Episode 482 - Jason Isbell
Guest:Lock the gates!
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Really?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Pow!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:And it's also, eh, what the fuck?
Guest:What's wrong with me?
Guest:It's time for WTF!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:With Mark Maron.
Marc:Alright, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck, buddies?
Marc:What the fuck, nicks?
Marc:What the fucksters?
Marc:What the fuck of billies?
Marc:What the fuckleheads?
Marc:I'm trying some different phrasing.
Marc:That's what I'm doing right now.
Marc:It's new phrasing on the old intro.
Marc:How's it going?
Marc:Alright, that was an interesting experiment.
Marc:Welcome.
Marc:Welcome to the show.
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is WTF, the podcast.
Marc:I host it.
Marc:I've been hosting it since the beginning.
Marc:I'm not the replacement host.
Marc:I think that I'm probably a little different than the guy that originally started hosting, but the nuts and bolts of it are the same in terms of personality.
Marc:The things that make it tick are still making it tick.
Marc:You understand?
Marc:Some of them got a little less edge to them, and I think that's probably a good thing, but that edge is always there.
Marc:All it needs is a good conflict to sharpen it.
Marc:That's how I sharpen my edge against other people that I have problems with.
Marc:Maybe I'm becoming a spoon.
Marc:Maybe the knife thing is done.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Hey, today on the show, Jason Isbell.
Marc:whose uh most recent record southeastern is phenomenal and the fact of the matter is i knew nothing of him look i'm a drive-by trucker fan but not unlike many bands that i am fans of i liked a few records i listened to them there was a window where i was listening to them but for some reason i did not know the
Marc:Before I interviewed Jason, like within days that he was part of that band for a while and also on the records that some of the drive by trucker albums that I that I love the most.
Marc:And and but then again, I had not heard all of them.
Marc:Now, here's the deal.
Marc:I interviewed Jason Isbell, and then I interviewed Patterson Hood.
Marc:So what we're doing here, this is Wednesday, so obviously it's not the usual day that we dump a WTF into your head.
Marc:So Wednesday, today is going to be Jason Isbell Day, and Friday is going to be Patterson Hood Day.
Marc:So between the two of them,
Marc:There's an interesting through line, not just the drive by truckers, not just the Muscle Shoals region of Alabama, where they both come from.
Marc:But actually, Dave, Dave Hood, David Hood, Patterson Hood's dad, is sort of a through line through both of these episodes in sort of a unique way.
Marc:Now, here's what happened for me approaching the Jason Isbell interview.
Marc:So I'm going up to Minnesota to do this show wits.
Marc:is john mo show and on that show is me uh jason isbell and his wife who is a fiddle player amanda shires so it was me amanda shires jason isbell were the guests on this witch show now i'm going up there and all of a sudden people on twitter are like hey man you gotta guy interview jason i'm like i don't know jason and i go into a panic
Marc:Uh, when I have to interview musical guests, cause sometimes I don't know their catalog.
Marc:I may not know more than two records and I freak out and I got to stuff it all in my head.
Marc:So enough people said, you got to interview Isbell this, this new album, Ryan Kopelman actually was like, it's a masterpiece.
Marc:And I'm like, well, that's, that's some big word.
Marc:That's a big word there.
Marc:And so what I did is I downloaded all of Jason Isbell's solo records and I did a little research on his drive-by trucker stuff.
Marc:And I liked that stuff.
Marc:And I listened to it on the way to Minnesota.
Marc:I contacted him on Twitter.
Marc:He said he didn't, he's into it.
Marc:So we get there and I'll tell you, man,
Marc:There's something about show business sometimes that makes me proud and amazed and just blown away by how specifically unique our lives are.
Marc:Because I'm doing this show.
Marc:It's basically a variety show.
Marc:We're doing it at a theater.
Marc:This is also the night my phone got stolen at intermission.
Marc:I realized my phone got stolen.
Marc:I'd go out back, go back out on stage and not be a child about it.
Marc:But, you know, I watched Jason.
Marc:I watched Amanda.
Marc:I listened to his that album.
Marc:Southeastern is stunning.
Marc:You know, I'm not a big lyrics guy.
Marc:And, you know, so I've got to really hone in and focus because I'm more of a melody guy and a rhythm guy.
Marc:But I don't always listen to words.
Marc:But Isbell is one of these songwriters that just has a turn of phrase, has a sense of place, has a sense of character within the songs and a sense of poetry that is just just punches you right in the fucking heart.
Marc:And I was astounded by it.
Marc:So now I meet him and he's this young dude.
Marc:He looks like he's like 10 years younger than he is.
Marc:And he's been through some shit.
Marc:I mean, you can hear that in the songs.
Marc:And I know that he went through some shit with the drive-by truckers.
Marc:And he hit the wall with the stuff that we all hit the wall with.
Marc:His wife is lovely, very talented singer and fiddle player.
Marc:And there we are on stage in a variety show at the end of the show, doing a group version of the weight, the band song.
Marc:And it was one of those moments where you just backstage in a big theater with other performers who do different things than you.
Marc:And you're out on stage.
Marc:You're just talking to them like, what's up, man?
Marc:Hey, how you doing?
Marc:I'm OK.
Marc:That's a nice guitar.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Did you have a good flight in?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Boom.
Marc:Then you're out on stage and it's like there they are.
Marc:sort of serenading and entertaining you know a room of 1200 1500 people and it's just a guy you were just saying like you know uh you're going out for a cigarette to me there's a magic to it that you know that we become this thing on stage i don't i'm not even aware of it in myself so jason and i planned to do the podcast and i of course was racked with anger and panic about my phone and
Marc:and uh he had been up you know almost all night because he just come from a gig and flew in that day and uh you know we were looking he wanted to do the podcast after the show and you know i'm tired he's tired he's got to be up in three hours to catch a flight and yeah and we we agreed to meet my hotel room so it's 12 30 at night
Marc:And I'm back in my room, phone-less and freaking out, reaching out, connecting to people to alert them that I've lost part of my mind that was made by Apple.
Marc:And Jason comes down.
Marc:I told him to bring his guitar.
Marc:He'd never recorded a song in a hotel room environment.
Marc:You know, I've done interviews, obviously, you know, on the road.
Marc:But we're going to try to do a song because I wanted him to play because it's stunning.
Marc:So he shows up and he's like, man, I got to get up at five to catch a flight.
Marc:And I'm like, well, let's just do it.
Marc:Let's knock it out.
Marc:So I turn on the mics.
Marc:I hand him a mic.
Marc:I get on the mic and we talk about his life.
Marc:We talk about all the stuff that you're about to hear.
Marc:But what was mind blowing to me, there's no way to do this other than, you know, he's gonna play and I'm gonna hold one mic in his guitar and I'm gonna hold the other mic to his mouth.
Marc:So I'm standing there, you know, double fisted with the mics
Marc:And he's singing that song Elephant, which is a powerful fucking song.
Marc:And I'm just standing there holding these mics, watching my levels and just watching Jason lock in to this beautiful, dark, sweet song.
Marc:And I'm holding mics and I'm trying not to get choked up.
Marc:But I think the point that I'm making is that we were in a hotel room.
Marc:He was strung out from the road.
Marc:I was tired and aggravated.
Marc:We just had a nice long about an hour conversation.
Marc:And, you know, we're both sort of at the end of our ropes a little bit.
Marc:But the beautiful thing about a dude that's been on the road for half his life and been playing since he was a kid.
Marc:And I see this a lot when they come into this into the garage here.
Marc:Is that, you know, I play guitar, but I don't play professionally.
Marc:And I just knock out a few things.
Marc:And sometimes I hit it and sometimes I don't.
Marc:But a dude that is a seasoned vet.
Marc:of playing and singing.
Marc:That's his thing.
Marc:That's his craft.
Marc:That's his art.
Marc:That's who he is.
Marc:That's what makes him.
Marc:To sit there two feet away from a guy who plays music for a living and has no discomfort about singing alone on stage or alone with me in a hotel room holding mics in front of him and nailing it is astounding to me.
Marc:No second take.
Marc:No oops.
Marc:No, I didn't hit it.
Marc:No, this note's out of tune.
Marc:Can we go back?
Marc:I got a string problem.
Marc:Just nailed it.
Marc:It was overwhelming to me, the beauty of that type of professionalism and craft and showmanship.
Marc:Fucking stunning.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Let's go.
Marc:Let's go listen to me talking to Jason Isbell in a hotel room at 1230 at night.
Marc:And then you can listen to this beautiful song as well.
Marc:Enjoy.
Marc:Jason Isbell.
Guest:Is that how you say his last name?
Guest:Yeah, Isbell.
Guest:Isbell?
Guest:Isbell.
Guest:Isbell?
Guest:I think I pronounce it wrong, though.
Guest:Isbell?
Guest:Yeah, Isbell.
