Episode 483 - Patterson Hood
Guest:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what the fuck sticks what the fucksters what the fuckadelics what the fuck minister fullers yeah thank you for that whoever sent me that i am mark maron this is wtf thank you thank you for listening
Marc:Patterson Hood from the Drive-By Truckers is on today's show and it's sort of a companion piece if not a continuation of Wednesday's show with Jason Isbell.
Marc:I appreciate all the positive feedback and I'm glad you people were moved as much as I was by that conversation and that rendition of his song Elephant.
Marc:Today is Patterson.
Marc:who was the, I don't like to say leader, but he is the leader of the drive-by truckers.
Marc:And he is the son of David Hood, the seminal bass player for the Muscle Shoals studio, who played on some of the most amazing hits and songs of your life, or perhaps songs that you know.
Marc:I'm just blown away recently by...
Marc:you know, my, my recent foray into, uh, into these documentaries, uh, you know, Denny Tedesco's unfinished documentary, which will be done soon.
Marc:The wrecking crew about that crew of 20 to 30 musicians in the Los Angeles area through from the late fifties through the sixties.
Marc:And also the Muscle Shoals video about that crew down there and their place in the history of music.
Marc:And, and, uh,
Marc:uh patterson's father was part of that and i watched that actually right before uh the night before i talked to patterson and and also a couple weeks before i i just filled my life and my mind would drive by truckers music and um
Marc:And I was excited to talk to Patterson.
Marc:He was excited to be on.
Marc:So that's going to happen in a few minutes.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:The struggle with Time Warner is ongoing.
Marc:It's fascinating to me that just last night, probably into the 20 or 25th call I've made to them about the dropping out of my Internet in the evening.
Marc:And now I've had three technicians over.
Marc:I've got a new modem.
Marc:And they've done some new wiring outside, and they insist that everything's fine, yet the problem persists.
Marc:And finally, this is two weeks into it or more, I put in one call the other night, and I get put on hold to talk to a supervisor, which doesn't happen for 15 minutes, and I decide I've got other things to do other than just seethe to bad music.
Marc:And I call back, and then I tell them the problem.
Marc:They're like, well, I see here on your file you're waiting for a supervisor.
Marc:I'm like, yeah, well, that guy I don't think even exists.
Marc:Whoever the supervisor was, I think perhaps that the customer service representative got aggravated with my tone and decided to punish me by hanging me in shitty music limbo.
Marc:with the occasional advertisement for your bad company.
Marc:And I actually said that.
Marc:I got into that tone.
Marc:It's like, I don't know how you guys can be such a bad company
Marc:That call a third time.
Marc:And again, same tone.
Marc:There's nothing you can do.
Marc:You do nothing.
Marc:Is there somebody somewhere that can do something?
Marc:And then this guy goes, well, let me connect you to tier two.
Marc:My tier two.
Marc:What's tier two?
Marc:Tier two customer service.
Marc:huh so then i hear a phone ringing i'm being connected to tier two and then it rings three times and then the call drops so now i get back on the phone and i'm like i was on hold being connected to tier two whatever that is what's your name and your phone number just connect me to tier two i want to be part of that i need to connect and talk to tier two
Marc:They're like, okay, I give them the information.
Marc:So then bad music, then phone ringing, and then a woman with an unidentifiable accent says, can I help you?
Marc:And there's part of me that thinks like tier two is on another planet.
Marc:That's why this has become so difficult, is that another planet is managing our internet connections and they haven't quite figured out our ways or the right way to do it, given the gravitational force of our planet and the electrical fields that exist.
Marc:I'm speaking to an alien.
Marc:That's how it made me feel better.
Marc:And this alien, this person from another planet did something that has not happened in the two weeks that I've been going through this.
Marc:And that is, she said, I'm running diagnostics on your line.
Marc:Not just where I'm checking the connection.
Marc:There is something else that happens on tier two.
Marc:Tier two is its own universe, its own planet.
Marc:They're doing some special tier two shit to my line.
Marc:And she goes, yeah, there's some red, there's a problem with the connection between the server and your modem.
Marc:And I'm like, thank you.
Marc:Thank you, lady from another planet.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:What happens now?
Marc:Because I feel like I'm close to getting a solution and perhaps some help.
Marc:She says, well, I'm going to put it on a 72 hour watch to see if it keeps happening.
Marc:I'm like, yes, that sounds proactive and great.
Marc:It sounds like your planet has good conflict resolution solutions.
Marc:And I enjoy doing business with with you and your planet.
Marc:I don't know why you've chosen the front company or the facade of Time Warner.
Marc:Because they clearly don't know what's going on.
Marc:Why can't you just be the person in charge who does hands-on diagnostic tests and makes me feel looked after for 72 hours to see if the problem that I've been saying is real for two weeks is actually real?
Marc:So I communicated with Alien Lifeform in the customer service area, and I'm looking forward to what that 72-hour watch on my line for problems yields.
Marc:Yeah, that's where I'm at.
Marc:That's where I'm at.
Marc:There's been contact.
Marc:Now we're going to talk to Patterson Hood, who is a lovely man, and I enjoyed talking to him.
Marc:We got a lot.
Marc:We covered a lot.
Marc:We covered some of the stuff I talked about with Jason Isbell.
Marc:We covered dads.
Marc:We covered rock and roll.
Marc:We covered the South.
Marc:We covered the politics of the South.
Marc:We covered man.
