Drive-by Truckers dropped a surprise album last week. It’s their second of 2020, and another example of how miserable times beget wonderful tunes.
How do the new songs compare to the Truckers’ canon? I don’t know yet. I digest music slower than most. But I’ll be listening to hear which of the new tracks join this list. (My money’s on “Sarah’s Flame” and “Watching the Orange Clouds.”)
Want to listen to these songs? I created a Spotify playlist for you.
photo source: https://www.al.com/life/2019/12/the-secrets-of-drive-by-truckers-trippy-album-covers.html
1. Where the Devil Don’t Stay (The Dirty South, 2004)
This song has everything I love about the Truckers. It’s rock and it’s country. It’s rooted in the past but it’s neither nostalgic or derivative. It has guitars like Nirvana, but lyrics like Gillian Welch. It makes me want to fight and it calms me down. It makes me glad to be alive despite the bleak portrait of life that it paints.
“Tell me why the ones who have so much make the ones who don't go mad
With the same skin stretched over their white bones and the same jug in their hand”
2. My Sweet Annette (Decoration Day, 2003)
Every Truckers song has a story, and few illustrate the frivolous cruelty of love and lust as vividly as a man who ghosts his wedding party to marry his bride’s best friend.
“Lord have mercy for what we done, Lord have mercy when to people get alone
Neither one of us had done anything like that you see
By the next sunset, I had eloped with Marilee,
My Sweet Annette was left standing at the alter.”
3. Decoration Day (Decoration Day, 2003)
A son who no longer wants any part of a feud that left his neighbors bloody and his father dead. The truth in the lyrics is more literal than I realized. Jason Isbell’s great uncle, Holland Hill, was acquitted of killing Dude Lawson on account of the man needed killin’. According to Isbell, this was a time and place (Alabama in the 80s) when the he needed killin’ defense held up in a court of law.
“Beat him real good, but don’t dare let him die
And if you see Holland Hill run”
4. Zip City (Southern Rock Opera, 2001)
Complaining about a fifteen-year-old who doesn’t put out has never sounded so profound.
“Keep your drawers on, girl, it ain't worth the fight
By the time you drop them I'll be gone
And you'll be right where they fall the rest of your life”
5. Ever South (American Band, 2016)
JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy packaged into a melodic five-and-a-half minutes.
“Ever Southern in my carriage, ever southern in my stance
In the Irish of my complexion and the Scottish in my dance
In the way I bang my head against my daily circumstance.”
6. Marry Me (Decoration Day, 2003)
The first time I heard the song, the guitar lick reminded me of the Eagles’ “Take it Easy,” a comparison that made the gut-punching opening line even more disorienting:
“Well, my daddy didn't pull out, but he never apologized”
7. Outfit (Decoration Day, 2003)
This is the spark that ignited a bonfire of treasures from one of history’s best songwriters.
“Don’t tell ‘em you’re bigger than Jesus, don’t give it away”
8. Three Great Alabama Icons / Wallace (Southern Rock Opera, 2001)
No one captures the duality of the southern thing like Patterson Hood. On this pair of songs, he paints Skynyrd, Bear Bryant, and especially George Wallace in tangled brush strokes that leap from the canvas and reveal a history more complicated than you’ll get from textbook learnin’.
“If it's true that he wasn't a racist and he just did all them things for the votes,
I guess hell's just a place for kiss-ass politicians who pander to assholes.”
9. One of These Days (Pizza Deliverance, 1999)
All of the truckers sing about their fathers, or a fictionalized version of them. Isbell’s songs are empathic (e.g., #6 “Outfit” and “Something More Than Free”). Hood’s songs are tragic (e.g., #10 “Daddy Learned to Fly” & #11 “Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife”). Cooley’s range from delicate (#15 “Little Pony and Great Big Horse”) to determined (#13 “Daddy’s Cup”) to defeated:
“If I had a dime for every time I heard my old man say ‘one of these days’
I wouldn’t be like my old man today.”
