KEEP ON TRUCKIN’

Drive-By Truckers look back and forward ahead of Orlando show

BY DAVE GIL DE RUBIO

When Drive-By Truckers went into the studio at the end of July 2021, the band was coming off an unintentional trilogy of albums rife with socially conscious messages — 2016’s American Band, 2020’s The Unraveling and The New OK.

All three albums were overflowing with trenchant musical observations about gun violence, the Trump immigration family separation policy and Black Lives Matter. Suffice it to say, founding members Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley were ready to get more personal with their songwriting, a shift that’s readily apparent on Welcome 2 Club XIII, the Athens, Georgia quintet’s 14th album. The duo’s pre-DBT days playing in the late 1980s outfit Adam’s House Cat proved to be a source of inspiration for the nine songs that make up the new record.

“We were a band from ’85 to ’91 and we made a record right before we broke up that never came out at the time,” Hood recalls. “We were able to locate the missing tapes, mix it and we put it out in 2018 [as Town Burned Down]. Working on that was sort of the impetus for some of the writing on this current record.”

Cooley’s oldest child at the time turning 19 and Hood’s senior child having just marked his 17th birthday, along with retrospection from those Adam’s House Cat days proved to be all the inspiration needed for an exploratory threeday recording session that wound up birthing this newest album.

Looking back on the Adam’s House Cat period proved to be a meaningful way to pivot away from the topical themes that had dominated much of the DBT material for the past six years as well.

“As far as the character-driven stories [on this album], these characters tend to be us, or family or really close friends, that in some cases, [we] lost,” Hood explains. “Part of it is a reflection on our younger days, but not in a ‘Glory Days’ sentimental way — more of taking stock of that time. You know, when you’re young and having a good time, it’s great. I’m all about [being] young and having a good time and hopefully [you] come out on the other end and find a way to make it work in your later life.”

Some of the highlights include the Crazy Horse-flavored rager “Maria’s Awful Disclosures,” the fuzz guitar-soaked title track shuffle and the horn-kissed “Every Single Storied Flameout,” a Hood favorite.

“That’s my favorite song on the record and that might be my all-time favorite Drive-By Truckers song,” he says. “I really love that song. I’m really extra-proud of it. I think Cooley’s songwriting on that is so next-level and phenomenal — the

DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS with Lydia Loveless

6 p.m. Saturday, April 22

Ace Cafe

100 W. Livingston St. backyardattheace.com 407-996-6686 $30-$55 words and the whole thing plays out — and the horns. I fucking love the horns on that.”

Adding to the fun are contributions by country music talents Margo Price and her hubby Jeremy Ivey on harmonica.

“We ended up sharing a dressing room with Margo and her husband Jeremy at the Newport Folk Festival,” Hood remembers. “We’re talking and one thing led to another and we asked if she wanted to sing on something and she said she’d love to.”

Longtime friend Mike Mills of R.E.M. also checks in, providing backing vocals, a talent that had impressed Hood since the latter would drive around in his truck listening to R.E.M.’s Fables of the Reconstruction and sing along to Mills’ contributions to that record.

“He’s one of my favorite harmony singers in the world,” says Hood. “It’s an honor to have his voice on our record because I love him because he’s just so great.”

And while the recording process proved to be quite a breeze, getting to the other side of the pandemic proved to be the biggest challenge for Hood and the DBTs.

“When I first got sent home, we were on tour when everything shut down and we had to fly home,” Hood says. “I thought it was an inconvenience and that maybe we were going to lose a month of work at most. But then the reality started setting in that this wasn’t ending any time soon. We may go bankrupt. It was brutal financially and on a mental and personal level. I kind of shut down. I wasn’t really able to write or do near all the creative things I wanted to do. Generally, when I’ve had dark times in my life, writing has been my sort of self-therapy that I’ve used to get through it on the other side. It kind of threw me. It wasn’t like a writer’s block necessarily, but more along the lines of anything I wrote made me feel worse. So I just didn’t do it much. I didn’t really write a lot until around December 2020, when the election was over — or when we thought it was. Or when it was supposed to be over. They had a vaccine coming and I started thinking that I’d start to be able to go back to work and be able to pick up the pieces. We had survived and hadn’t lost our house, which was a big deal. After that, the floodgates opened.”

Once the Drive-By Truckers were able to return to touring, they spent most of 2021 making up rescheduled dates from 2020 and early 2021 before starting to hit markets that didn’t lose shows to the pandemic.

