Five Records With… Patterson Hood

I had the opportunity to interview Patterson Hood about some records that keep him going. I covered his band, the Drive-By Truckers’ latest record The Big To Do here. Five Records is an occasional feature of artists talking about the music that inspires them. Read more of these posts here.

Elton John Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

“When I was a kid, it was Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.I was 8 when I started writing songs and that was 1973. My dad had both of those albums and I played them all the time.Later on Todd Rundgren’s Something/Anything? album and The Clash’s London Calling that sort of set my mind to how it’s done.”

Neil Young Tonight’s the Night

“I’m obviously a big Neil Young fan and really love Tonight’s The Night. He was best known for making kinda countryish mellow, kinda pleasing music and his mental state deteriorated due to some bad times and instead of pretending it was all right, he followed his muse and made a very difficult album. It sold very poorly at the time but is certainly held as a masterpiece by some of us out there.”

Willie Nelson Phases and Stages

“I can’t think of any single album that directly related to The Big To Do. A lot of it was written on the road and the stereo on the bus is usually playing some old soul album but when I’ writing I tend to try not to be listening to anything in particular. I have in recent months been listening to a lot of Iron and Wine, Spoon, Willie Nelson’s Phases and Stages album and Dylan’s last album but our new album doesn’t sound anything like any of those albums.”

Curtis Mayfield Superfly

“There’s a lot of songs I really admire but no one could ever write someone else’s song (at least not the songs I tend to love). So much of what makes a song is how the inspiration is filtered through the writers psyche and imagination. I am a really great big admirer of Curtis Mayfield and love how he did the soundtrack/score to Superfly, taking the context of that story and turning it around to suit his own point of view but still being totally true to the subject matter and in the process taking the subject to a much greater and higher artistic height. “Freddies Dead” is a masterpiece.”

Girls Album

“I’ve been really digging Album by Girls a lot. It’s a really cool album. I’d really like to see them live.”

Patterson Hood – Pollyanna

Drive-By Truckers – The Big To Do

1. Like R.E.M. a generation before them, the Drive-By Truckers are telling a story about the South through rock music. I grew up in Georgia and Tennessee, and the characters that inhabit their songs are the people I saw at the gas station, the people I worked with on the golf course, and the people you heard hushed whispers about in church. Their latest, The Big To Do, finds them building upon the focus they found with Brighter than Creation’s Dark.

2. Opening with Patterson Hood’s story of a young boy who believes the myth about his dead father, “Daddy Learned To Fly” carries a careful Southern naivete, treading ground around something mysterious and grave, and dealing with it in a lighthearted way. Other songs do not get the same light touch, as they outline grim scenes from the front pages of newspapers. “The Wig He Made Her Wear” tells the story of an abusive preacher, whose murdering wife is forgiven when she takes the stand and tells all about their bedroom escapades. Told over a churning, angular Cooley riff, the song shows a bit of humanity behind a crime that “the locals couldn’t quite grasp”, though they may have identified with it in one way or another. “Drag the Lake Charlie” finds a few men hoping that they find their friend drowned, or his wife’s “gonna come and kill us all”.

3. Hood retreads some previous territory in lead single “This F**king Job” (whose radio-friendly retitle “Working this Job” seems to lessen the bite), as well as revisiting the narrative skill he honed with Southern Rock Opera, covering South Florida circus family “The Flying Wallendas”.

Though only represented by three songs, Mike Cooley makes the most of his spotlight moments. “Birthday Boy” highlights the hardened misery of a stripper, dropping this lyrical gem towards the end:

Cooley’s own style of storytelling gets a workout on “Get Downtown”, where Jimmy, saddled with the “unemployment blues”, is pushed out of the house by his girlfriend Kim, who is “too pretty to work”.

4. The real star of The Big To Do is bassist and relatively new songwriter Shonna Tucker. “(It’s Gonna Be) I Told You So” is a stomping Petty-esque rocker that perfectly displays the fury of a woman scorned. The fury is opposed with tenderness in “You Got Another”, a rare piano ballad that outlines the heartbreak of being replaceable to someone. Though she has only been given a few songs per record, Tucker makes the most of what she does, and the addition of a female voice to the band provides a welcome variety in perspective and sound.

5. Earlier in their career, the Drive-By Truckers gained notoriety for their “three-axe attack”, though it was seen more as a Skynyrd revival than an artistic portrayal of their home states. As they have clawed through their career (as wonderfully documented on the recent film The Secret To a Happy Ending), they have gained respect for their songs, putting the attention where it should have been all along. The Big To Do pushes that forward sonically and lyrically, with stories about real people that reach much farther than the bounds of the South.

Drive-By Truckers – (It’s Gonna Be) I Told You So

Dexateens – “Spark”

1. Counting off time with a thumping muted guitar strum, the Dexateens immediately reference Johnny Cash’s Sun Records sound, though considering the conditions under which “Spark”, from their latest record Singlewide was recorded, John Hiatt might be a better comparison. Hiatt’s landmark Crossing Muddy Waters (one of Ed Jurdi’s favorites) was the first record I remember to be recorded on a porch, and this record from the Dexateens makes two. I heard of their second record, Hardwide Healing, through its producer, Patterson Hood of the Drive-By Truckers. The stripped down sound of Singlewide is not as much a departure from their early roots-rock sound as it is a focused effort to highlight the songs rather than the music. “Spark” is a prime example, with the bare instrumentation laying plain Elliott McPherson’s optimistic words.

2. McPherson’s pitched tenor is immediately reminiscent of Gary Louris from the Jayhawks, a comparison reinforced when John Smith enters singing in unison. McPherson’s lyrics speak of hopeful wishing for a “faraway life” without “so much darkness drawn down to ya”, dismissing the negative with “can’t be a shadow or a spark don’t shine”. The rest of the band shuffles in on the chorus, warming McPherson and Smith’s duet that jumps past future glory to reminisce “that I knew you when”, and assuring that the “time will come around again/ If you stick around and see.” The second verse is more endearing encouragement to “wait all night, the sun is gonna find us”, before moving into an understated solo and ending as it began.

3. McPherson doesn’t have a lot to say in this song other than a few hopeful suggestions to a struggling friend. Luckily, he doesn’t try to hide the simplicity of his song with a lot of instrumentation or extra verses. Some of my favorite songs, like Big Star’s “Thirteen” follow this concept. Lyle Lovett said that in songwriting, “having something to say is the hard part. If you get an idea for a song, then it pulls you along.” The Dexateens succeed by not letting a lot get in the way of a simple, good idea.

The Dexateens – Spark