10. Daddy Learned to Fly (The Big To-Do, 2010)
We never find out whether it was an accident, a suicide, or irresponsible wanderlust. To the child who voices the song, all that matters is Daddy’s gone and he isn’t coming back.
“They tell me you can see me
So I'm trying not to cry
But sometimes I can't help it since Daddy learned to fly”
11. Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife (Brighter Than Creation’s Dark, 2008)
Similar outcome as “Daddy Learned to Fly,” but from the perspective of the deceased.
“Is there vengeance up in heaven?
Are those things left behind?
Maybe every day is Saturday morning
Two daughters and a beautiful wife”
12. 21st Century USA (The Unraveling, 2020)
A brutal, honest portrait of 21st Century USA inspired by a truck stop outside of Gillette, WY.
“Men working hard for not enough at best
Women working just as hard for less
They get together late at night at bars
And bang each other like crashing cars”
13. Daddy’s Cup (The Dirty South, 2004)
This one edges Springsteen’s “Racing in the Street” in the race for my favorite song about racing.
“Since then I've wrecked a bunch of cars and I've broke a bunch of bones
It's anybody's race out there, and I've learned to run my own.”
14. Guns of Umpqua (American Band, 2016)
Part 1 of the Truckers tribute to American gun culture. Part 2, “Thoughts and Prayers,” boils with righteous indignation. But Guns of Umpqua, sung from the perspective of a community college student moving chairs to barricade the door from a mass shooter, simmers with empathy and loss.
“We’re all standing in the shadows of our noblest intentions of something more
Than being shot in a classroom in Oregon”
15. Little Pony and Great Big Horse (The Fine Print, 2009)
The circle of life, from the eye of a horse.
“Little pony and great big horse went out in a great big trot
Great big horse laid down to rest little pony he did not”
16. Birthday Boy (The Big To-Do, 2010)
Most songs about strippers glorify the vocation. This one is more ambivalent.
“The pretty girls from the smallest towns
get remembered like storms and droughts
That old men talk about for years to come
I guess that's why they give us names
So a few old men can say they saw us rain when we were young”
17. Puttin’ People on the Moon (The Dirty South, 2004)
Just another voice left behind by politicians, preachers, venture capitalists, and astronauts.
“The preacher on the TV says it ain't too late for me
But I bet he drives a Cadillac and I'm broke with hungry mouths to feed”
18. 18 Wheels of Love (Live from Austin, 2009)
Patterson Hood’s wedding gift to his mother and father-in-law. The preamble, which tells their story, has grown with time: divorcing, recording TV on three VCRs (like Elvis, the king), botching trucker logs, marrying in Dollywood, surviving cancer.
“Mama ran off with a trucker…
They got married in Dollywood
By a Porter Waggoner lookalike”
19. When Walter Went Crazy (English Oceans, 2014)
There’s only so much a man can take…
“When Walter went crazy, she was sitting on the couch
Painting her toenails and drinking a Tab
He walked out of the bedroom with a cigarette in his mouth
And he poured gasoline in a circle all around the house”
20. What it Means (American Band, 2016)
Before this song, the Truckers’ politics lurked between the notes and were neither explicit nor overtly partisan. No more.
“We trust science just as long as it tells us what we want to hear”
Addendum: My favorite songs that y’all suggested…
21. Gravity’s Gone (A Blessing and a Curse, 2006)
22. Women Without Whiskey (Southern Rock Opera, 2001)
23. I’m Sorry Huston (Brighter than Creation’s Dark, 2008)
24. Use to be a Cop (Go Go Boots, 2011)
25. Ramon Casiano (American Band, 2016)
26. Ronnie and Neil (Southern Rock Opera, 2001)
27. A Ghost to Most (Brighter Than Creation’s Dark, 2008)
28. Never Gonna Change (The Dirty South, 2004)
29. Shit Shots Count (English Oceans, 2014)
30. World of Hurt (A Blessing and a Curse, 2006)