Marc:We covered, you know, his sort of growth as an artist and just a great guy.
Marc:And I like talking to guys from the South.
Marc:And I think this man, not unlike Jason Isbell, is a very earnest and very...
Marc:honest songwriter and a guy with a vision and and a commitment to that vision i don't know what more you can ask for you know from from uh from an artist and he plays a song at the end that's that was uh important to him and i think you'll enjoy that but what a great guy and what a great talk so let's talk now to patterson hood from the drive-by truckers
Marc:You know, I talked to Jason.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You guys all right?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:We're real good.
Guest:We haven't always been, but we're good now.
Guest:I'm real proud of Jason.
Marc:You weren't always good with Jason Isbell like during the time you were in drive by truckers.
Marc:Oh yeah.
Marc:You know, it didn't.
Guest:I mean, the last couple of years were hell, but, uh, but, and I, and I'm sure he, I'm sure he would be the first to say that too.
Marc:But, but I think what's interesting to me about his story is that, you know, his relationship with your father is, is a little bizarre to, in, in the fact that Jason Isbell had a relationship with your father when he was a young man and you were out of town and it was coincidental and that you guys didn't even know each other.
Guest:That's really until later.
Marc:yeah i'm sure dad met jason before i did and i know dad knew shauna before i knew her i was then why yeah he was in the band your band right it's a complicated little man you southern guys i know everybody kind of knows the other person so you did you uh you were did you grow up in muscle shoals around there in around there yeah what town in florence
Marc:So like five minutes away.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Across the river.
Marc:You know, given that your dad was, you know, part of what the fame studio and then his own studio, which was what?
Marc:The Muscle Shoals Sound.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The Muscle Shoals Sound.
Marc:What are your first recollections of that?
Yeah.
Guest:i mean i always kind of knew about it you know i remember hearing about when the stones came to town dad got us out of town he sent mom and i to visit our grand my grandparents in aruba he got us out of the country he didn't want us anywhere close by when the stones came but first time when they went down there they were to record sticky fingers pieces of sticky fingers they did brown sugar and wild horses at your dad's place or at his place nick what was the other guy's name it was a dad's place at mussel soul sound
Guest:was the other guy's name fame rick hall rick hall yeah so it was at your dad's place right and he was a partner in that he was a partner that's fascinating so he's like you know i don't know what they're gonna get me up to i can only imagine i mean i was five you know so i was i was just thrilled to go see my grandmother but uh but it uh in retrospect it was years later when i kind of did the math like oh okay that's why they sent us to see my grandmother right right before christmas and that year but
Guest:So they, you know, I mean, that's an amazing story.
Guest:I mean, there were a bunch of just, you know.
Marc:local guys they weren't you know they weren't they were as far from rock stars as you could as you could possibly be your dad and the guys yeah and all of a sudden they're hosting the rolling stones you know and the whole story is pretty fascinating because like in the documentary you know they were able to sort of bring in you know just like to that studio to uh to uh uh recall right initially and then your your dad's place
Marc:were able to sort of make this case that they redefined American music entirely.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:Like, you know, the bit about, you know, Dwayne Allman trying to, you know, talking Wilson Pickett into covering Hey Jude.
Marc:And because of the chorus at the end, you know, that's where Southern rock was invented.
Guest:I mean, it's truly, you know.
Guest:And it's an amazing story.
Guest:That's one of my favorite tracks of all time.
Guest:I just got asked for some piece I did at Sirius last week about they were as a little sidebar thing about the Allman Brothers.
Guest:They want to know, you know, what my favorite Allman Brothers track is like, actually, my favorite is pre Allman Brothers is the Wilson Pickett.
Guest:Hey, Jude track.
Yeah.
Marc:I got to listen to that again, because I think I got it on vinyl in there.
Guest:It's so smoky.
Guest:And that's not my dad on bass on that song.
Guest:That's a bass player named Jerry Jermott, who was, I think he was a Memphis guy, but he did a lot of sessions in Muscle Shoals at that era.
Marc:But at that time, you know, in that studio, and I'm not going to get too hung up on it, I'm just trying to get a sense of...
Marc:you know what your belief is about the region because you know in that you know coming you come from a pedigree of something that uh that was a pretty amazing thing and a very singular thing you know your father you know has obviously a specific bass sound it's on some of the most the biggest r&b you know tunes in the ever right like uh on the erythra franklin numbers and stuff like that right oh yeah and
Guest:You know, when I became really aware of it all, I was about seven, and When I'll Take You There became a hit.
Guest:And, you know, that song is, I mean, it's built around Dad's bass part.
Guest:And during the breakdown part, which is
Guest:kind of awesome in its own right mavis starts you know vamping david little david and i was i would hear it on the radio and i was aware that that was my dad she was talking about she was saying my dad's name on a record on a on at that time the number one record in the nation yeah yeah and i thought that was really really cool it's amazing uh
Marc:And it's an amazing song.
Guest:It is.
Guest:It's still one of my very all-time favorites.
Guest:But I also learned really quickly not to talk about it at school because it was not amazing to my classmates.
Guest:For the race reason?
Guest:Well, all of it.
Guest:I mean, I was really an oddball, weird kid as far as from the perspective of the other kids in my, you know, North Alabama public schools, early 1970s.
Marc:Just by virtue of having a musician as a father?
Guest:My dad was a musician.
Guest:My parents were, you know, about 10 years younger than most of the kids' parents.
Guest:We didn't go to church.