Guest:Do you know where that comes from?
Guest:Well, you know, originally I believe it was Spanish, but there's a family in Texas that pronounces it Isbell, and they will correct me.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:When I go to Texas, yeah.
Guest:There's a bunch of us in Alabama, but the Texas one, they say Isbell.
Marc:Are they relatives, or do they just come out to bother you with that?
Guest:No.
Guest:Well, they're distant.
Guest:They're so distant.
Guest:They're not really.
Guest:They just want to bother me with it, I think.
Marc:They see you're in town.
Marc:They're like, there's one of the renegades.
Marc:Let's go tell him he's pronouncing his name wrong.
Marc:One of the antis.
Marc:Where did you grow up, though, man?
Marc:I know, like, you know, I did a little research.
Marc:It's funny, though.
Marc:I'll tell you the truth.
Marc:So I knew I was coming out here and I knew we were both going to be on the same show.
Marc:And I, you know, I know, uh, and people are like, are you going to interview Jason?
Marc:Are you going to interview Jason?
Marc:I'm like, I'm not sure I know all his stuff.
Marc:I'm not, you know, like I, and then my friend Ryan, who's a huge fan of the drive by truck, he says, Oh, you drive by trucker guy.
Marc:And I'm like, well, I know their shit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then like, I had a, you know, I'm like, well, I better get up to speed on this.
Marc:And I, and I listened to the new record, Southeastern, Southeastern, which is genius.
Marc:And then I listened to the other two solos.
Marc:I'm like, all right, I got enough.
Marc:I got enough.
Marc:I, I,
Marc:I don't feel like I'm just going to go into this empty-headed or empty-handed.
Guest:Yeah, well, you could have.
Guest:That would have been fine, too.
Guest:It would have, but, you know, out of respect, my friend.
Guest:Yeah, well, thank you.
Guest:I appreciate that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I know a lot of the people that listen to me are big fans of you, so they're very excited about it.
Guest:Like, the crew and, you know, a bunch of people on Twitter, they were all like, man, you got to do the show.
Guest:You got to do it.
Marc:I know they're excited because they think that, like, all right, these guys, they've been through some shit.
Marc:They'll have some war stories.
Marc:They'll have stuff to talk about.
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:But I'm always fascinated with the South, and I don't talk to that many people from the South.
Marc:And I have a great love, an unashamed love for Leonard Skinner and the Allman Brothers and a lot of things that went on down there.
Marc:And I like going down there.
Marc:I spend time in Nashville, but I still can't really imagine.
Marc:I talked to Johnny Knoxville, and he grew up in the South.
Marc:But I'm sort of fascinated with it.
Marc:And you grew up in Alabama.
Marc:I did, yeah, North Alabama.
Marc:What does that mean, North Alabama?
Guest:It means it's a little bit more populated than South Alabama.
Guest:There's not really a major city in Alabama anymore.
Guest:Birmingham's shrunk a little bit, and there's not even what you would call a metropolis there.
Guest:Birmingham, Montgomery, or Huntsville, that's pretty much your biggest Tuscaloosa when college is in.
Guest:You know, like we had cows in the backyard and stuff.
Guest:It was that Alabama.
Guest:Your family had cows?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, my granddad, well, he had horses and sheep.
Guest:I remember getting trampled by sheep as a child.
Guest:That was a pretty interesting experience.
Guest:Was it interesting or horrible?
Guest:It was both, you know.
Guest:It was horribly interesting.
Guest:My favorite one, okay, we had chickens, ducks, geese.
Guest:When I was a kid, I was in charge of the fowl because they're kind of easy to keep up with.
Marc:Do you have siblings?
Guest:I have them, but they're half siblings and they're much younger than me.
Guest:So it was just me.
Guest:My parents would send me to stay with my grandparents while they worked.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:That was the daycare system.
Marc:And the grandparents were up the street?
Guest:Grandparents were right down the street.
Guest:They were right next to the school.
Guest:So I could walk there after I got out of school.
Guest:And they had a farm.
Guest:They had a farm, and so I took care of the fowl.
Guest:My granddad taught me how to kill a chicken by wringing its neck.
Guest:You grab it by the head, and you swirl it around in a circle, and the chicken's body comes off if you do it right, and it flops around, and then it's dead.
Guest:You can pluck it and boil it and eat it and all that stuff.
Marc:This is what you learned.
Guest:This is what I learned.
Guest:At what age?
Guest:At probably seven, six or seven years old.
Guest:But my grandfather was a prankster, and after I learned to do this with the chicken, one afternoon he said, okay, now go kill that goose the same way that you kill the chicken.
Guest:And I started in with the goose, and his neck got like 20 feet long.
Guest:It just kept stretching and kept stretching.
Guest:I looked up, and he's on the porch laughing his ass off at me.
Guest:I finally just went and got a hatchet and finished the poor sad goose off.
Guest:But that was very rural, very rural.
Marc:That is very rural because I can't, in my mind, I'm thinking, I can't get past the idea of killing the chicken.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But if you grow up like that, it's just something you do.
Guest:Yeah, it was.
Guest:My dad was one of those, if you're going to eat it, you need to at least kill it once.
Guest:Was he a hunter?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:um not really he he did it occasionally i went hunting with my dad but just to sit in the woods really that was it i like we never killed much of anything we just sit in the woods what'd your what'd your dad do he was house painter and he does now he does maintenance at a hospital down there uh-huh so he's a working class guy working class guy um did you grow up with trucks
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Trucks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All that kind of, you know, real, real, real redneck stuff, I guess, but not in the not in the red like they're open minded people.
Guest:You know, Dad was very curious.
Guest:He always prided himself and still does prides himself on being able to hold a conversation with any type of person, whether they be, you know, more intelligent, more educated than him or less or whatever.
Marc:Well, I found that, like, when I travel the South, people are very friendly.
Marc:I don't always trust it, because in my mind, something bad happens out here.
Guest:Sometimes it's not trustworthy, friendliness, sometimes.
Guest:But, you know, my family never really, like, we're not part of that kind of, like...
Guest:wealthy Southern I think I think a lot of the problems came from from the rich folks in the south you know oh yeah rednecks with too much money man it's a bad it's a bad situation bad combination it's a bad thing it really is money and power rednecks with money and power well that's rough yeah
Guest:That's bad.
Guest:It's rough.
Guest:I think I think a certain point, you know, if you have the money and you're still a redneck, then you can cause some real problems for everybody else in the country.
Marc:I imagine they still do.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I know they do.
Marc:It's a fact.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So you're going to school.
Marc:Your parents are working.
Marc:What did your mom do?
Guest:My mom, she hung wallpaper and stuff, did a little bit of the construction side that women did.
Guest:And then she went back to school.
Guest:She got her degree in interior design and started doing that kind of stuff.
Guest:So they both kind of worked in construction in one form or another.
Marc:And you were just hanging out at your grandpa's farm, learning how to kill chickens.
Guest:Learning how to kill chickens and play guitar.
Guest:See, he was a Pentecostal preacher, and he played music in church, and he had like seven or eight brothers, and most of them all played instruments, either professionally or recreationally.
Marc:So you grew up in the Pentecostal church?
Guest:And my dad was Pentecostal.
Guest:So I went to the Pentecostal church with him when I was little.
Guest:And then when my parents got a divorce, my mom's family was Church of Christ, which was like a very strict, almost Quaker kind of Southern thing.
Guest:She switched over to that?
Guest:No, that was her family.
Guest:So she started going to church with her family at that point.
Guest:And so I would kind of switch back and forth between one or the other.
Marc:What is a Pentecostal church like?
Marc:Because I've gotten into trouble with suggesting there are snakes involved every time I talk to them.
Guest:Sometimes, not in all Pentecostal churches, but most of your snake handlers are some form of holiness or Pentecostal.
Marc:And what is a Pentecostal exactly?
Marc:It's Baptist, right?
Guest:No, it's kind of an offshoot of Baptist.
Guest:They have essentially the same interpretation of the Bible as the Baptists do.
Guest:They have the thing where...
Guest:If you're baptized, then you're always saved.
Guest:You're going to go to heaven after that.
Guest:No matter what you do, because you've been baptized, technically you're still going to get in.
Marc:No matter what.
Marc:If you really believe it.
Marc:The last minute, if you ask to get in, he'll let you in.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So the Church of Christ, they don't play that at all.
Guest:You've got to repent.
Guest:Pretty publicly, right up until the end.
Guest:If you slip up and fuck somebody other than your wife 10 minutes before you die, you better hurry up and ask for forgiveness before you go.
Marc:You better hit your knees right at the point of climax.
Marc:Yeah, you got to do it as soon as possible.
Marc:Just hit your knees right at the side of the bed, say, I'm sorry, I got something I got to do.
Marc:Whoops.
Marc:I got a chest pain.
Yeah.
