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part of the movement, in my eyes more by
default. No one in the band wears clothes that
bespeak a certain era of Southern or C&W tradi
tion. and the closest you'll get to a country signi-
fier is upright bassist Adam Howell's mammoth
cowboy hat. With the exception of that hat, the
Truckers are wearing on stage what they drove to
the gig in — probably what was closest to the
bed when they woke up.
It's unfortunate, however, that a portion of
what Hood and others in this ''movement" do is
seen as novelty. Bear down. Listen to the words.
There's not much funny in “Wife Beater." or other
Gongstabilly tracks, like the raging “The Tough
Sell" or the cathartic “Why Henry Drinks."
Patterson sees an interesting dichotomy. “I've
been told all my life that I write songs that are
too dark. Adam's House Cat? Everyone thought our
songs were so dark and so depressing, and that
always really bothered me. I always heard a lot of
humor in the songs, but it got overlooked because
of the subject matter. So, all of a sudden having
people dismiss this as a 'novelty' thing is so much
fun for me.
“I see a lot of humor in everyday lives, even
depressing ones. American comedy films are so
bad so often, that every 10 years when someone
makes a Raising Arizona — come on, what's that
movie about? It's about kidnapping someone’s
child. That's a dark fucking thing. It's about some
one who's such a loser in life — because of the
whole socioeconomic situation he's in and has
become a part of, he has to rob convenience
stores." He gets up to change the Bobby Womack
record that has been quietly spinning in the back
ground, and looks back to me, "But it's the funni
est fucking movie I've ever seen."
If Gongstabilly has an emotional center, a real
palpable beating heart, it might come only four
songs into the album, on “The Living Bubba,” a
remembrance of Gregory Dean Smalley, the late
guitarist, songwriter and singer of untold numbers
of bands in Atlanta. Smalley founded the
Bubbapalooza Festival, a yearly celebration of
music, barbecue and PBR that extends a warm
hand to some of the more humorous aspects of
Southern culture while poking it occasionally in
the ribs; in the liner notes to Gongstabilly. Hood
refers to Smalley as ' the personification of the
Redneck Underground." I ask Patterson if it was
difficult to write such a profoundly sad song.
"Would you find it so sad if you didn't know
the guy was dead? The title of the song is the
most important part: it's a celebration of the liv
ing. his living," he says. “We're all dying, and
some of us are lucky enough that we may get to
hang on for a while, but it's still an inevitability.
Greg's life got cut off way too soon, but the
song's about what he lived for.
“I called him up after the Truckers got on at
Bubbapalooza, mainly to thank him because I
know he had something to do with us being
asked, and his wife answered, saying he was in
the hospital. He was dying of AIDS. I went out
and walked my dog after that, and the song just
hit me. I ran home and wrote it down before I for
got it.“
Smalley and Patterson first met at the High
Hat, where Patterson works as a sound man.
Smalley would come up to Athens to play almost
every other week with a different band. "There
were never more than eight people in the audi
ence. some nights even less," Patterson says of
Smalley's shows. "I remember he was so sick one
night it took him 10 minutes to get from the High
Hat office to the stage. When he got there he had
a bar stool on stage because !.e kept falling — he
couldn't stand up. He'd have to save his energy,
so he'd stand up when he had to sing in the mike
and then fall back on the stool. He did the whole
show that way. We played Bubbapalooza last year,
and Greg's momma came. She'd heard about the
song through some friends of mine in Atlanta, and
showed up to hear us do it. When we began play
ing it, she walked right up to the lip of the stage
— talk about stage fright. It was profound. She
gave me a big hug after we finished."
It's this fervent support of what Smalley stood
for, both in heart and song, that seems to drive
Patterson, yet another songwriter who is no
stranger to the occasional half-filled club, creative
insecurity and the appreciation the small rewards
that come with this racket. Patterson grows quiet
as our conversation winds down about Greg, and
before he and I wander back to more familiar,
comfortable territory — our respective childhoods
in Alabama, the smoky mythology surrounding the
plane crash that took the lives of three members
of Lynyrd Skynyrd — it's obvious he's holding
back real tears.
"You know, you turn on MTV and see these
whiny little pussies Ditching about their angst-
filled little Generation-X lives... the whole thing
makes me want to puke. Greg would walk away
from a gig with 10 or 15 bucks in his pocket and
drive back to Atlanta. Sick. Dying."
He stares out the window, his voice cracking,
“It just makes you re-evaluate why people like us
do this. Some people want to be stars or want hit
records, and I wish them luck. Some people do it
because, at the end, that's what keeps them
alive."
Jason Station
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M FLAGPOLE MAY 20, 1998