Guest:That was a big deal.
Guest:I mean, you know, I grew up in a place where one of the first questions when you meet someone is, you know, and what church do you go to?
Guest:You know, and I was like, I don't, you know.
Guest:You know, I went once to Presbyterian Church, you know, and what, you know.
Guest:But so my dad's partner, the drummer, Roger, his son was in my same classroom with me in second grade.
Guest:And I can remember him at like show and tell standing up there saying, you know, and my dad's the world's greatest drummer, you know.
Guest:And talking about it.
Guest:And then I'd see him on the playground getting the shit beat out of him.
Guest:You know, a few minutes later, it's like note to self, we don't talk about what dad does, you know.
Guest:And so I didn't I didn't talk about it until I moved to Athens in my 30s.
Guest:And and it was just, you know, people who knew me well knew about it and are people who were into that knew about it.
Guest:But I never talked about it.
Marc:Was there a sense then, other than getting your ass kicked, I mean, what was the primary line of work in those parts?
Guest:It was very blue collar.
Guest:It was, you know, the TVA was based there or had a lot of operations there.
Guest:And Reynolds Metals, they made aluminum foil and stuff like that there.
Guest:Timber too, right?
Guest:A little bit.
Guest:And the other big industry, a lot of T-shirts and stuff like that were made.
Guest:I guess that was more in the 80s.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Oh, and the Ford.
Guest:Ford built transmissions there.
Guest:And they closed the Ford plant in 82, the year I graduated from high school.
Guest:And that started a domino effect.
Guest:So it became kind of almost like a not quite not as bad as Flint, Michigan.
Guest:But I mean, it it a lot of parallels.
Guest:When I saw Roger and me years later for the first time, I couldn't get over all the parallels that I saw that had happened because when Ford closed, then all these other businesses that.
Guest:you know, made their money from Ford or Ford employees closed.
Guest:And just the domino effect.
Guest:And so we had double digit unemployment all through, even all through the 90s.
Guest:I mean, it took, the town has really just rebounded in the last decade.
Guest:It started rebounding because it occurred to them to kind of turn it into a tourist, to go after tourism and also retirement communities.
Guest:A lot of people retire.
Guest:It's not a bad place to retire.
Guest:It's pretty.
Guest:And it's very pretty.
Guest:And so it's kind of rebounded.
Guest:And then, you know, a few other things have happened.
Guest:Billy Reed, the clothes designer, is based there and has been really successful.
Guest:And he's reinvested a lot into the town and done some really great stuff.
Guest:And you live down there still or no?
Guest:No, I've been in Athens, Georgia for 20 years next month.
Marc:So that's where you stayed.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:yeah you'd be now well let's go back to where you know where where'd you get the bug to play i mean you know i know did you spend any time in that studio either one of them either rick's or your dad very little i wasn't really allowed to go much because i was a kid and and and also that would mean mom would be there and
Guest:Mom and dad, you know, they should never have.
Guest:There were two people that shouldn't have ever been married in the first place.
Guest:Are they married now?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:And and I mean, they've only started they've been divorced.
Guest:Twenty six, twenty seven years.
Guest:They've only started speaking recently.
Marc:So half your life they've been divorced.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But it happened later.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:it happened later should have happened sooner yeah and uh a lot of fighting uh yeah it wasn't you know and a lot of just dad just not just not coming home because it just was better if he just worked all the time because he like you know in the documentary it's like i feel like i got to know him a little bit whatever he seems like a pretty he seems like a bass player he's really laid back low-key guy yeah
Guest:personality wise his um his personality in that band in the rhythm section is very comparable to uh what brad our drummer brings to the table in our band he's the he's the guy who's kind of level-headed and easygoing that all the different factions can get along with and so everybody uh you know we call brad easy b and uh and dab was that guy in that band because the others were all total hotheads jimmy and barry and roger the drummer too
Guest:A little bit.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And not as much as Jimmy and Barry.
Guest:But, yeah, I think they all could get a little hot, you know.
Guest:And Dad was very mellow, very, you know, and very likable.
Marc:He's a sweet guy.
Marc:And when did you...
Marc:i mean if there was this distance between you and whatever was going on there in the studio which is understandable because he didn't want your mom around he didn't necessarily want you around you know during a wilson pickett session or no or a throwing stone session because at that time it was just fucking nuts oh yeah i mean i didn't understand at the time i was mad about it i was you know i was like you know
Guest:he's getting to do this cool thing and i'm not allowed to even you know walk in the door or whatever but i mean i totally and to make it worse one of dad's partners was kind of the guy who brought his son around a lot all right and so so and i grew up you know a year older than jay and and jay johnson was always at the studio and so i would hear from him you know and like oh man i just you know just met mark knoffler it was great and blah blah blah and you know dealing with and it's like what you know
Marc:When you were old enough to know.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because you and I are about the same age.
Marc:So by the time Dylan was recording there, Knopfler, I mean, that was what we were in high school.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I remember when those records came out.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:It probably wasn't even a Dire Straits album, was it?
Guest:They did Communique and Slow Train Coming at about the same time.
Guest:And so I think Communique was actually co-produced by my dad's partner, Barry, by Barry Beckett with Jerry Wexler.
Guest:And then right at that same time, Dylan hired Knopfler to play guitar on Slow Train Coming.
Guest:So they mixed Communique at Muscle Shoals Sound and then recorded Slow Train Coming.
Guest:And you couldn't go.
