Patterson Hood, center, is an Alabama native defying stereotypes about Southern rock.
Patterson Hood is angry.
The generally avuncular frontman of Southern rock titans Drive-By Truckers is unfailingly polite, but it’s obvious there is something on the 52-year-old musician’s mind. For one, he’s concerned about President Donald Trump’s nomination of Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions to the position of U.S. attorney general. “I can tell you firsthand what a piece of shit he is,” says Hood, an Alabama native who now lives in Portland, Oregon. “He sucks. He sucked for Alabama. I grew up watching Southerners vote against their best interests. It’s like all the people in Middle America who went out and voted for Trump — do they think he gives a fuck about them? Do they think that billionaire on his gold-painted plane gives a fuck about some steelworker?”
It’s brash, but Hood’s worn his political opinions on his sleeve for a long time. So the audience for the Truckers’ show at the Majestic on Jan. 31 should expect an earful. Songs like “Ronnie and Neil” and “Puttin’ People on the Moon” are prime examples, but American Band — the band’s 11th studio album, released last year — ditches the band’s usual allegorical storytelling for an album that is very much of its time.
Recorded at the legendary Sound Emporium in Nashville, American Band is as stark as rock albums get, with songs that directly reference contentious topics like the 2015 mass shooting at a community college in Oregon (“Guns of Umpqua” ) or police officers killing unarmed black men (“What It Means” ).
“What It Means” may be the most important song of Hood’s career. As Hood tells the story, in 1995, Edward Wright, a 20-year-old factory worker with a cognitive disability, ran naked into the streets of Athens, Georgia, where Hood once lived. “His mother was worried for him, and called 911 to bring her son back. And he got shot seven times,” says Hood.
After police shootings in Ferguson, Missouri, and elsewhere, Hood says he needed to write about that incident to get it off his chest. “I just kind of felt a calling to write about it,” he says. “Hip-hop artists were writing about it and talking about it, but I didn’t really hear anyone who looked like us doing it.”
That’s true. There aren’t a lot of middle-aged, white, Southern men who tape the words “Black Lives Matter” to their amps, as Hood has done. But these are extraordinary times, says Hood. “It’s a shitty time for America, a shitty time for the world,” he says. “But we’re in a good place in the band. We’re able to channel our energy and our angst into something that hopefully can at least provide a little bit of comfort to somebody.”
