On the title track to Welcome 2 Club XIII, Drive-By Truckers pay homage to the Muscle Shoals honky-tonk where founding members Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley got their start: a concrete-floored dive lit like a disco, with the nightly promise of penny beer and truly dubious cover bands. “There were no cool bars in town and Club XIII was the best we had—but it wasn’t all that good, and our band wasn’t particularly liked there,” says Hood, referring to the vocalist/guitarists’ former band Adam’s House Cat. “From time to time the owner would throw us a Wednesday night or let us open for a hair-metal band we were a terrible fit for, and everyone would hang out outside until we were done playing. It wasn’t very funny at the time, but it’s funny to us now.” The 14th studio album from Drive-By Truckers—whose lineup also includes keyboardist/guitarist Jay Gonzalez, bassist Matt Patton, and drummer Brad Morgan—Welcome 2 Club XIII looks back on their formative years with both deadpan pragmatism and profound tenderness, instilling each song with the kind of lived-in detail that invites bittersweet reminiscence of your own misspent youth.

Produced by longtime Drive-By Truckers collaborator David Barbe and mainly recorded at his studio in Athens, Georgia, Welcome 2 Club XIII took shape over the course of three frenetic days in summer 2021—a doubly extraordinary feat considering that the band had no prior intentions of making a new album. “We had some shows coming up and decided to get together and practice, since we hadn’t even seen each other in a year and a half because of the pandemic,” Hood recalls. “We started demoing song ideas, and pretty soon we realized we had a whole record. It was all sort of magical.” Featuring background vocals from the likes of Margo Price, R.E.M.’s Mike Mills, and Mississippi-bred singer/songwriter Schaefer Llana, Welcome 2 Club XIII was recorded live with most songs cut in one or two takes, fully harnessing the band’s freewheeling energy. “For us it’s always about just getting together and having fun, but this time there was the added feeling of being set free after a long time of wondering if we’d ever get to do this again,” notes Cooley.

Arriving as the band enters its 26th year, Welcome 2 Club XIII marks a sharp departure from the trenchant commentary of The Unraveling and The New OK (both released in 2020). “All our records are political to some extent, but after making three overtly political records in a row we wanted to do something much more personal,” says Hood. A hypnotic introduction to the album’s sprawling autobiography, “The Driver” kicks off Welcome 2 Club XIII with a seven-minute-long, darkly thrilling epic punctuated with lead-heavy riffs and Llana’s unearthly vocals. “Around the same era of Club XIII, I spent a lot of time driving around late at night when I couldn’t sleep, listening to music loud and often having a beer or two,” says Hood. “Sometimes during those drives I’d have these epiphanies about what to do with my life—like listening to Tim by The Replacements not long after it came out and deciding to drop out of school to try and make this whole band thing work.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: This sounds like classic DBT, country leaning indie rock imbued with a hazy southern groove. It's heavy in parts, but also nuanced and cohesive. For a band coming on 30 years together, they're showing no signs of slowing down or faltering. A brilliantly uplifting and well humoured new entry in their storied history.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Driver
2. Maria's Awful Disclosure
3. Shake And Pine
4. We Will Never Wake You In The Morning
5. Welcome 2 Club XIII
6. Forged In Hell And Heaven Sent
7. Every Single Storied Flameout
8. Billy Ringo In The Dark
9. Wilder Days

Originally conceived as a quarantine EP collecting material recorded in Memphis during sessions for ‘The Unraveling’, the project quickly grew to include provocative new songs written and recorded over what Drive-By Truckers co-founder Patterson Hood calls “this endless summer of protests, riots, political shenanigans and pandemic horrors.”

Tracks such as Hood’s ‘Watching The Orange Clouds’ - inspired by the protests which followed George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police - and a fiery cover of The Ramones’ classic ‘The KKK Took My Baby Away’ (vocals by bassist Matt Patton) were exchanged between Hood, cofounding singer / songwriter / guitarist Mike Cooley, bassist Patton, keyboardist / multiinstrumentalist Jay Gonzalez and drummer Brad Morgan and then mixed by long-time Drive-By Truckers producer David Barbe.

TRACK LISTING

The New OK
Tough To Let Go
The Unraveling
The Perilous Night
Sarah’s Flame
Sea Island Lonely
The Distance
Watching The Orange
Clouds
The KKK Took My Baby Away

Drive-By Truckers’ 12th studio album and first new LP in more than three years – the longest gap between new DBT albums – The Unraveling was recorded at the legendary Sam Phillips Recording Service in Memphis, TN by Grammy® Award-winning engineer Matt Ross-Spang (Jason Isbell, Margo Price) and longtime DBT producer David Barbe. Co-founding singer/songwriter/guitarists Mike Cooley and Patterson Hood both spent much of the time prior doing battle with deep pools of writer’s block. “How do you put these day to day things we’re all living through into the form of a song that we (much less anybody else) would ever want to listen to?” says Hood. “How do you write about the daily absurdities when you can’t even wrap your head around them in the first place? I think our response was to focus at the core emotional level. More heart and less cerebral perhaps.”