Guest:No, I did meet Dylan when I was a kid, but that was just kind of a fluke.
Guest:It was one of those rare times I did make it over there.
Guest:When Bob Dylan came to town, the very first time was to play on a record by Donnie Fritz, who's an artist from there.
Guest:Dylan was just playing.
Guest:Yeah, he came to play on that record, and he brought his wife and oldest son together.
Guest:And they drove from California to Muscle Shoals in the dead of summer in like a station wagon.
Guest:Not Jacob.
Guest:And it was Jesse.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I ended up, you know, Jesse was stuck in Florence for nothing to do.
Guest:And he was close to my age.
Guest:So they kind of arranged like what they nowadays call a play date, I guess, you know.
Guest:So he and I played together one day.
Guest:And so I met his dad.
Guest:for a moment then although I don't I don't know if he said anything but I was maybe 11 probably 11 I was old enough to know he was I mean I was I already had a couple of Dylan records but you know I didn't you know I knew not to gawk
Marc:Yeah, so what informed, you know, what became your interest in playing and listening?
Marc:I mean, if your dad was sort of icing you and you were kind of getting mad about that, I mean, what was around the house?
Marc:I mean, what was the music that was... Well, he had thousands of records.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:And he was gone.
Guest:So I would pilfer, and I wasn't allowed to...
Guest:play with them but i did i taught myself early that if i put everything back exactly perfect so i got really good at taking care of records at a young age so i'd come on from school and put the headsets on i'd be supposedly you know in quotes doing homework right and uh and uh
Guest:Mom would be upstairs watching TV, not paying any attention, so I'd be down there rummaging through the record collection, and anything that had a cool cover, that's what I'd play.
Guest:And that's where I got my, to this day, kind of obsession about the artwork on our records and stuff.
Marc:yeah they're great it's like you use the same guy right a lot Wes yeah they're great and thank you for all that vinyl because you know I had I think I had three or four of your records you know I had Decoration Day Dirty South and one other one and then like you know it's one of those things where I interview a musician like I like a band right but you know when you have to talk to a guy you're like well I guess I better make sure I'm caught up and then you're like holy fuck yeah there's 900 records here yeah
Marc:I was listening to your solo record last night from 2012.
Marc:I liked how you get involved and invest yourself emotionally in the stories of either fictional characters or, in that case, I guess your grandfather, right?
Marc:Right, my great uncle, yeah.
Marc:Your great uncle.
Marc:And to sort of work from that memory and process the darkness through the type of music that resonates with you and the type of music you put out is very moving.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And where did you first start to realize that there were stories to tell?
Marc:What made you do that?
Guest:I always loved stories.
Guest:And I think probably from my mom's side of the family, I think there's a lot of probably could have been great writers in my mom's side of the family.
Guest:My grandmother...
Guest:was a really good writer.
Guest:She even got published a few times, just, you know, like magazine things.
Guest:She'd submit a magazine thing, like article back in the 50s.
Guest:And I think the three things she submitted all got published.
Guest:And her brother, one of my other great uncles, he was kind of like the family historian.
Guest:And there's like...
Guest:hundreds and hundreds of pages of things he's written that you know my cousins in the process of trying to kind of type up and preserve and everything and it's i mean it's it reads like literature it's beautiful it seems to be sort of a southern thing yeah uh just sort of like the idea because all those communities were were so kind of tiny right and and you know everybody was sort of involved right and there was a lot of oral history involved you know it was it was uh
Guest:you know that region of the country was one of the last places in the united states to get power and so there was a lot of storytelling because there wasn't tv walking down the street and sitting down and talking yeah yeah and so you know i was i was raised mostly by my grandmother and and her brother because my my parents were teenagers when they got married and they weren't happy and dad was a musician and he was gone a lot my mom's had a life of a lot of health issues and stuff and uh
Guest:So we, you know, we spent I spent most of my childhood with my grandmother.
Guest:And then every weekend I'd go out to the family farm that was that side of the family's like homestead land.
Guest:And my great uncle, who's a truck driver, he would time his trips where he'd be home every weekend and he'd take care of me.
Guest:And so I spent every weekend from the time I was.
Guest:like a baby and in diapers all the way until i was a teenager and you know too busy drinking and chasing girls to go out there on weekends but i spent every weekend out there and what'd you do like what was the scene out there um it's beautiful beautiful farm about eight miles out of town and uh what are we talking like you know
Guest:Like 150, about 200 acres.
Guest:Wow, that's huge.
Guest:And gorgeous.
Guest:And like rolling hills and fields.
Guest:And I had a go-kart out there.
Guest:And my great uncle, who was like – he never married.
Guest:He never had children of his own.
Guest:So I was like the closest he ever had to a son.
Guest:And he was the greatest dad imaginable.
Guest:And he would –
Guest:You know, he would take the bush hog and cut out, like, trails and stuff in the fields.
Guest:He'd let the grass grow high, then cut all these trails for the go-karts.
Guest:And I had a cousin that kept his out there.
Guest:And we would ride go-karts all weekend.
Guest:And I kept my stereo out there.
Guest:My records were out there.
Guest:He'd take me to the movies because he loved movies, too.
Guest:And I've always been a movie fanatic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, and he would take me to, you know, I got...
Guest:I got taken to movies as a kid that kids weren't really supposed to see.
Guest:Like I saw Chinatown when I was nine or 10.
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:You know, I saw some great movies at a young age and always was kind of obsessed.