Marc:And this is a bad situation.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's one of those, you know, they would say all your prayers are either please or thank you.
Guest:You know, try to have more thank yous and fewer pleases.
Guest:Help me out, man.
Guest:I fucked up again.
Guest:I did it again.
Guest:But in the Baptist church, you know, you could do that.
Guest:Once saved, always saved, they would say.
Guest:But in the Church of Christ, they were very, very strict about things.
Guest:They didn't have musical instruments, nothing but human voices.
Marc:That was a rule.
Guest:Yeah, they thought it was a sin to have musical instruments in the church.
Marc:That's crazy.
Guest:Yeah, I think so.
Guest:I think it's crazy.
Marc:So you learned your grandfather got you a guitar?
Guest:He played guitar and then his son, my dad's brother, played.
Guest:And the two of them spent tons of time with me teaching me how to play.
Guest:And, you know, partially, I think, to keep me out of trouble, keep me from breaking stuff.
Marc:Did it?
Guest:And running off.
Guest:It did.
Guest:It really did for a long time until it got me in trouble in my 20s.
Marc:Right.
Guest:yeah but wait what was the what was the type of music that they were laying on you then i mean how old were you i started playing when i was about seven or eight years old maybe maybe even six i think i got a mandolin when i was about six because my hands were small my granddad gave me a mandolin he just had instruments around he had them all around yeah yeah he played the fiddle and the mandolin banjo and the guitar and what was his music
Guest:um gospel and bluegrass bluegrass yeah bluegrass gospel music and then he liked the funny stuff he had a really good sense of humor he liked grandpa jones he liked uh minnie pearl he liked the old opry singers um um uh what was the string bean you know string bean died because he buried his money in his backyard somebody knew it and dug him up and killed oh that was a tragedy you know that was is that real yeah that's how string bean it was his nephew i believe
Guest:um so string being the guy the comedic performer the comedic opera singer he buried all his money in the backyard buried his money in jars in the backyard yeah and uh and his his nephew it might have been his son but i think it was his nephew killed him because of that that's that's when a lot of the nashville country stars started going to the bank for the first time no kidding is that true a scare yeah
Guest:Yeah, I've heard it from more than one source.
Marc:Trying to pull that stuff out of the mattress.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:Out of the floorboards.
Guest:Time to put it somewhere out of the house.
Marc:We're going to have to trust the banks.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because that fascinates me.
Marc:I mean, bluegrass is fast and it's hard, isn't it?
Guest:It's painful.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:He would tell me I was getting the lazy arm because he played a big dreadnought acoustic guitar, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and i was not my full size yet so i would learn how to play rhythm he'd play what he called a lead instrument like banjo or fiddle and i'd have to play rhythm guitar and that that bluegrass right arm man you're hauling ass you know it's it's fast and it's and it is tiring i would imagine after a couple hours of it um uh you know i would start slowing down he'd give me hell yeah you're getting lazy arm pick it up getting lazy so it's like training
Guest:It was.
Guest:It was, really.
Guest:And I don't necessarily think he meant it that way, but I just loved it.
Guest:Could you keep up with him?
Guest:After a while, not at first.
Guest:But by the time I was 11 or 12, I could definitely keep up.
Marc:Now, like now, I mean, how old are you now?
Marc:35.
Marc:Could you handle yourself in a bluegrass outfit?
Guest:um i can handle myself yeah i could be unnoticeable uh-huh you know i'm not tony rice by any means right there are people who really really do that yeah i'm not one like a flat picker you mean yeah yeah yeah i could i could fake it enough to where you wouldn't notice me on stage right and and yeah no one would say like who's that kid right no nobody would say that positively or negatively you know
Marc:And when did you start to feel like, what was the first music that made an impression on you to sort of shift into a different gear?
Guest:Probably about the same time I started getting into what my mom liked and what my dad.
Guest:My dad liked arena rock, and he liked old country.
Guest:He liked...
Guest:Free.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Free's great.
Guest:He had that Fire and Water record.
Guest:That's a great record.
Guest:That was a huge record for me when I was a kid.
Guest:It's a great record.
Guest:It just blew my mind.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Zeppelin 4.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And then he had some like Hank Jr., like The Pressure's On.
Guest:He had Big City, Merle Haggard record.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and um you know so he he had all the skinnered stuff a matter of fact a couple weeks ago he gave me his copy of street survivors that he bought with the flames he bought it new in 77 before the plane went that's a good record that steve gaines could play steve could really play and he was on what two records right yeah he didn't he didn't stay very long was he on the live one and yeah because he got killed in the crash and they added him later but he could really play
Guest:Yeah, his sister was a backup singer in the band, and she talked him into letting him come in and play, and yeah, he was great.
Guest:He was fast and clean.
Marc:And what about some of the other Southern rockers, like Molly Hatchet, Blackfoot?
Guest:Yeah, you know, when I was learning to play, I went through a phase where I listened to a lot of that stuff, but none of it stuck like Skinner'd.
Guest:I don't consider the Allman Brothers to be Southern rock.
Guest:I don't think so.
Guest:I think they're in a different world.
Guest:I think they're on a different plane.
Guest:I think they fit in better in San Francisco than they did in Birmingham.
Marc:Well, they were sort of interesting because they were kind of a blues band that kind of opened it up.
Marc:They had a country vibe to it, but there was also those long instrumentals that were very... Kind of like the Grateful Dead in some ways.
Marc:A little bit.
Marc:But Dickie Betts, he was a real country player, I think.
Guest:Dickie played real country and Dwayne played real blues style.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So you think that... Who was the first Southern rock band then?
Guest:The first Southern rock band?
Marc:Kind of, yeah.
Marc:Like chronologically?
Marc:Well, I mean, who do you think is Southern rock?
Marc:I mean, Skinnerd, obviously.
Marc:Skinnerd was... Are there bands before Skinnerd?
Guest:That's a good question.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's a really good question.
Marc:Because that's when we all started to hear about it.
Guest:I think what we think of as Southern Rock, yeah, Skinner was definitely the best, and they were probably the earliest.
Guest:They were probably the biggest influence on everybody else.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:played drums on the first Skinner recordings.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then went on to front Blackfoot.
Guest:Right.
Guest:After that.
Guest:Did you know these guys?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, you did?
Guest:Yeah, we toured with them.
Guest:The drive-by truckers toured with them?
Guest:Yeah, we opened for them.
Guest:And we had just done that record, Southern Rock Opera.
Guest:Were you on that record?
Guest:No.
Guest:I started the tour right when they finished the record on the initial tour for that.
Guest:I started out with them.
Guest:And some of the first shows were opening for Skynyrd, making $300, $500 a night.
Marc:That must have been crazy, though, for you guys.
Guest:It was crazy.
Guest:And it was scary because the Skynyrd guys, they're not...
Guest:to be fucked with you know i mean even at this age like billy powell comes to a show yeah with his nose broken yeah right and these guys are in their 60s you know billy shows up with his nose broken and i overhear him talking to one of the roadies and he had drank the night before right and gary rossington had broken his nose with his fist because billy had had a drink and billy was saying man my fucking cat died man my wife called me my cat died i had to have a drink
Guest:Was he sober before that?
Guest:Yeah, he had been sober, and Gary was, I guess, keeping him sober, you know.
Marc:Because Gary's sober, right?
Guest:He was strung out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But they were very nice to us.
Guest:Gary came back.
Guest:You know, he said, I listened to that record y'all made.
Guest:I don't really, you know, it's not really my cup of tea, but I appreciate you guys making it.
Guest:We didn't know if he was going to hit us in the head with a damn two by four or what.
Marc:What do you think he meant by it's not his cup of tea?
Marc:Because it was a story and there was an idea behind that?
Marc:It was a punk rock record.
Guest:It's out of tune.
Guest:It's all over the place.
Guest:It's crazy, wild.
Guest:It's a punk rock.
Guest:It owes as much, I think, to The Clash or...
Guest:The Pixies, even, as it does to Skinner, it just happens to be about Skinner, and the instrumentation is the same.
Guest:And it was respectful.
Guest:It was respectful, yeah.
Guest:I mean, you know, Patterson and Cooley genuinely loved Skinner.
Guest:How could you not, if you grew up in that area playing guitar and singing?
Guest:I mean, they were...
Marc:They were great.
Marc:I don't know how you could not if you grew up in, you know, in America in general at that time.
Marc:I mean, I remember I'm 50.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So I remember when Street Survivors came out and I remember the one dude I knew turned me on to Skinner and I had all the Skinner records.
Marc:I mean, I don't have a lot of peers that necessarily love Skinner, but I've always I've always been been prone to to that kind of music.
Guest:They worked harder than any band in the world.
Marc:Well, that's what I hear.
Marc:I mean, that's a fascinating story about that kind of them playing in some, you know, un-air-conditioned rehearsal space.
Marc:Eight, ten hours a day.
