by Brian Baker
The standard operating procedure in the music industry has always been album/tour/album/tour, a tried-and-true formula that has been around longer than Tuesday release dates. Leave it to the Drive By Truckers, a band well-versed in skewing concepts, to offer a slightly different spin on the idea. Although the Truckers' new album, Brighter Than Creation's Dark, doesn't hit stores until the end of January, the band is previewing songs from the set on its latest tour which it's christened "The Dirt Underneath."
The difference here is that the Truckers' current circuit is an understated acoustic tour rather than the amps-to-11, rafter-rattling affair that would normally accompany a new album. Frontman Patterson Hood is quick to note that when the band goes out early next year after the album's actual release date, it will be with an electric vengeance.
"When we go out in January, it will be guns blazing," says Hood via phone. "That's such a natural thing for us to do at this point in our lives. So [with the acoustic tour] it's almost like going into it with one hand kind of tied behind your back to see if you can still have an entertaining rock show sitting down. On the good nights, it definitely works."
Given the recent upheaval in the Truckers' camp, it's not particularly surprising it would take a slightly more sedate approach to the road. The divorce of guitarist Jason Isbell and bassist Shonna Tucker cemented Isbell's decision to part ways with the band and launch his solo career, which gave the Truckers the perfect opportunity to reassess what they would do next and how they could accomplish it, which included bringing old guitarist/steel pedalist John Neff back into the fold.
"He's become such an integral part of the band in such a short period of time," says Hood of Neff. "I've loved having Neff as part of the band; it's an amazing chemistry. The chemistry between himself and [legendary session keyboardist] Spooner [Oldham] is a thing all by itself. You could build a whole record around just that."
Oldham will be joining the Truckers for the last few dates of the "Dirt Underneath" tour, a fact that excites the band as much as the fans.
"We'll have him in Cleveland, and that's special in its own right," says Hood. "It's special to us anyway, because we love playing with him. He's phenomenal, and he's such a big part of our new record, too. He's on just about every song."
While the current acoustic setting and the presence of the new material in the set might give the impression that everything on Brighter Than Creation's Dark is flavored that way, Hood dispels that notion.
"It kind of goes all over the map," he says. "It's almost like a travelogue of every different sound we have. It's 19 songs and all 19 are pretty different from each other, yet I think it flows real well. To me, it's the most cohesive record we've made yet, and yet it's also the most all-over-the-map record we've made. And I'm happy about both of those things."
Hood insists he and the Truckers didn't actively set out to do anything specifically different with Brighter Than Creation's Dark, it just turned out that way organically. After touring non-stop since the fall of 2001, the band took some time off this year to work on writing new tunes.
"We'd all been through a lot of personal crap, and we had the personnel change happen and we'd been through a lot and it all started coming out in song form," Hood explains. "I know I wrote maybe 40 songs in a really short period of time, and [guitarist Mike] Cooley, who's never been very prolific, wrote like 10 songs, which is huge. He's been averaging one to two a year and he wrote all these songs that are great - best songs he's ever written. And Shonna wrote some songs. We knew we were gonna get together in the spring and do the acoustic tour, and we all decided we wanted Spooner to do it with us and we thought, "Well, let's work in these new songs over the course of the tour since we're going in the studio in June and start working on the record.' Even then, we didn't know if we had any great focus or timeline; we were just gonna pick the best of these songs, go in and start recording and see what happens."
The Truckers' three-week May tour turned out to be a kamikaze affair as far as the band's new material was concerned. With a handful of songs already completed and heads full of works in progress, the Truckers hit the road with the intent of honing the new tunes into recordable shape before heading into the studio the following month.
"We ended up working up the majority of the record at sound- checks," says Hood. "We'd work up a new song at soundcheck and premiere it that night at the show, and kind of road test them and iron the kinks out in front of audiences. That went great and everybody seemed to like the new songs and we were really liking what we were doing. By the end of the tour, the show was pretty much all new songs and nobody was complaining about that. I took that as a good sign."
The Truckers were just as fortunate when they took their newly minted tunes into the studio just a couple of weeks after some of them had been tweaked and finalized.
"It was almost like throwing it up in the air and it all just landed where it needed to land," says Hood with a laugh. "It happened so naturally and unforced, which is always best, I think. It kind of formed and shaped itself."
Unlike a good many of the Truckers' efforts over the years, Brighter Than Creation's Dark is not a concept album with a central theme and some sort of connecting narrative. Rather, it's a collection of songs that hangs together as a whole, diverse in sonic construction but united under the Truckers' unique banner.
"There seems to be running themes that keep popping up and it's extremely cohesive, but it's not a concept record," says Hood. "It just sounds like one big piece of work that all the ingredients fit right with. We've never recorded a Shonna song before and we've got three and they fit perfectly with the record. And we ended up recording seven of Cooley's songs this time and they're the best songs he's ever written, and I've got nine on there and I'm as proud of them as anything I've ever written. Some of it is really pretty and some of it is kind of primal MC5/Stooges-influenced, and it all flows right with each other. There's definitely a big soul music and R&B influence in a lot of it, and I think that's always been in our music but never been as noticed, and I'm glad of that."
This leg of the "Dirt Underneath" tour, stocked as it is with the now-finished versions of the songs from Brighter Than Creation's Dark as well as stripped-back versions of the Truckers' deep and impressive catalog, continues to be very well-received by the band's loyal fan base. Amazingly, the band doesn't work up a set list prior to any given show; it hits the stage and gauges the audience to see where it should steer its big sonic rig.
"It's a mixture of really old songs and songs that have gotten neglected live, because our show is big and loud, and our records have always had those quieter moments that don't translate in the middle of a big rock show," says Hood. "This tour has given us a chance to showcase some of those moments and do a little more storytelling, particularly on nights when the audience is quiet. We just go out and play it as it comes to us there, and so much of that is controlled by the audience. If everybody is really listening, then there's all kinds of things we can do, but if everybody's getting drunk and raising hell, then it's, "Alright, Get Drunk and Naked,' one-two-three-four."
The Drive By Truckers, Ryan Bingham & the Dead Horses
8 p.m. Wednesday, October 24
Beachland Ballroom
15711 Waterloo Rd.
216.383.1124
Tickets: $18 adv, $20 dos