Guest:That's my other obsession.
Marc:So, uh, but that's interesting because like, you know, to see that stuff, cause I saw some stuff when I was too young to see it, but you know, it forces your brain to reckon with shit that not ready to reckon with.
Marc:And then you never fucking forget it.
Marc:And it's just sort of stuck there.
Marc:And then one day you're like, oh, there you go.
Marc:But it's already kind of carved this pathway in your brain to the dark place.
Marc:And then you have to sort of fill it in later.
Guest:I think it was a positive thing.
Guest:I mean, looking back on it, my wife just gets...
Guest:horrified at some of the stories i tell her about things like that you know movies i saw as a kid that you know i saw midnight cowboy when i was six you know she's like i can't believe your parents took it you know but well you know to be honest with you about that movie i didn't know that that was about a gay relationship till i was in my 20s
Guest:right right most of stuff just went over my head and and uh and and the parts that didn't you know probably helped me deal with my own dark shit yeah some later point well it sounds like your your your great uncle i mean you know going out onto a farm on the weekend riding go-karts playing records and going to movies that's fucking great must have been like the root oh it was i
Marc:Idyllic.
Guest:You know, my childhood was kind of split between the idyllic weekends and the hellish weeks because I was, I mean, school sucked for me.
Guest:I made terrible grades.
Guest:I started writing songs when I was eight, and I would sit in class and write songs instead of listening to class, you know, and so my grades sucked.
Guest:What drove you to do that?
Guest:Just the knowledge that your father was a musician?
Guest:I heard him in my head.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I mean, I probably always heard him, but I started writing him down when I was eight.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And those records that you were going through, do you remember which ones popped through?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:You know, vividly.
Guest:You know, Elton John was huge around that time.
Guest:That was big.
Guest:You know, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road was my favorite record.
Guest:What a fucking record, man.
Guest:I still love that record.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:My daughter, my nine-year-old daughter loves that record.
Marc:Funeral for a Friend?
Marc:Incredible.
Marc:What's that song it goes into?
Guest:Yeah, Love Lies Bleeding.
Marc:Yeah, Love Lies Bleeding.
Marc:That's crazy.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, that's a good one.
Guest:Dark Side of the Moon.
Guest:I was a huge Pink Floyd fan.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Then I got into Zeppelin and all that stuff.
Guest:Your dad had all those?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:He had all that stuff.
Guest:He had everything.
Guest:He got promos, I'm sure, a lot, too, from Atlantic.
Guest:He still got them?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He does.
Guest:He's got a room in the house?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He hasn't taken as good a care of his record.
Guest:He hasn't taken as good a care of them as I would have, but...
Marc:now was that is that also something to do with your your sort of compulsion about you know continuing to record on analog did you do yeah that's the way i like it i like the way that sounds and and and i i would imagine that probably through the entire uh run of of the muscle show sound your dad was all it wasn't digital at all was it no digital was probably invented in the later days of it yeah you know by then the heyday was long over and uh so you believe in analog
Guest:oh yeah i love it like the way it sounds yeah you know that you know jack uh jack white is doing that he's going direct to acetate now yeah that's that's crazy yeah i'd love to do one of those singles or something why don't you should yeah i'd love to yeah we did a thing at a third man uh i guess three years ago when the last record came out we did a little live like little live ep thing there and um and actually had dad come up and play on a couple of songs for it so that was cool yeah
Guest:And he was super.
Guest:Jack was super nice, super cool.
Guest:But yeah, it'd be great to do something like that.
Guest:So now when did you start playing and what did you start playing?
Guest:I started playing Dad's bass a little bit when I was 13 and kind of figured out that...
Guest:It was going to be hard enough to try to follow in his footsteps without playing the same instrument.
Guest:So I pretty quickly got a guitar.
Guest:I got an acoustic guitar in one of those Mel Bay books with chords and started teaching myself some chords.
Guest:I was a slow learner.
Guest:I was a terrible guitar player for many, many years.
Guest:I think I've really become a pretty good guitar player in the last...
Guest:like the last few records i've kind of feel like i've gotten the hang of it but for a long time i was you know my guitar playing was definitely a weak link in the band as was my singing i've worked really hard at trying to be a better singer to try to do something with this crazy voice i've got you know well it's interesting though because you know especially in terms of your sound and what you guys do is that the earnestness is important
Marc:You know, that, you know, whatever struggle you're having with your voice, your guitar playing.
Marc:I mean, that's the amazing thing that you realize, I think, at some point.
Marc:And maybe you did as well.
Marc:It's interesting to me that early on, you're like, I ain't going to try to follow in debt.
Marc:I'm not.
Guest:You know, thank God for punk rock.
Guest:I mean, punk rock happened just in the nick of time.
Guest:And.
Guest:And it also provided me with that much needed generation gap that I think at some point in a kid's life they need with their father to go through.
Guest:You've got to fight against them.
Guest:Yeah, you know, it's like that was the point where all of a sudden our record collections started looking different from each other's.
Guest:Right.
Guest:you know before that mine was just like a smaller version of his you know the record i liked most in his collection i'd pick up my own copy but then all of a sudden i started buying these records that he thought were terrible and like what you know i like the early punk records he just you know ironically now he really likes some of that stuff but i mean you know he didn't like the class or the pixies or whatever when it first happened and uh
Guest:It was years later before he kind of came back and appreciated that.