Marc:Right.
Guest:When they should have been in the eighth grade and shit.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's a good story.
Guest:They had it worked out so well that when they went in, when they cut Freebird, they thought that they were trying again.
Guest:The solo, you know, it's layered again.
Guest:Well, they thought they were cutting it again.
Guest:You know, the engineer would say just...
Guest:I mean, the producer would say, all right, try that one again.
Guest:And he would keep each of them.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that's how closely they were playing those parts.
Guest:They had them rehearsed that closely, that precise.
Guest:So on the original Freebird, that's layered?
Guest:It's layered.
Guest:It's like three or four different guitars.
Guest:Oh, so it's not all playing at once.
Marc:Because they figured it out later.
Marc:They played it live.
Guest:They played it live at once, but they thought that they were trying again.
Guest:They thought they were taking another stab at it.
Guest:They were just doing it identically the same way.
Marc:Good licks, man.
Marc:Good licks.
Marc:Were you a lead guitar player early on?
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:yeah all right so let's go back to your grandpa so your dad had the free records gave you the skinnered record so at what and then you went to uh when did the when did you start playing in bands um let's see i was probably 14 15 so in high school in high school had a garage band and then had a country cover band that i played in like what'd you cover um we covered some like uh keith whitley and some garth brooks and some
Guest:alan jackson stuff that we could go make you know a hundred bucks for all of us together on a friday night at the dance hall and you guys did all right with it we did okay we actually we played at the opry once when i was about 16 years old my best friend at the time he played piano and we're still we're still close he's a he's a big time hit songwriter in nashville now but we were in our first band together when we were 15 or 16
Guest:and it was just a cover band it was just yeah country covers so you grew up all country pretty much yeah i mean i grew up listening to a whole lot of different kind of stuff like i really wanted to be in a rock band yeah my mom listened to john hyatt and john prine and bonnie rate yeah and you know all these lyrics and song songwriters that i really took to yeah and uh you know my dad kind of
Guest:like the arena rock side to things, you know?
Marc:Cause it's, it always interests me about people.
Marc:Cause I was talking to Ron white the other day about people that there are people in the world.
Marc:A lot of them in this country that only listen to country.
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:That's it.
Marc:But I think that most people, even from those regions of the U S they, they got a big rock and a lot of rock in them too.
Marc:And then countries almost become rock now.
Marc:But I think that some people, I imagine some people you knew just grew up with country in the house.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That's it.
Guest:Yeah, I think that's kind of the last time that happened, though, because the culture now, people who are a generation younger than me listen to as much 2 Chainz as they do, you know, Florida Georgia Line or whatever.
Guest:They listen to hip-hop and country.
Guest:So you go to a bar in Florence, Alabama on a Friday night.
Guest:You see a band play a set, and when they take a break, they put hip-hop on.
Guest:Everybody dances.
Guest:And then the same people slow dance to the country band for the next hour.
Marc:i think that seems that's that's heartening to me yeah yeah i like it too i've always liked that aspect of things like there's a there's everything in them you got country you got hip-hop and now the the whole sort of the rock thing has become sort of it's not the thing as much anymore yeah huh not down there and when you were in high school did you play other instruments yeah i played uh trumpet and french horn
Marc:What happened?
Marc:Well, French horn's not that practical an instrument.
Guest:No, it doesn't.
Guest:I mean, I can still play them.
Guest:I played them on record some.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It takes me a little time to get my chops back, but I can still do it.
Marc:And when did you start?
Marc:When did the boozing start?
Marc:Ooh, that started late for me.
Guest:I was probably...
Guest:I drank a little bit at 18, and then when I went to college, I was in a fraternity in college, and I didn't really binge drink that much.
Guest:I wasn't a big drinker in college.
Guest:I did pretty good, made pretty good grades, studied and stuff.
Marc:Did you finish?
Guest:No, I have a human fitness and wellness course left.
Marc:Do you ever have dreams about finishing?
Guest:No, I hadn't thought about it at all.
Marc:What were you studying?
Guest:English creative writing.
Marc:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So how'd you end up getting out of growing up in the South without getting into a lot of trouble?
Guest:That's a good question.
Guest:I mean, because I was close to my family, I didn't want to disappoint them.
Guest:They were nice to me.
Guest:They spoiled me with attention.
Guest:They didn't have material things past what I needed, but I didn't want to disappoint them.
Guest:I still don't want to disappoint my dad.
Guest:When I went through that long period of time when he's told me since then, he's like,
Guest:I didn't think you were going to live.
Guest:I didn't think you were going to make 30.
Guest:You know, I'd pretty much resign myself to the fact that I'm going to get a call one night and he's had a wreck or overdosed on something or something happened somewhere on the road.
Guest:You know, that sucked.
Guest:I didn't want to disappoint my old man.
Marc:It's a heartbreaking thing to hear that they were, you know, they don't know what to do.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because they, you know, they love you, but they got no control over you anymore.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And you don't necessarily listen to them about that kind of stuff anyways after a certain age.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So they're just worrying all the time.
Guest:That's it, yeah.
Guest:And my dad definitely spent a lot of time concerned about the way I was living.
Guest:He was proud of me, you know, for being a songwriter, going after my dream and actually making a living at it, you know.
Guest:But at the same time, I think he knew that I was killing myself pretty quickly.
Marc:Yeah, in your mind, like when you started playing in bands or when you started to get into that lifestyle, I mean, because I know myself, I mean, I sort of aspired to it.
Marc:There was part of me that thought like, well, this is what you do.
Marc:This is the freedom of this.
Guest:did you have that oh totally yeah we were hell razors man we had like other bands would take pictures which band um when i was in the truckers okay like the bands that would open for us and stuff i remember catching them taking pictures of the tables in our dressing room because there'd be like you know five or six or eight empty fifth whiskey bottles you know what was the whiskey jack daniels yeah that was what i drank when i was in high school and it was always jack had to be jack right yeah
Guest:where's that come from that's a skinner tennessee right but that's like a that's a specifically southern thing yeah not that it's not the greatest tasting liquor it's always i always thought so you did i always thought so that smell at first what did you drink it straight as you mix it with coke at first yeah you know we drank it out of the bottle on stage i remember the first band i saw do that was dash riprock from new orleans when i was in college i saw them play a show and they were
Guest:They were doing that.
Guest:And then when I joined the truckers, they were doing it.
Guest:I was like, that's the coolest thing I've ever seen.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:As long as you had something to prop up against or, you know, like by the end of the show, I mean, I was just blitzed.
Marc:Now, you grew up near Muscle Shoals.
Marc:So, I mean, those guys, and I know Patterson's dad was one of those guys.
Marc:Did you know Patterson or did you know when you were a kid?
Marc:Not really.
Marc:No, he had moved out of town.
Marc:They were a bit older than me.
Marc:The truckers are.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Patterson and Cooley both.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:but you used to see those musicians around i knew patterson's dad real well before i knew patterson he was still in town he still lived there he still played out friday saturday nights and in restaurants and you know they didn't really have they still don't really have much for music venues there's one or two down there that that gets out of town bands but
Guest:but the people who played on those records, you know, you could still catch them at, at, at a local bar and grill, you know, playing on a Friday night.
Guest:So I would just go and, and sit and listen to them at first.
Guest:And then finally kind of worked up the nerve to tell them that I played and they'd have me sit in with them and,
Guest:Got to be good friends with those guys.
Guest:How old were you?
Guest:I was 16, 17, 18 years old.
Guest:Isn't that kind of bizarre?
Guest:It is.
Guest:It's amazing.
Guest:It's ridiculously fortunate.
Guest:I didn't know at first that much about the music that was made in that area.
Guest:I don't think I was really ready for that kind of... About Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett?
Guest:Yeah, and Otis and Percy.
Guest:The real severe kind of... And that's the guys they played with?
Guest:yeah i interviewed booker t oh yeah yeah booker t's a sweet sweet man very sweet looks like he's about 30 years unbelievable yeah he's taking care of himself but those guys they weren't they weren't stacks they were session players right muscle shows guys muscle shows guys were put together initially by rick hall at fame and muscle shoals and they were just local musicians
Guest:They were very young.
Guest:And he put them together, and then he tried to sign them to a contract that they didn't necessarily agree with.
Guest:So they opened their own studio in Sheffield, Alabama, right down the street.
Guest:The towns are connected.
Guest:And they started getting people through Atlantic Records.
Guest:People like the Stones came in, Luther Dickinson.
Guest:I mean, Big Jim, Luther's dad, he brought the Stones in to record.
Guest:What did they record down there?
Guest:They do wild horses and brown sugar.
Guest:Oh, that one.
Guest:There's some footage on the— Sticky fingers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's some footage on the—what's the Altamont?
Guest:Gimme Shelter.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Right before they go to Altamont, they go to Muscle Shoals, Alabama.