And while business concerns might have dictated holding off on releasing Welcome 2 Club XIII until after the band had played the make-up dates — essentially continuing The New OK tour — gut instinct drove Hood and his compatriots to get the new music out to the fans, even at a financial cost.

“Waiting on releasing the new album would have probably been the smarter business move to make,” Hood admits. “In retrospect, maybe we should have [waited]. But it’s not what we felt like doing. We were excited about this record and this is what we wanted to be doing. Now we’re kind of dealing with the other end of that. They let us do what we wanted to do. If they told us no, we would have probably been sore about it, but they might have been right.” music@orlandoweekly.com

Local Releases

After emerging on the scene and capturing the local music cognoscenti in the mid-2010s, Orlando artist Zoya Zafar went relatively quiet for several years. Last year, she began performing live again, and now she’s finally unveiling new music for the first time in four years.

Just-released single “Wordz” is a furtherance of the atmospheric indie-pop trajectory Zafar has been on for a while now. But while her melodic introspection is still bathed in lo-fi textures, the lens is notably more upclose this time. “Wordz” radiates a beguiling bedroom aura of warm sonics that make it feel like she’s singing from only a pillow away. Besides a welcome return, it’s Zafar’s most intimate and crystalline work in ages. The good news is that this single is just the beginning of a trove of new work that Zafar already has in the can. She’s completed an entire album and plans to release singles from it this year with a full drop either late this year or early next. “Wordz” now streams everywhere.

Concert Picks This Week

Lydia Loveless: The headlining DriveBy Truckers are one of the most venerated Southern rock bands of their time. Opener Lydia Loveless, on the other hand, is one of the most underrated Americana artists alive right now. With years as one of Bloodshot Records’ brightest stars, she’s got indie cred. Loveless stunned me early in her career when she absolutely ruled as the opener for Scott H. Biram at the Social in 2012. Since then, though, her commanding songwriting has only gotten sharper and her voice has

After capturing the local music cognoscenti in the mid-2010s, Orlando artist Zoya Zafar went relatively quiet for several years. She’s just unveiled a new song, and it’s her most intimate and crystalline work in ages ripened into a specimen of muscled finesse. That drive for the perfect line between guts and grace has made Loveless one of her generation’s greatest talents. (6 p.m. Saturday, April 22, Ace Cafe, $30-$55)

The Great Orlando Skunk Ape Conference: Despite the name, this event is actually more punk concert than conference. But it is timed intentionally to be a little fuck-you to the annual Great Florida Bigfoot Conference happening the very same day in Ocala. Organized on the grass-roots level by Florida natives rather than the Tennessee group that runs the GFBC, the Great Orlando Skunk Ape Conference is a local clap-back that’ll have none other than Dave Shealy in attendance. When it comes to Florida’s own Bigfoot, this guy is the truest believer of all. Whether you consider him a champion or a huckster, Shealy is undoubtedly the lead barker for the rural legend of the skunk ape. Personally, I have as much opinion on the relative legitimacy of these two competing events as I do patience for all those pointless Bigfoot reality shows. What makes this event ping on my radar is that it’ll feature something even more locally momentous: a rare performance by Orlando comedy-punk band Tooth and the Enamels. They’ll be joined by Orlando punks Fatties and Florida cracker bard Johnny Debt. (7 p.m. Saturday, April 22, Dirty Laundry, $8)

Green Jellÿ, American Party Machine, Shining Wizard: From their beginnings under the litigation-baiting name Green Jellö, Green Jellÿ have gone from underground phenoms to cult status as one of America’s premier comedy bands. Even though studious players like Tool’s Maynard James Keenan and Danny Carey were once members, Green Jellÿ have remained hilariously steadfast in their disdain for quality and intellect. But they also happen to pack enough visual flair to have spun off into an audiovisual production house (Green Jellÿ Studios), so expect insane props, costumes and revelry à la stage spectacles like GWAR and Mac Sabbath (who themselves will be playing Conduit on April 27).

The native openers will bring their own high camp. Orlando’s American Party Machine are a pro wrestling circus manifested as a rock band. And with their luchador masks and grindcore attack, Tampa’s Shining Wizard are like a heavy-metal Los Straitjackets. Nothing else this week will be as gloriously stupid as this show. (6 p.m. Sunday, April 23, Conduit, $15) baolehuu@orlandoweekly.com