Guest:But it's ironic because he and Charles from the Pixies have become pretty good friends, and he's played on several of his solo records.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he told him that story about when I was a kid playing in the Pixies the first time and him hating it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:dad's been to see the pixies like three times and i've never seen them so he's got it well yeah it's interesting because the pixies got heavy bass sound yeah yeah and he likes that must resonate with him you know so well that's that that's amazing because well it seems like that sound that you grew up around was really kind of a melting pot of things i mean in the documentary and in the music that was going on there it was kind of hard to define
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because all those guys intentionally they wanted it to be.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, they didn't want to have a specific sound.
Guest:They wanted their sound to be the sound of whatever the right sound for whatever artist came to town.
Guest:Because, I mean, they were truly session guys.
Guest:And I think I think a little bit of that leaked into our DNA as a band.
Guest:I think there and probably one of the things that.
Guest:you know, that I'm proud of about our band, but we probably sometimes get slagged for it, you know, is a little bit of eclecticness that comes from, you know, I am fascinated by the notion of being able to shapeshift as much as my voice will allow, you know, I'm limited by what I can do with that.
Guest:But, you know, I love that our band has done, you know,
Guest:The Go Go Boots record was kind of a country soul record, and the record before that was kind of an attempt at a power pop record.
Guest:And, you know, the record before that was whatever that was.
Guest:And you're conscious of this.
Guest:At times, you know, and as we were conscious this time of not thinking about anything like that.
Guest:I mean, this record was...
Guest:We were very conscious of this time of just making English oceans of just making a record out of these songs that we have at this moment, capturing this moment right now as quickly as possible.
Guest:This moment in time for our band as people and as a band.
Marc:It's interesting because I was listening to it, and maybe I'm projecting onto it, but there was, in a few tunes, there was definitely a mid-period Stones vibe.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Is that possible?
Marc:Oh, of course.
Guest:We grew up, you know, yeah.
Guest:Oh, that's total coincidence.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I've never listened to Keith Richards in my life.
Guest:Mike Cooley's never listened to Keith Richards, you know.
Guest:Lightning strikes.
Guest:The garage goes up in flames.
Marc:But it definitely felt, the groove of it, you know, and the way the guitars were interacting definitely felt like that.
Guest:Yeah, it was a good...
Guest:you know that that's a kind of a good place to approach some of these songs from yeah and uh it was a good jumping off point especially for you know like the first song on the record for shit shots count i mean you know that was kind of the perfect jumping off point for that yeah the lyrics you know it's like in my life i've not i've never been like a huge lyrics guy i'm sort of a melody guy and a groove guy you know but like with you you know i'm gonna have to process
Marc:I'm going to have to sit down and listen to the story.
Marc:And I found, like, you know, going over the catalog, which I've been doing, you know, some of the stories are profoundly moving.
Marc:You know, I don't remember what record that story is about the guy who, you know, had a... What, he ended up killing himself because the dam, they built the dam and they... Oh, Uncle Frank, yeah.
Guest:That's a great song.
Guest:That's Cooley's song.
Guest:That was...
Guest:That was early.
Guest:That's our second record.
Guest:That's an early.
Guest:That's probably the fifth or sixth song he ever wrote.
Guest:I mean, that's really an early song of his.
Guest:And because, you know, for years we played together, I wrote all the songs.
Guest:Where'd you guys meet?
Guest:We were roommates, kind of accidental roommates.
Guest:He lived with this guy that I knew, and they had an extra room for rent in the apartment I needed a place to move into really quickly.
Guest:And the day I moved in, he was sitting on the couch, a guitar next to him.
Guest:I was carrying a guitar.
Guest:I was like, oh, you play guitar.
Guest:I play guitar, you know, and and we'd sit around and drink.
Guest:We didn't have any money to do anything else.
Guest:We'd sit around and drink cheap beer and play guitar.
Guest:And we kind of neither one of us were worth a shit.
Guest:I mean, we weren't any good.
Guest:This was in Athens or in Florence, Alabama in like 1985.
Guest:So you were.
Guest:I was 21.
Guest:Cooley was 19.
Guest:and we were just punk kids and he was actually making decent grades in college and I was flunking out of college and I got in the college in my hometown which at that time wasn't hard to do or else they wouldn't have let me in.
Marc:So at that time you'd written some songs, you could play a little bit and what was the substance intake?
Marc:How much were you living that life at that point?
Guest:It was mostly just drinking beer.
Guest:Drinking anything I'd get my hands on.
Guest:I drank a lot, especially then.
Guest:And, you know, if anyone had some weed, I'd smoke it.
Guest:But if anyone had whatever, I'd do it probably.
Guest:But there wasn't a lot of that around in front of me.
Guest:yet at that time and your old man was still living down the street and your mom was still around uh that was right as they were splitting and uh so uh they had a uh house out on the lake um that we moved into when i was in high school and that ended up um going to pay off lawyers basically i mean they i mean they they spent two years battling it out in the courts until there was just nothing left to split basically and uh and it it you know it was a
Guest:terrible terrible divorce and i was lucky to be out of the house but my sister was stuck in the my sister's eight years younger so she was stuck in the middle of it all and and um so uh she all right yeah she's great and both your folks still around they're both around are they all right yep my mom's uh my mom's like in love and and in a really great relationship now and yeah um she's her health isn't great she's got ms and has some has some issues but uh
Guest:But she's probably happier and mentally healthier than I've ever seen her in my life.
Guest:And my dad's great.