Marc:And you were just going to restaurants and seeing these guys.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:They were out playing.
Marc:And when you sat in with them, what was Patterson's dad's name?
Marc:David.
Marc:And you knew him when you were a teenager.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:He calls me son still to this day.
Guest:That's a fascinating bit of coincidence.
Guest:It really is.
Guest:I got very lucky, Mark.
Guest:I got very lucky because they'd been through, you know, anything that I could possibly come up with.
Guest:Substances, you know, gear, women, you know, financial heartbreak, success.
Marc:And they would talk to you about it.
Guest:And they would tell me about it, you know, especially David.
Guest:David would all, he would answer any question that I had completely honestly.
Marc:Like what kind of questions did you remember talking to him about?
Guest:And I always had a good attitude.
Guest:And he was dead serious.
Guest:I'm like, yeah, right, dude.
Guest:You know some magical bass guitar shit that you're not telling.
Guest:But it turned out that he's right.
Guest:Gear works.
Guest:You show up on time.
Guest:You don't be a smartass.
Guest:You'll get those gigs.
Guest:Now, he does have a style of playing that he won't admit to, but it's really great.
Guest:But he's the most humble person.
Marc:What kind of style would you call it?
Guest:He plays R&B music in a real bouncy way, like a certain way that he doesn't improvise much, but he has a way of playing a little bit in front of the drummer, but a little bit behind the beat, kind of between the exact beat and the kick drum.
Guest:He's not always right on the kick drum.
Guest:I don't know, there's something about it that just lays in really nice.
Guest:And it's probably something he just developed naturally.
Guest:Yeah, he's probably not aware of it.
Marc:It's just that that's what he does.
Guest:From listening to Duck Don and people like that, I imagine.
Marc:Yeah, I can't really always identify because I'm not really a musician in that way.
Marc:I can tell when someone's ahead of the beat and I can tell when someone's behind it a little bit.
Guest:i mean i i don't i can't like the the nuance of what you're talking about is is that pockets that's a hard thing to find some days i can't find it for shit you know and you're conscious of that yeah yeah um yeah that that's where you know what they call soul music which i call it r&b because people who sang it usually call it r&b so soul music is kind of a white people term for it but um
Guest:The R&B from that area, the stuff that really moved you, the reason Booker T and the MGs sounded that cool was because they found that pocket, that space around where the actual beat was without slowing the speed of the music down, without slowing the tempo down.
Marc:I get it, I get it.
Marc:But it sort of propels, it feels like the bass sometimes is pushing the drum.
Guest:Yeah, a little bit, a little bit.
Guest:They're not exactly on the same place.
Marc:Right, right.
Guest:Now, if you hear a pop record, your kick drum and your bass guitar are one and the same.
Guest:I mean, they line them up digitally.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:Digitally now.
Marc:There's a little more of a, it almost comes from a swing.
Guest:yeah there you go yeah you got to be able to to move it like that there's a groove to it it's a groove yeah it's it's it's not it's not a it's it's not a knob it's a fader you know it's something you kind of slide into because i think on your last record you did a ballad didn't you i mean you've done a little bit of soul structure yeah yeah i have because is and that sits with you because you sort of grew up with that do you think yeah i love that kind of music so i tried to recreate it in the past um
Guest:But I just don't know if I'm really cut out for it.
Guest:I mean, I don't have remarkable pipes.
Guest:I'm not a bad singer, but I don't have, you know, I'm not going to sing like Otis Redding.
Guest:Well, no, but you're not supposed to.
Guest:No, of course, for a lot of reasons.
Guest:But, you know, I just have a hard time trying to emulate something without being able to move it forward.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, yeah, there was a structure to it.
Marc:I think that, you know, to deliver that kind of ballad with that kind of emotion, you kind of have to look at the delivery system.
Marc:And, you know, that one works.
Marc:I mean, the Stones have used it.
Marc:A lot of people have used it.
Marc:You know, you just got to make it one of your own.
Marc:It's a solid structure.
Guest:Yeah, you just got to try it and then follow your mistakes.
Marc:But it seems to me in your solo career that, you know, you went through, like when I was listening to it, and it's all pretty fresh in my head, that it seemed like earlier on when you first started with your band, that there was like almost a, you seemed to got more confident.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And stripped it down a little more.
Marc:It seemed like there was a lot of music and a lot of production.
Marc:And by this album, I mean, you're in your own thing.
Marc:The songs are on their own.
Marc:You don't have a lot of, there's not a lot of, it doesn't feel like there's a lot of production and a lot of noise going on.
Marc:Is that intentional?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I think some of that in the past was probably just insecurities about my own voice and my own, you know, literally my voice and also my voices and my style, my technique, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I, I was, I was a little bit afraid to let people hear it.
Guest:Like I had to, you know, I'd go in the studio and, and when we would mix the vocal would be right where I liked it.
Guest:And then I would say, okay, now turn it up, you know, bump it up a number.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm not going to listen to it that way, but I know that's what I need to be doing because if it's left up to me, I'll bury it, you know, just because it just, it's still sometimes it creates on my nerves to hear my voice.
Marc:So when you were talking to Dave hood, when you were a kid, he didn't mention his kids.
Guest:He did, you know, but not a whole lot.
Guest:I think they were, you know, they kind of went back and forth with getting along, because Patterson was pretty rebellious.
Guest:He moved out of town, moved to Athens, Georgia, and played in some gutter punk kind of, you know, hillbilly punk rock bands, and
Marc:So his rebellion against his R&B dad and his country roots was to play fuck you music.
Guest:Yeah, exactly, fuck you music.
Guest:And his dad, David, called one of his blanket terms for those kind of left of the dial college bands was the Chocolate Vomits.
Guest:In any band, he'd be like, oh, you're listening to the Chocolate Vomits.
Guest:Well, then years later, after Patterson and David had gotten really, really close again, which they still are, David played bass on a Black Francis soul record that he made.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, the Frank Black soul record.
Guest:And Patterson called him and said, Dad, you do realize you're a chocolate vomit now, don't you?
Guest:David had no idea.
Guest:He was like, that's what I was making fun of.
Guest:I didn't know.
Yeah.
Marc:That's hilarious.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But he sort of took you on as a surrogate son in a way.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Did you spend time at their house or you just saw him out?
Guest:Yeah, I did.
Guest:They had parties and stuff.
Guest:There was this one place in particular where...
Guest:like a lot of people congregated that were musicians and, uh, Scott Boyer and Dick Cooper were the two older fellows who rented the house.
Guest:And Dick was, he managed bands, worked in the, in the music scene.
Guest:He'd worked with Skinner and some back in the day.
Guest:And, uh,
Guest:Scott played in Greg Allman's band, had a band called Cowboy that was on Capricorn and Macon in the 70s.
Guest:Greg Allman's a great singer.
Guest:Great singer.
Guest:Really great singer.
Guest:And wrote to his strengths really, really well.
Guest:He wrote beautiful songs that are very simple, you know.
Marc:What's your favorite Allman Brothers song?
Guest:i really like uh uh ain't wasting time no more i like their version of that i think they did a really cool thing on it i like whipping posts and yeah yeah i like it when they get way out there but i think ain't wasting time no more really yeah definitely they had a groove man yeah they did so there's this place in these parties and you know everywhere they would all hang out
Guest:they would come and they would play and you know for a while there they were having a party like every other weekend and it would be like pete carr who was a session guitar player at muscle shoals you know played on down on main street oh yeah that's pete he'd be out there playing and uh delbert mcclinton would come and bonnie bramlett um you know some people who were
Guest:Big deal.
Marc:It was just like barbecues or what?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So like David would bring a bunch of a bunch of barbecue he would get from this place out in the out in the boonies and they would all come set up their stuff and play.
Guest:And I was just living there sleeping on the couch at the time.
Guest:Where?
Guest:At that.
Guest:scott and dick's house that's how i met patterson actually because i was there hanging out with his dad pretty much and all his friends and that's where you're just sleeping on their couch sleeping on their couch how old do you now um probably 20 21 like so you're out of the house and yeah and summers when i'm not in college in memphis and then as soon as i drop out of school i come and i'm staying in that place and i met patterson we started playing music together and
Marc:they played a house concert at that house that same house the drive-by truckers yeah so they were together already they were together from like 97 they've been together since i was about 18 i guess wow so you were this kid that was kind of hanging around his dad's friends like this little upstart guitar player and by that point were you sitting in with these guys all the time
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Did you play on records?
Guest:No, I didn't do any sessions or anything.
Marc:Were you writing songs?
Guest:I was writing songs.
Guest:I wasn't letting anybody hear them yet, but I was writing them.
Guest:I still wasn't happy enough with them to let anybody hear them.
Marc:In what way?
Marc:What do you think was wrong with them?
Guest:Well, I made some demos and turned them into the people at Fame, and they signed me to a publishing deal, so that was the first.