The songs that eventually emerged are among Drive-By Truckers’ most direct and pointedly provocative, tackling the myriad horrors of our new normal through sincere emotion and unbridled heart. Indeed, “Armageddon’s Back in Town” takes a whirlwind joyride through the whiplash of events we collectively deal with each day while the concluding “Awaiting Resurrection” dives headfirst into the despair and pain roiled up by these troubled times.

“The past three-and-a-half years were among the most tumultuous our country has ever seen,” says Hood, “and the duality between the generally positive state of affairs within our band while watching so many things we care about being decimated and destroyed all around us informed the writing of this album to the core.

“While a quick glance might imply that we’re picking up where 2016’s American Band album left off, the differences are as telling as the similarities. If the last one was a warning shot hinting at a coming storm, this one was written in the wreckage and aftermath. I’ve always said that all of our records are political but I’ve also said that ‘politics is personal’. With that in mind, this album is especially personal.”

The remarkable songcraft found on The Unraveling receives much of its musical muscle from the sheer strength of the current Drive-By Truckers line-up, with Hood and Cooley joined by bassist Matt Patton, keyboardist/multi-instrumentalist Jay Gonzalez, and drummer Brad Morgan – together, the longest-lasting iteration in the band’s almost 25-year history. The LP also features a number of special guests, including The Shins’ Patti King, violinist/string arranger Kyleen King (Brandi Carlile), and North Mississippi All-Stars’ Cody Dickinson, who contributes electric washboard to the strikingly direct “Babies In Cages.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Having always tread the fine line between good-ol' Americana and more driven, indie-based rock and / or roll, it's good to see DBT maintaining their southern lilt but with a more momentous, stadium pomp to the proceedings. Brilliantly produced and perfectly weighted, this might well be their finest work to date.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Rosemary With A Bible And A Gun
A2 Armageddon’s Back In Town
A3 Slow Ride Argument
A4 Thoughts And Prayers
A5 21st Century USA
B1 Heroin Again
B2 Babies In Cages
B3 Grievance Merchants
B4 Awaiting Resurrection

New single featuring ‘What It Means’ recorded live at Newport Folk Festival in the Summer of 2017, backed with a brand-new Patterson Hood-penned track called ‘The Perilous Night’.

Hood says, “It may be the darkest song I’ve ever written, but it’s also a Tracklisting dance song. Turn it up.”

Drive-By Truckers present a live set recorded at The Fillmore in San Francisco, available in two editions.

In the band’s own words: “Thrilled to announce that our long awaited live album, recorded over three nights at the historic Fillmore in San Francisco CA, will be released […]! Our long-time producer, David Barbe, acquired the necessary mobile gear to record us and flew out to San Francisco to capture our three-night stand in November of 2014. We hired some horns, sold some tickets and played three special and unique shows. From those shows we have sequenced a sort of ultimate live DBT collection, one that hopefully captures the essence of our life’s work into one cohesive whole.

“We are releasing two versions... a shorter 13 song version called ‘This Weekend’s The Night’ which provides a Best Of version snapshot of our live show [and] also a larger 35 song box set entitled ‘It’s Great To Be Alive!’ which goes far more in-depth into the DBT catalog and history. Songs and stories spanning thirty years of Drive- By Truckers sequenced to hopefully give as close as possible document of the DBT show.”

Drive-By Truckers release their new album ‘English Oceans’ through ATO Records.

‘English Oceans’, the band’s 12th release, is an elegantly balanced and deeply engaged new effort that finds the group refreshed and firing on all cylinders. “It can go from this chainsaw rock ‘n’ roll to this very delicate, pretty-sounding stuff,” says singer and guitarist Mike Cooley.

‘English Oceans’ was recorded over 13 days at Chase Park Transduction Studios in Athens, GA with the band’s longtime producer David Barbe.

TRACK LISTING

Sh*t Shots Count
When He’s Gone
Primer Coat
Pauline Hawkins
Made Up English Oceans
The Part Of Him
Hearing Jimmy Loud
Til He’s Dead Or Rises
Hanging On
Natural Light
When Walter Went Crazy
First Air Of Autumn
Grand Canyon