Guest:The movie's been a really good thing for him.
Guest:He's actually making a record with the Water Boys right now.
Guest:The Water Boys?
Guest:I know.
Guest:It's awesome.
Guest:He's producing it or just playing bass?
Guest:He's just playing bass.
Guest:Well, that's the great thing about those old session guys is they can still all play.
Guest:Yeah, he plays his ass off.
Guest:And he plays wonderfully.
Guest:He plays incredibly.
Guest:You ever play with him?
Guest:Just a little bit.
Guest:He played on that Heat Lightning record, the last solo record I did.
Guest:He's on three songs on that.
Guest:Was that nice?
Guest:Yeah, it was really nice.
Guest:It was a long process getting us to a point where we could do that.
Guest:Why?
Guest:because i came from just a different the punk rock thing was our generation musical there's a musical problem you had with the session guy with the king of all session guys right right because he was the king everything was perfect everything had to be perfect right and you know and i grew up where nothing was perfect you know my favorite parts of any record were the imperfections yeah and uh and uh which you know when i was a punk kid i'm sure he
Marc:took is like a personal kind of middle finger you know and uh you know i mean he played on still crazy after all these years and things like that tight man that's super tight and that's incredible yeah i think that must have been all rick hall's you know uh influence on that because it looked like that guy just drove those tyrant yeah just drove them he did and they were just kids and they were like i can't even imagine that all right so all right so you meet cooley and you guys are just hanging out and and you both like the same kind of music and
Guest:Yeah, we both did.
Guest:You know, right around that time, the replacements put out Tim.
Guest:And that was the record that literally inspired me to drop out of school.
Guest:I mean, it's like, it's like, why am I fucking around doing this shit?
Guest:I'm making terrible grades.
Guest:I don't want to be whatever a marketing major does.
Guest:You know, I don't want to, you know, I'm.
Guest:I'm obviously spinning my wheels and, you know, I knew I could write.
Guest:I'd always that, you know, that was the one thing I could do.
Guest:I started writing when I was so young that that, you know, by the time I was old enough to have it even occur to me.
Guest:that it mattered to be good or not.
Guest:I had written enough to where I was comfortable enough with the medium that I didn't, you know, it, it wasn't hard for me.
Guest:I wasn't ever intimidated by it.
Guest:You enjoyed it too.
Guest:I loved it.
Guest:I loved it.
Guest:It was my therapy.
Guest:It kept me from killing myself.
Marc:And we're writing songs specifically.
Guest:Specifically.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Because like,
Marc:you know i i know that feeling because i you know i studied you know poetry and i was into writing poetry but there it becomes sort of like like almost like this uh you can chip away at it differently than like it's not like a story that you kind of keep writing keep writing you know you get your guts you know out there and then you kind of shape it and you can work with it it almost becomes like a math problem oh i know i know i love it i love it and i love everything about it and uh you know i would in a perfect world i would get to do it even more than i do yeah i would write more
Marc:but uh so the replacements comes out and you're like that's that's it i'm i'm out of here and it's interesting that you you know there's a benefit to the fact that you know growing up knowing that your dad was a musician but not the type musician that was a grandstander but a guy that you know obviously made a living right you know in music that it wasn't this weird outlandish thing i i have to imagine that you're you didn't think your dad was going to go what the fuck are you doing
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, he did.
Guest:He thought it was crazy.
Guest:Don't drop out of school.
Guest:You know, it's like it's like I spend my I spend my time playing, you know, with people who do this for a living.
Guest:And I see how what they do and how hard they work in order to do what they do.
Guest:And you don't have that.
Guest:and uh oh and it killed me you know it's like and that was why i ended up in college in the first place i got that one when i was a senior in high school but he was right i mean he was absolutely correct whether he was right to and he probably was right to say it i mean you know that's a dad's job sometimes to sometimes to sometimes dad has to be an asshole are you your father huh yeah yeah and uh it's hard you know and uh
Guest:and and you know my my dad you know he he didn't uh some of that stuff didn't come naturally for him but he was he he did the best he could you know and it's good that you got in that perspective yeah and i mean we're super close now we're super close but uh but yeah it was it was you know but he didn't think you had the discipline or necessarily the talent right and the replacements was my proof that it didn't that that was okay it's like well they're on a major label
Guest:yeah you know this is um you know and and yeah my guitar is out of tune but so is their guitar you know and and uh you know they but they've got great songs and i think i could write a great song i think i could do it you know it's like i may not have yet but i think i i think if i quit this bullshit i'm doing and applied myself i can do that and when you look back on your your your uh you know your work
Guest:right and it's a lot of work yeah you know what what do you think is is the the example you would take to your father and go huh yeah which one you know the new one yeah good for you i mean i mean he he he came around pretty early in the drive-by truckers which was you know cooley and i had been together for like it was our 11th year playing together when we started the drive-by truckers so or it
Guest:Yeah, 11th year.
Marc:So what manifestations did you go through previous to that?
Guest:We had a punk band called Adam's House Cat for six years.
Guest:And that was in Florence?
Guest:In Florence.
Guest:And did you get a good local following?
Guest:No, we were hated.
Guest:We were hated.
Guest:We were hated everywhere.
Guest:For six years?
Guest:For six years.
Guest:You stayed hated?
Guest:Oh, yeah, hated.
Guest:And our flagship song was called Buttholeville, which made all the dad's partners really hate us.