Marc:So they had confidence in you as a songwriter.
Guest:Yeah, and that gave me some confidence.
Guest:I think they were a couple hundred bucks a week, enough for me to live on at 20 years old.
Marc:And did you churn out anything that got recorded?
Marc:No.
Marc:No.
Marc:never never did really it's a tough racket man because i know in nashville it's an amazing place because unlike any other place where people will just go and they will make demos and they'll write songs all day long just hoping it's an office job yeah and it's like the lottery sometimes too you know it is i mean the first time i was down there i mean there was a guy a taxi driver gave me his cassette tape yeah
Marc:And it's still like that?
Guest:Yeah, it's still like that.
Guest:And I appreciate that side of things because the talent and the finances sort of trickles down to what we do.
Guest:There's a lot of studios that...
Guest:that people who make our kind of music go record in and the engineer worked on huge hit records and then got tired of the bullshit of it and opened his own little studio and it's you know we benefit from that i have to look at it as a different job because you know that music is just intolerable to me the pop country top 40 stuff just it offends my soul
Marc:It's interesting, though, how alt-country or what they call progressive country or whatever it is is closer to what country used to be than country is now.
Guest:And, I mean, there are exceptions to the rule.
Guest:Like sometimes a song will come out and it's Miranda Lambert or somebody.
Guest:I think that's a really good song.
Guest:And I think Kacey Musgraves now is pushing herself into that world, which is good because she's a good songwriter and singer.
Marc:But do you find that Nashville, the old guard still looks down on what you're doing or what the drive-by truckers do?
Guest:I just don't think they pay any attention to it at all.
Guest:Because there's no money in it in their eyes.
Guest:There's no money in it for them, no.
Guest:But we're looking at them and taking what's trickling off the leaves.
Guest:We're picking up the apples off the ground and making something out of them.
Marc:Were you a Steve Earle guy?
Guest:Yeah, I love Steve's songwriting very much.
Marc:Were you a fan of his early stuff?
Guest:yeah uh-huh are you guys friends yeah yeah we are he's an interesting guy he is professor steve yeah right he's yeah he's got some opinions on some stuff um but he can back them up he's got he's got something to say about everything he really does you know his son and i were really good friends for a long time we're not talking now but we were all right what happened what towns
Guest:uh yeah yeah justin justin towns earl yeah we were good friends he he got mad man we were uh um he he had a split up with a girl and we continued to hang out with her and hired her to work for us at one point because she was a roadie the drive-bys were no this was real recent this was in the last few months and uh
Guest:I said, man, he's yelling, you're not a loyal friend.
Guest:I'm like, dude, we're not going to make you hang out with him.
Guest:We're not over here talking about how shitty a person you are.
Guest:We're just all grown people.
Guest:He just got really mad about it, got offended.
Guest:I'd be fine with it if he called me up and wanted to hang out.
Guest:I wouldn't mind, but it was just childish.
Guest:I'm not going to apologize.
Marc:Well, come on, this is country music, man.
Marc:You know how it goes with the girls?
Marc:Yeah, but... You write about it.
Marc:You write about it, yeah.
Marc:You write about it?
Marc:You write about it.
Marc:Like that song Codeine, that's a heartbreaking song.
Marc:But you wouldn't see Willie and Waylon getting pissed off about who was hanging out with their ex.
Marc:I think that's true.
Marc:I think that after a certain point, there is a brotherhood.
Marc:I'm not saying it's necessarily a healthy thing.
Marc:I don't know that the women fare that well in that system.
Guest:I don't know if it's misogynist.
Guest:I don't try to handle it that way.
Guest:It's not like we pass women around between us or anything.
Guest:It happens.
Guest:Well, I mean, maybe we have.
Marc:Maybe we haven't.
Guest:A few months here and there.
Marc:Neither here nor there.
Guest:Not this particular one.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:No, I get what you're saying.
Guest:It just kind of made me sad that he got all that upset about it.
Guest:well he was pissed off that you still you didn't fire yeah yeah he was pissed off that we that we took her out on the road and that we that we continued to hang out with her i was like man that's your business you know yeah but we'll probably be friends again yeah he'll get over it he'll get over it yeah you like his songs i do yeah i think he's a talented guy i played on one of his records uh-huh and my wife played on a couple of them and yeah i think he's good and what there's a mother uh uh
Guest:uh country scions around uh the jennings kid shooter yeah shooter's a buddy of mine yeah yeah i like shooter i like his attitude he's definitely uh unafraid to speak his mind and and make some real weird country music that i don't listen to a lot of it he makes some real cool stuff that's very i would say experimental for country what about hank three
Guest:Hank 3 I don't know very well.
Guest:I know his sister Holly.
Guest:She's open for us, and she's really talented, really good.
Guest:I've seen Sheldon play some shows.
Guest:I've liked the country shows he did, and I don't necessarily think he's qualified for metal music, but that's my own personal taste.
Guest:A lot of people like to see Sheldon play metal.
Guest:Do you like metal?
Guest:I do like metal, but I have my own personal taste in metal.
Guest:Who are your metal guys?
Guest:I like Mastodon.
Guest:I think Mastodon's a really good metal band.
Guest:You know, when I was touring with Ryan Adams, I wound up listening to a lot of Norwegian black metal.
Guest:Oh, yeah, the real fast stuff?
Guest:Where they were eating each other in real life.
Guest:Ryan's very particular about his metal.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Ryan Adams doesn't listen to country music or melodic music much at all.
Guest:It's always the deathiest death metal.
Guest:Everything else is false metal to you.
Marc:It plays to something in your heart sometimes.
Marc:I mean, I just started listening to metal for the first time legitimately as a 50-year-old.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it's soothing somehow.
Guest:It does.
Guest:You know what I told Amanda, my wife, when she was driving in really shitty traffic to put on the hardest shit she could find.
Guest:And she got the last Mastodon record, and that got her through driving through Manhattan, and she really calmed her nerves down.
Guest:It's amazing how that works.
Yeah.
Marc:it is it is all right so you meet patterson when you're hanging out at his dad's friend's house you're sweeping on the couch there and you guys finally sort of you know talk to each other and yeah play some shows together i'm a guitar player and and was that was that when you joined the drive-by truckers or before just a few months after that i met patterson
Guest:like almost a year before i joined the band and then they played that house concert and their guitar player at the time didn't uh come to the house concert for one reason or another and uh and i got up and finished the set and wound up staying with them were you familiar with all their stuff
Guest:Not all of it.
Guest:I knew some of it.
Guest:I'd seen him play a few shows before.
Marc:Did it jive with you?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, it did.
Guest:Yeah, it wasn't what I was used to playing, but I liked it a lot.
Marc:What were you primarily playing at that time?
Marc:Just sitting in with the country and R&B guys?
Guest:Yeah, and R&B guys and straight ahead rock, you know, what I was listening to.
Guest:I mean, Nirvana.
Guest:Nirvana was such a big thing.
Marc:Did you have long hair?
Guest:I had long hair.
Guest:Yeah, it was on my shoulders.
Guest:so you're you know you're a guitar player i was that guitar player guy yeah yeah um so yeah some some some power chords and some country music and stuff and then i don't know the way they did it like i'd never gotten into that kind of independent music as much before so the time i spent with them really opened up my eyes to a lot of pixies and replacements and neutral milk hotel and you know vick chestnut and all these people that i never would have heard of otherwise just is he still around no he killed himself oh
Guest:god that's right yeah he tried about seven or eight times and finally got it those some of those records are just so heartbreaking they really are my god did that influence your songwriting at all yeah i think so i think knowing vic a little bit and and really getting into his his lyrics uh
Guest:You know, he had that ability to be hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time, much like Todd Snyder has, I think.
Marc:I interviewed Todd.
Marc:He's a good cat, man.
Guest:Todd's a good one.
Guest:He married my wife and I, actually.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah, he performed a ceremony.
Marc:Do you guys hang out a lot?
Marc:Yeah, quite a bit.
Marc:Yeah, he's a good songwriter.
Guest:He's really, really good.
Marc:So you started with the Truckers, and you had your own mindset about your own songs, I imagine.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So how was the process?
Marc:Because I know that the, what did you do, three records with them?
Marc:Three records and... What was it, Decoration Day, the Dirty South?
Guest:Dirty South and Blessing and a Curse.
Marc:I have the Decoration Day and the Dirty South.
Marc:Now, it seems to me that you had an influence on the sound of the band.
Guest:I think so.
Guest:I think I might have tightened it up a little bit, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:yeah i i think i think i think so i think we made some real good records there um but they were really open to my songs and and to the way i approach things you know and for those for especially for decoration day in the dirty south that worked that worked fantastically yeah you know all right so you're with them and this is this is your first time in a legitimate band an original band and you know you started living the life immediately
Guest:Yeah, I did.
