning to grapple with the meaning and identity of being Borderer-Backcountry (the misnamed “Scots-Irish”, who were neither Scottish or Irish). And these people and their culture, originating on the border between England and Scotland, can be found not just in the South, but also in Downeast Maine, western PA, southern IL, Indiana, and Missouri; scattered across the West, and in the Salinas valley.
On the whole, what is most striking about Patterson’s ruminations is that they are almost entirely without precedent in popular music.
Again, with respect, no. Patterson’s themes have been sung by us Borderer-Backcountrymen for 1000 years, just as we have lived in “various hovels [i.e., “cabins”] and broken-down [rack-]rented duplexes” and eating grits for a 1000 years. We are a warrior culture of a people who have been obliged to fight for our very existence, living in a world marked by impermanence, betrayal, fear of strangers, a necessary perchance to violence, and a need accordingly for “elbow room”. The very name “Drive-By Truckers” says it all.
So for the historical background, read David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed, the chapters on the Virginia Cavaliers (another and very different Southern culture, also unchanged for millennium, a chivalric culture predating the Normans), and the chapter on the Borderer-Backcountry. Then experience “the shock of recognition”. Then, more controversially, look at Thomas Sowell, Black Rednecks and White Liberals, the first essay, to see if another ethnic group is a derivative of the Borderer-Backcountry. Sowell’s thesis is at least worthy of inquiry
PS: The Borderers, with their hatred of the Anglican establishment, were first Presbyterians. In the US, During the First Great Awakening in the mid 1700s, they become Methodists and Particular Baptists, a change foretold by the earlier New Light Presbyterians and by the Non-Subscriber Borderers in Ulster.
Mr. Cundiff -- thanks for those titles. I'm assuming the Cavaliers are long dead and gone. As for the Borderers, their energy is being wasted on the sands of the Middle East.
The old Virginia Cavalier culture very well may be alive...but I wouldn't know it because I've never been east or north of Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Nor have I ever met anyone from Virginia. Seriously, I haven't. All of my Southern friends and co-workers are from North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi.
But I've seen what I believe to be the remnants of the Cavalier culture here in the Deep(er) South; for example my boss speaks with that non-rhotic accent (he says "Atlanna, Jawjaw" instead of "Atlanter, Georger" or "Alanny Georgie"), wears a bow tie, and is a high-church Episcopalian. He's from Atlanta, but from a rather well to do family, growing up in quite a nice neighborhood.
So, the Cavalier culture may be any Southerner who hasn't been in a fist fight in their adult life, majority of whom that have a college education, and goes to a [conservative] liturgical church.
I have 25% (pure) celtic blood and it can't hurt to wonder if that 'better'-?-part of me might be of the blood of the Ulsters? it's a sad thing though to always be on the border, though then again that's where you are. good titles to go and get mr. cundiff i'll posit in advance of getting them and tell'ya later?!sir.
I was not aware that the Cavalier culture has roots dating back to pre-Norman times. I would have assumed that it began with the Normans, since it was an upper-class aristocratic type of culture. Though it's nice to learn of it's Anglo-Saxon roots, I cant see how it could not also have a huge Norman influence, considering English history.
Likewise, I suspect that the reason that Cajuns got along so well with Anglo-Southrons when they first began coming into contact with each other was because the Anglo-Southrons were partly of Celtic heritage and also had a Norman influence in their culture, (more one or the other depending on family background and social class, etc.), whereas the Cajuns not only had Celtic heritage in their historical baclground, but were, in fact, Normans. Perhaps historians should look into how common Norman cultural influence affected various groups in the New World.
The above is also a very likely reason why Cajun music has similarities with Southern folk music, aside from cross-cultural influence.