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Georgia Today
Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers on 'Decoration Day'; Reuniting with Jason Isbell
00:09:06
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- [00:07]
A
Hello and welcome to the Georgia Today podcast. Today we bring you a special edition of the podcast, a Christmas Eve show featuring rock and roll and one of our favorite southern storytellers. Patterson Hood of the iconic southern rock band Drive By Truckers tells Salvation south editor Chuck Reese that even though he moved away 10 years ago, he still thinks of Athens, Georgia as his home.
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I lived in Athens for 21 years and Athens, I will always consider Athens home. Even more than my hometown, I grew up in that community enabled me to become who I became.
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Today is Wednesday, December 24th. I'm Orlando Montoya and this is Georgia Today. Last month, iconic Athens southern rock band Drive By Truckers released the definitive Decoration Day, a box set commemorating the 22nd anniversary of their classic 2003 album. To mark the occasion, they reunited with former member Jason Isbell After 22 years for a performance on the Late show with Stephen Colbert. Salvation south editor Chuck Reese talked with Drive By Truckers founding member Patterson Hood about how that performance came together and the lasting legacy of Decoration Day. This is an extended version of the conversation we featured previously on Georgia Today.
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B
How did the whole idea of including Jason in the performance on Colbert come about? He was nice enough to do it. To be totally blatantly honest about it, I'm, I'm, I would, I seriously doubt we would have gotten on for a, for a reissue of a 23 year old record. You know, I, I, I doubt they were going to put us on tv, but when they pitched it about doing it with Jason, I was like, well, if, you know, if, if he's willing to do it, I'm in, you know, Absolutely. He said yes. And I'm like, hell yeah. You know, And Cooley was like, hell yeah. I mean, we're all friends, we're all good. We've been good for a long time. We all got there about 10 minutes before our rehearsal sound check thing and we got up there completely cold. I mean, hell, the bands been off. The band hadn't seen each other in several months. And we walked up there and plugged in and they asked us to run through it a few times so they could get camera things. And the first take of it sounded as good as what we did on tv. Hell no, I ain't happy. Hell no, I ain't happy. Jason Isbel, he's a freakish talent and he was freakish talent before we met him. At that time, he was so young. We left for that tour, his mama dropped him off for us to all get in the van and leave together. And his Mama, she like comes up to me, tears in her eyes. It's like, don't let my boy die. Don't kill my boy. You know, I'm like, I won't, I promise. I mean, I'd say the last five or six years, you know, I mean, we're closer than we ever were when he was in the band. And he was like a, almost like a kid brother to me or something, you know. I always love Jason and no one's prouder of him than me, you know, maybe his mama. I'm curious why you wanted to put this definitive thing out now. Because it's not a milestone anniversary. We can't do anything right. Like my new record tells like a autobiographical story of my first 30 years, but it tells it backwards and even that the timeline gets screwed up and I mean, I can do anything right. I, I, I, you know, it, it, we, we just play it like we feel it. When I look back at my life now that I'm an old man and look back at my life, I mean, the first half of 2002 was probably the most idyllic six months of my life. I mean it was exciting, man. We had a, you know, we got four stars at Rolling Stone and we were making these year end lists and the Village Voice and you know, we're, we're, we're selling out everywhere we play. Still playing small rooms, but you know, they're like, I mean, people are excited when we come to town. I'd never experienced that. I've been doing this, you know, literally 16 years by that point. I'd been playing empty rooms when the drop by truckers were all of a sudden pulling 50 to 100 people a night. Everywhere we went we were excited, man. It's like we got something that's clicking with people and so we were pedal to the metal, man. It's like this is our chance. It was a very fertile time. I was going through a divorce. The band had gone through all their battles. We had making Southern rock opera, which almost broke up the band. And there was a lot of turmoil and personal lives at that era. So there was a lot of fodder to write about. I had very much a clear vision of what that record was going to be and never really talked about that to Cooley, but he evidently had the exact same vision about it, judging from what his songs were for it. The very first song I wrote for Decoration Day was the Deeper End. I'd get off work at 2:30 in the morning and I'd go home and I was living out on Jefferson Road, Old Jefferson Road, this big white haunted house. I think you probably came out there a time or two. There is a railroad track that ran right across our front yard. So I'd come home from work and take my guitar out on the front porch if the weather was okay, and drink a beer and play my guitar for about an hour every night when I'd get home from work. And while the train, watched the train go by, I wrote deeper in. It probably took me 15 minutes to write. I mean, it just wrote itself. It just. I mean, barely longer than it takes to play it. I knew when I wrote it it was the first song on the record. The working title was always Heathens. We changed the name of the record when we were mixing it, which was fall of 2002. There was. We were mixing the record and David Bowie, Oasis and someone else in about a two month period put out records with Heathens in the title. And it's like, God, you. It's like, you know, and I can't begrudge Bowie. So it's like, we gotta find another title. And Decoration Day was the obvious next choice. In retrospect, it's better that it worked out the way it did because that's the perfect title and it's even better than Heathens. But I always refer to those as my Heathen songs.
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A
And.
- [07:07]
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And there are about 200 of them. About 200 of them, yeah. I mean, there's not 200 keepers. This whole album was coming together. Yeah. At a time when you guys were back and forth between Athens, where you lived at the time, and Atlanta constantly. Constantly. I lived in Athens for 21 years and Athens. I will always consider Athens home even more than my hometown. I grew up in that community, enabled me to become who I became. And. And so, you know, as far as I'm concerned, the Drive By Truckers will always be based in Athens, Georgia. And I'll always consider Athens, Georgia, home. We're about to make a new record. We're starting a record in February. We're going to start in Athens. I don't know where it will lead us, but we're going to go in and we're going to start recording. And. And you know, we want to do something different too because we, we got a lot of records. There's no need of doing another one. That's a lesser version of something we've already done.
- [08:07]
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That was Patterson Hood of the Drive By Truckers speaking with Salvation south host Chuck Reese. And for more of Chuck, you can listen to the Salvation south podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts. And that's it for today's edition of of Georgia. Today, in this season of gratitude and looking back, I want to say thank you for your listenership this entire year. Merry Christmas and happy holidays. Find the latest Georgia news@gpb.org news hit subscribe on this podcast to stay current with us in your feed and send us feedbackorgiatodaypb.org I'm Orlando Montoya. Have a great holiday and I'll talk to you again soon.