Guest:I mean, it was blowing up for them right then, you know.
Guest:The rock opera got, like, they sold about 20,000 of them out of the back of the van, and then they got picked up by Lost Highway, which was a Universal Records label.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And, you know, wound up selling 100, 150,000 of them maybe by the end of it.
Guest:And that's big.
Guest:That was big for that size, you know, independent band.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Guest:So we had, you know, we're playing for 1,000 people a night usually.
Uh-huh.
Marc:and yeah it was great i was making money and you know there was drugs and alcohol and all that kind of stuff and was this the first time you realized just your capacity for that lifestyle oh yeah yeah i'd never i never really tested it before uh-huh and do you have alcoholism in your family no no i don't get you're special i'm special i'm lucky lucky that way um
Marc:So when did it become a problem?
Marc:Because you made it through three records.
Guest:When exactly did it become a problem, Mark?
Guest:That's the question.
Guest:Somewhere along the way.
Guest:The day it became a problem, I can't quite pinpoint, but one day I just looked up and went, holy shit, I don't remember any of that.
Guest:Yeah, there are a lot of situations, a lot of those just terrible nights where you do things that you feel horribly shameful about.
Guest:What, like blacking out?
Marc:Yeah, blacking out.
Guest:Waking up with people?
Guest:Yeah, waking up with people or waking up with blood everywhere and somebody screaming you and slapping you and thinking you're dead or...
Marc:You had some of those, huh?
Guest:Yeah, I had some of those.
Guest:Some of those nights of like doing coke after I swore I wouldn't do any more coke, you know.
Marc:The worst.
Marc:Yeah, that kind of shit.
Marc:Being up on coke at like four or five in the morning.
Marc:That is the worst feeling I've ever had.
Marc:It's so lonely and so fucking pathetic.
Guest:Soul is just wrung out like a towel, like a wet towel.
Guest:Coke's a bad one.
Guest:yeah so now the guys i guess like i don't know what went down uh you know how did it because i mean you were partying you obviously out partied the rest of them i think so i mean at the time it didn't seem like that at the time my argument was well we're all out how are you going to point the finger at me when you're doing this but yeah i was being an asshole i was being an asshole but i think i was being an because i didn't really want to be in that environment anymore for one reason
Guest:And for another thing, because I was just, you know, really out of my mind most of the time.
Guest:And what ultimately happened?
Guest:Well, let's see.
Guest:They called and said, you know, you need to take some time off, try to get your shit straightened out.
Guest:And, you know, I said, well, I don't want you touring as this band if I'm not with you.
Guest:And I said, all right, well, then, you know, you're not with us.
Guest:Goodbye, you know.
Guest:so your card was that like you know you can't tour as a drive-by truckers without me no i felt like at that point yeah i felt like at that point that that uh that that just wouldn't be right i mean we didn't have any kind of legal trouble after right right right but you know i thought i had a pretty big influence on the way the band sounded at that point yeah definitely um
Guest:But, I mean, it was Patterson's band.
Guest:He came up with the damn name in the first place, so it wasn't mine to say.
Guest:You know, they've had 20 people in that damn band, you know, close to it.
Guest:So that wasn't my place to say.
Marc:And so you drew a line, and they said, see you later.
Guest:And they stepped across the line, yeah, and that was it.
Guest:And were you married to the... I was married to the bass player up until about eight months before that.
Marc:And so you had enough of you?
Guest:Yeah, we got a divorce.
Guest:Because of the booze.
Guest:Well, we shouldn't have been married in the first place.
Guest:I think that was part of what made the booze get worse, and then the booze made the relationship get worse.
Guest:We should have just been friends the whole time.
Guest:We were really young when we got married.
Guest:I was like 22, I think.
Guest:She was 23.
Guest:You got kids?
Guest:No kids.
Uh-huh.
Guest:but you know we're friends now and uh that took that took a minute so okay so you're you get kicked out of your band you're fucked up yeah so what was the what was the divine providence that led you to get straight oh man it was another five years after that i'm fucking what were you doing i just started my own band and kept drinking and and kept making made all the records up until southeastern
Marc:Fucked up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I'm 35 now, you know, so I didn't get clean until two years ago.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they told me I didn't have any liver damage.
Guest:I don't know how that happened.
Guest:Well, you're young.
Guest:I guess, man, but I really would have thought that...
Marc:i mean i don't i mean don't hang on that too long yeah because that's one of those things that will take you back out so i got fucking oh of course i know what you mean yeah i'm fine i can go back no but that was doc said i'm okay i didn't quit because of my damn liver i quit because i was intolerable yeah yeah and because i was in pain uh-huh and now the this album then southeastern is really a sober album
Guest:Yeah, I wrote it sober with the exception of one, maybe two songs.
Guest:I mean, I wrote them sober, but not sober as, you know, I'd get up right in the morning before I got drunk in those days.
Guest:But I think probably 10 songs on this album.
Marc:And it's getting great response.
Guest:Been the best thing that I've ever done.
Marc:Well, it's beautiful.
Marc:It's very heartfelt.
Marc:And it's surprising that, you know, because sometimes when you get sober, you're so raw.
Marc:And you got all these new feelings.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you're a little crazy.
Marc:But somehow or another, you were able to steer that into the music.
Marc:I just think that's the best time.
Marc:It is, but it takes some balls.
Marc:I had something to talk about.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It did.
Guest:I had to write things that scared the shit out of me.
Marc:Now, how do you know when you're writing a song what to take out and what to leave in?
Marc:I mean, what's that process, man?
Marc:I just edit based on the turn of the phrase.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Based on like aesthetic concerns rather than personal concerns.
Guest:I've always tried to make it a point to not edit things to protect myself.
Guest:You know, I'll edit to make a phrase sound better, to make a melody work cleaner, to make something more specifically what I meant to say.
Guest:But I won't take something out because it scares me to put it in.
Guest:I think that's bullshit.
Guest:That's lying to people.
Marc:I think that's a good policy.
Guest:It's helped.
Guest:I mean, you build an audience that way that they're very similar to me.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:If you're honest and you're vulnerable, then like-minded people find you.
Guest:Yeah, and it might take them a little bit longer.
Guest:You're not going to blow up overnight doing that.
Guest:You don't got to tell me.
Guest:You know what I'm saying, though?
Guest:The people who appreciate the work that you do, you could say anything you wanted to say now.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And you're exactly right.
Marc:And even if it's not a million people, they're your people and they get you and you know that there's transparency there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, you're not lying.
Marc:You're not a fraud.
Marc:You're not getting away with something.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That they're connecting with exactly what you do.
Marc:Now, how much did Amanda play in the sobriety business?
Yeah.
Guest:it's a big deal you know because i was very much very much in love with her and for a long time for a long time but yeah you knew her a long time we were friends we never you know but did you always feel the love yeah i was always in love with her first time i saw her you know and that was 10 years before you got married yeah
Marc:That's an amazing bit of business.
Marc:Longing.
Guest:It was.
Guest:It really was.
Marc:Was she with somebody else and you were with somebody else?
Guest:She was and I was, yeah.
Marc:I know that situation.
Guest:So nothing happened.
Guest:We were friends.
Guest:We were, hey, how you doing?
Guest:Polite to each other.
Guest:And we had conversations that were the kind that friends have.
Guest:And then at some point it just all sort of...
Guest:did she draw a line with you though it's like if we're gonna do this you gotta you know clean up oh yeah yeah she wasn't gonna put up with that shit um there's no way and i told her you know like i would get really drunk and this only happened a couple times with her so i would say uh you know i gotta stop it's been too long i gotta go to rehab i gotta get clean i can't do it by myself
Guest:And she said, all right, next time you say that, you're in there.
Guest:You're going.
Guest:Because she didn't have a whole awful lot of experience with being the adult in that kind of situation before.
Guest:So she said, next time you say that to me, I'm going to hold you to it.
Guest:So sure enough, a week or two weeks went by, and I got just a little bit too fucked up.
Guest:And I said, I need to stop.
Guest:I really do.
Guest:And she got on the phone, and she called me.
Guest:my manager and my mom and you know three or four of my closest friends and said okay he's told me that he's checking himself in and i want y'all to know this because he he don't want to let y'all down if y'all know this he'll go you know which to me was a difficult thing for her to do you know some of these people she didn't know nearly as well as i did you know unlike ryan adams was one of them she called ryan and told him that and
Guest:That's not an easy thing, you know, to make that call in the middle of the night.
Marc:But they must have all known it was right.
Guest:They knew it was right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They knew me, so they knew it was time.
Guest:And so I went in.
Guest:How long?
Guest:Two weeks.
Guest:14 days.
Marc:How bad was the withdrawal?
Marc:How fucked up?
Marc:I mean, did you feel it or was it more of a...
Guest:Yeah, I felt it.
Guest:I did.
Guest:Not for very long.
