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parking lot of my high school That was [fellow
Trucker Adam] Cooley!" He leans in, concentrating
now. "A guy from a record store in Columbia, Mo.,
is stocking the record and he called me one night,
drunk, from the store. I'm assuming he hung out
drinking after he closed down.
"But he leaves a message on my machine, with
the record just cranked in the background, saying
he really liked it. I call him back a few days later
when he's sober, and he tells me although he
enjoyed the record, he almost didn't play it
because of the cover." He stops, studying his
hands. "I don't know how to put it into words. It
makes me like the cover more. I hope Jim Stacy
doesn't read this and think I'm dissing his art
work. I get the feeling Jim's probably pretty mis
understood himself."
Patterson wandered into Athens back in April
of 1994 and decided to stay, signing his lease on
the day that Kurt Cobain killed himself in Seattle.
He set about playing open mike nights and unat
tended opening slots with just an acoustic guitar,
and began pressing his homemade cassettes into
people's hands — tapes with names like Murdering
Oscar and Memories Of Snake Handling — if only
to gauge some kind of response.
Gangstabilly coming out of Athens these days.
Precise, airtight recording techniques were forsak
en in favor of gathering all the Truckers — Hood,
guitarist Cooley, upright bassist Adam Howell,
drummer Matt Lane and pedal steel-ist John Neff
— in one big room to play and sing. There's loads
of mike bleed, and the instruments wash and
churn over one another like the more wrung-out
material on the Stones' Exile On Main Street. The
harmonies, always live and at times four parts
strong, are informed not only by Mick & Keef, but
also gospel tradition, the louvin Brothers. Hood's
battered acoustic guitar, tuned down a whole
step, slashes and rings at the forefront of most of
the songs. The result is a big-sounding record, at
times mean-spirited as a whimng nest of hornets,
other times as warm and forgiving as a dusky
Alabama evening dotted with fireflies. Even
though such hyperbolic truck will probably send
shudders through the respective members of the
band, Gaigstabilty, for all intents and purposes, is
a monolithic achievement.
That's not to say, however, that it's above the
inclusion of the kind of standup-comic scatology
that peppers a song like "Steve McQueen."
Patterson: "The French love Jerry Lewis, but
American's don't revere him because [his work is]
silly, and therefore it's not valid as art The French
are secure enojgh in their artsiness that they can
see the valid ty in what he does. I think Jim
“¥ou turn an KTY and
^ee -these whfny 5ltt!e
pussies bitching- about
their angst-flMed kittle
Seneratlon^X 51 ves*.».*.
the whole thing, makes
me want to puke/’
They were generally of the quality that one
would expect from a simple boombox: press record
and hope for the best. These cassettes, though,
contained early versions of Drive-By Truckers stan
dards like "Nine Bullets" and "18 Wheels Of Love."
and were, all at the same time, perverse, beauti
ful scary and subversively funny. After a spate of
side projects like the Lot Lizards — a project
formed with the Possibilities and seeming to have
the main goal of clearing every room they played
— Hood slowly began to hone his songwriting,
and over the course of a few months and strings
of shows, the Drive-By Truckers (*hich basically
began as. and still is, a group of friends who
enjoy playing music with one another) became an
actual band.
Cut to last year's AthFest. The Truckers were
headlining , show at the 40 Watt, following sets
by the Dashboard Saviors, the Palletjacks, Jack
Logan and Martee Macleod. I was loitering outside
the front door searching for fresh air when an
older, extremely drunken denizen of Washington
Street rounded the corner, and stopped next to
me, weaving to and fro, radiating cheap vodka. He
was wearing a KISS T-shirt along with an eight-
day stubble and leaned closer to the door (and
me) to listen for a few moments to what the
Drive-By Truckers were playing and to marvel at
the crowd. ."Gawd-damn," he whispered, "Couldn't
stir 'cm with a stick."
There's a good chance you won't hear too
many records like the Drive-By Truckers'
Stacy's art fits in that context. It's a little too
close to home for people to laugh at it. but over
there, that's the way it is. It's fucking funny, you
know?"
We're back to the movies, if only for a second.
"It's kind of like the Marx Brothers movies, which
aren't taken as seriously as iitizen Kane in this
country," he continues. I just read this Pauline
Kael essay on Citizen Kane, written around 1971.
Her whole point was that the people Orson Welles
employed to film the movie all worked on the '30s
comedy farces. They applied all of that to Citizen
Kane. It basically takes it's style from the Gothic
horror films of the silent era and those '3C» farces.
It’s all that rolled into one package.
"What I mean is, at the same time it's all
show business. This is something Jim helped me
come to terms with: it's supposed to be entertain
ing. Maybe that's where the Drive-By Truckers
have caught on where other bands I was in didn't
— although I still contend Adam's House Cat was
entertaining. This time, maybe because of the
funny artwork, people respond to it and then in
time see that there's something else there. If peo
ple miss some kind of profound message, that’s
fine. I'd rather just have fun with it"
What of the "Redneck Underground," a network
of bands, clubs and ideals that celebrate, in a
sense, trash culture, lampooning Southern stereo
types while at the same time embracing them?
The Drive-By Truckers have found themselves a
continued on next page
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