Guest:I know alcohol withdrawals can be hell on some people, but they kept me monitored.
Guest:I went into the hospital first and detoxed, and then I went in and detoxed again at rehab, and they kept me on Valium for a few days.
Marc:to keep me from freaking out and snapping anybody's head off i think the value of such an insurance concern for rehab facilities well there's also a fear depending on how bad you're hooked on it that you can you could actually die that's what i hear so then you got clean and you did the best record you'd ever done so that's got to be incentive to stay clean you got the girl got engaged got married
Guest:She said yes, it was great.
Guest:Yeah, parents were ecstatic.
Guest:Friends were ecstatic.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:The world was still there.
Marc:He seemed good.
Guest:Large chunks of it still suck so much ass.
Guest:You know this.
Guest:It's not like homeless people are going to get off the sidewalk and go home because you quit fucking snorting coke.
Guest:But I can put it where it needs to go now, I think.
Marc:The creative energy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And your anger and your feelings and your sadness.
Guest:Just honesty.
Guest:That's it for me.
Guest:Like, if I'm upset about something, now I think, why am I upset?
Guest:Is there shit I can do about it?
Guest:You know, that serenity prayer stuff is a big deal, man.
Marc:It's a real thing.
Guest:That's the root.
Guest:That's like the golden rule in religion.
Marc:It's a great equation.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, it really is.
Guest:I mean, if you can't do something about it, you really have to learn, you know, this is something I cannot control.
Guest:And I can't get worked up over it because it'll kill me.
Marc:That is the most important thing.
Guest:That was number one for me.
Marc:Yeah, that's solid.
Marc:I know on the record that you speak a lot of your own experience, but there are tunes on there that seem like you have a certain sensitivity that things strike you in life or people's situations strike you in life and you kind of put yourself into it.
Guest:into into their life do you is that something yeah i do that i mean i remember hearing uh angel from montgomery john prine song when i was a kid right first line of that he says i'm an old woman yeah and i remember thinking no you're that's not an old woman and then it clicked like the light bulb went on like oh i can do that
Guest:I don't have to be Jason in every song that I write.
Guest:I can be whoever I want.
Guest:When that happened, you know, because people don't go up to Arnold Schwarzenegger and say, you know, you're the Terminator in real life.
Guest:But if you're a songwriter, very often they'll assume that everything you write in the first person is about you.
Marc:Yeah, I used to think that until I interviewed Nick Lowe.
Guest:And he's like, that's not me.
Marc:Yeah, he's so good.
Marc:Yeah, he's a nice guy.
Marc:A lot of his characters are assholes.
Marc:He wrote The Beast and Me.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And he sang it in my garage.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Marc:Because it's the greatest song in the world.
Marc:And I'm thinking, you've been through some shit.
Marc:He's like, no, he's a songwriter.
Guest:That's not me.
Guest:I made that up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I love that guy, man.
Guest:He's a sweet guy.
Guest:He's so sweet and he's so good.
Guest:so you're just going to keep running yourself ragged on this album yeah now are you gonna is there any plan to to play with those fellas again or no with the truckers yeah no i don't think so yeah i don't think it makes sense now i mean they're doing good music um they just made a record that it comes out real soon in the next few weeks and i've heard it and i think it's great yeah i hope i'll get to talk to him yeah he's sort of a fan of the show yeah yeah i'm sure he does like the show he loves that kind of stuff
Guest:yeah and but you guys are friends we're friends yeah we we talk uh uh pretty frequently and you're friends with his old man still oh yeah yeah david still still calls me son and your parents are they're good they're good yeah it's probably they're proud of me it's amazing they're sleeping a little better now a little bit i don't see them as much as i would like to but you know yeah what you're gonna do there's no and nashville's treating you well yeah i like nashville you go to prince's chicken ever
Guest:I like Prince's.
Guest:There's quite a few.
Marc:Bolton's is good.
Marc:I think Prince's is a little longer weight, but it's still hotter and better than Bolton's.
Guest:It's a little hotter, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, I've had them both.
Guest:Some people think the flavor's better at Bolton's, but I don't know.
Guest:There's a few new places, though, that people just love and really love in town.
Guest:It's kind of a thing that's springing up.
Guest:I think Prince's got a beard award.
Guest:Oh, that's right.
Guest:I saw a lot of hot chicken places.
Marc:Did you ever go hang out at Jack White's place?
Guest:No, I don't know Jack.
Guest:I'm glad he's in town, but I don't know him.
Guest:I've never hung out with him.
Guest:I like his music.
Marc:He probably puts you on one of them records.
Marc:He likes to just have people over and cut a record.
Marc:He cuts those 45s.
Guest:Yeah, I don't know how I wound up in there.
Guest:He's a rock star.
Guest:There aren't many left.
Marc:That's true.
Marc:That's true.
Marc:All right, so you'll get your guitar.
Marc:I'll try and figure out how to do it.
Marc:Thanks for talking to me, man.
Guest:Thank you, Mark.
Guest:Thanks for having me.
you
Guest:She said, Andy, you're better than your past, winked at me and drained your glass, cross-legged on a bar stool like nobody sits anymore.
Guest:She said, Andy, you're taking me home.
Guest:But I knew she planned to sleep alone.
Guest:I'd carry her to bed and sweep up the hair from the floor.
Guest:If I'd fucked her before she got sick,
Guest:But she don't have the spirit for that now We drink our drinks and laugh out loud Bitch about the weekend crowd And try to ignore the elephants somehow Somehow
Guest:She said, Andy, you cracked me up.
Guest:Seagram's in a coffee cup.
Guest:Sharecropped her eyes and her hair almost all gone.
Guest:When she was drunk, she made cancer jokes.
Guest:Made up her own doctor's notes.
Guest:Surrounded by her family, saw that she was dying alone.
Guest:I'd sing her classic country songs.
Guest:She'd get high and sing along.
Guest:But she don't have much voice to sing with now.
Guest:We burn these joints in effigy Cry about what we used to be Try to ignore the elephants somehow Somehow
Guest:Giving up my place in life But I don't give a damn about that now There's one thing that's real clear to me No one dies with dignity We just try to ignore the elephant somehow
Guest:We just try to ignore the elephant somehow We just try to ignore the elephant somehow Somehow
Marc:Yeah, we got it.
Marc:So what inspired that song?
Marc:Because that's one of those songs.
Guest:That was a few different people's stories that I heard within a few months period there.
Guest:I was living above this bar in Sheffield, Alabama.
Guest:When I got sober, I had to move away from there.
Guest:i was dating this girl a real sweet girl and she worked behind the bar as a bartender and i told her you know don't get too attached to these folks because they'll start disappearing like that scene in rent where they go around the circle and people just vanish surely enough they you know within a couple years most of the regulars weren't there anymore and it was usually because of cancer it wasn't people drinking themselves to death and it was it was cancer and uh
Guest:So I was thinking back on that after I'd cleaned up and I was on the road, you know, sit down to write on a night off.
Guest:And I was thinking about those folks and their stories and their relationships to one another and wrote that song.
Marc:Beautiful, man.
Marc:I really appreciate you taking the time.
Marc:It was fun, man.
Marc:I loved it.
Marc:I loved it.
Marc:Good talking to you.
Marc:Thanks.
Marc:You too.
Marc:How was that?
Marc:Huh?
Marc:Are you fucking kidding me?
Marc:Are you fucking kidding me?
Marc:The whole fucking album is good.
Marc:Southeastern by Jason Isbell.
Marc:What a sweet guy.
Marc:What a fucking pro.
Marc:What a fucking mensch.
Marc:And it was great to be sitting there.
Marc:So that's it.
Marc:That's it for today.
Marc:On Friday, we continue Drive-By Trucker Week with Patterson Hood.
Marc:It's a WTF Goes Down South week.
Marc:And the conversations that Patterson and I get into revolving around where he grew up and the truckers and Jason and primarily his father, David Hood, I had watched the documentary about the Muscle Shoals studio.
Marc:The Night Before I Talked to Patterson.
Marc:That's his pop on bass.
Marc:And his pop is on more records than you could ever imagine.
Marc:That are your favorite songs.
Marc:I love this shit.
Marc:I love learning about behind-the-scenes music stuff.
Marc:So that's really part two of what you heard today on Friday with Patterson.
Marc:And go to WTFPod.com for all your WTFPod needs.
Marc:Get yourself some... Pow!
Marc:I just shit my pants.
Marc:JustCoffee.coop available at WTFPod.
Marc:And look into that app.
Marc:Poke around in the merch.
Marc:Do whatever you got to do over there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, boy.
Marc:I'm wearing a vest right now.
Marc:And it's tight.
Marc:But, you know, that's the way you're supposed to wear them.
Marc:But you know what?
Marc:I don't play anything that close to the vest, really, do I?
Marc:Thought there'd be more there.
Marc:Boomer lives!