Guest:So like dad's partner, Jimmy Johnson, he didn't speak to me for years over that song.
Guest:He said...
Guest:the guitar player he took it as a yeah and he took it as like a very personal fuck you to him even though it wasn't at all meant that way but uh uh didn't you put that on a record uh later the truckers recorded it on gangster bill yeah on gangster bill yeah but uh but yeah so it was you know so we were we were that i mean we were we were punk kids you know and we were of course it was it was all middle finger you know yeah yeah that was what that was the that was a finger we knew how to raise you know yeah yeah
Guest:and uh six years and we were loud as shit we had a really good drummer and uh we um we we just we mostly just practiced which is i guess why the truckers never practiced because we practiced so much those six years that you know we we kind of got all that out of our system we don't really you know we never practiced so what was the choice to to to take it to another level into another city
Guest:After that band broke up, actually what broke up that band was we were attempting to relocate it to Memphis because we just had realized that it was not going to happen for us there.
Guest:Six years.
Guest:Six years, yeah, yeah.
Guest:It took you to realize that.
Guest:I'm slow learning, man.
Guest:I'm a slow bloomer, man.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:So we tried to move.
Guest:Cooley and I moved to Memphis with the intention of relocating the band.
Guest:And instead, it broke the band up.
Guest:So he and I became a duo called Virgil Kane for a couple of years.
Guest:And then we had a band out of Auburn, Alabama.
Guest:We ended up down there.
Guest:I was my sister went to school there and I started dating a girl down there.
Guest:And so we ended up down there and.
Guest:And we put together a band called Horse Pussy that for some reason didn't catch on.
Guest:And then we had a falling out and we didn't speak for a year or so.
Guest:Who, you and Cooley?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Over a chick?
Guest:No, I don't even know what it was about.
Guest:Some kind of bullshit.
Guest:But we ended up having this big falling.
Guest:I think mostly we were just frustrated.
Guest:I think we'd been playing together so long and going nowhere for so long.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and putting up with each other's shit for so long with no reward.
Guest:I mean, you know, because neither one of us, particularly in our younger days, were probably very easy to put up with.
Marc:Well, that's an interesting point about music in general and about when you see bands...
Marc:who keep pounding yeah you know and not unlike comics either you know you don't you don't really know how or when to stop or if you should and that's probably better off but sometimes it's not and i imagine that you know despite all your best intentions whatever was going on there's got to come a point where it's like what the fuck are we doing right i mean it's an important part of our story that we did that that we split up because it forced both of us
Guest:to learn some important things to learn.
Guest:You know, we had never had a serious band without each other, for starters.
Guest:So we kind of took each other's roles for granted.
Guest:Cooley had never written, because I wrote all the time, and Cooley was, you know, he had no interest in it.
Guest:But once he didn't have, he didn't want to go out and play covers.
Guest:And so he, you know, and I'd always told him he should write.
Guest:I mean, he was born to be a writer.
Guest:I mean, I used to, in Adam's house, go, man, you should write this shit down.
Guest:You are a writer.
Guest:You're just not writing it down.
Guest:And fuck you, you know.
Guest:But all of a sudden, without me around saying that, he started writing it down.
Guest:And it was great.
Guest:And, you know, the first thing I did was, you know, part of the way he and I work is...
Guest:Whatever I do, he kind of applies the opposite to it.
Guest:And that wasn't in our younger days always appreciated, you know.
Guest:But if I write a pretty song, then he's going to make it as ugly as he can make it.
Guest:And if I write something ugly and desolate, he'll play something beautiful on it.
Guest:What is that about?
Guest:And it just came naturally.
Guest:That's who we were.
Guest:That's how it manifested itself.
Guest:There's still a little fuck you in there.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:And when all of a sudden I was putting together a band without him, I would find these players who played...
Guest:you played great you know but they would play so complimentary to me whatever i wrote they would play the perfect thing for it and i ended up not liking it it's like man i miss that friction you know i miss that that you know i need someone to ugly this up this song's already pretty enough or this song's already i need someone you know i needed that opposite thing yeah yeah and um
Guest:So by that time I'd moved to Athens.
Guest:To create the sludge.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You need to sludge.
Guest:I was thinking, where can I go?
Guest:And I wanted to live somewhere.
Guest:I was very close to my grandmother and my great uncle, and they were getting older.
Guest:I didn't want to move way off and never get to see them.
Guest:So I wanted to be within a day's drive.
Guest:And Athens was like the closest place I could find that offered what I was like.
Guest:I wanted a cool town.
Guest:yeah and somewhere where you know were you fans a fan of the music scene there of course and rem was you know they were gods you know to me what was the other one that be yeah the one 52s yeah ones that that weren't rem but were they never quite made it pylon yeah pylon incredible you know and yeah and i was already into i mean i was into a lot of the athens bands big chestnut was up there who's just my hero and one of my favorite people in the world and uh
Guest:And so, although I wasn't, I had heard of him when I moved there, but I didn't, I wasn't really aware of his music.
Guest:I'd never actually heard him yet until I moved there.
Guest:Unbelievable stuff.
Guest:It's unbelievable and life-changing.
Guest:First time I saw him is one of the nights that I definitely will consider like a life-changing show I went to.
Guest:What happened?
Marc:How long had you been in Athens until you move up there?
Yeah.
Guest:Not long.
Guest:I had just gotten there.
Guest:When I first got to town, people would meet me.
Guest:They'd hear what I was doing.
Guest:They would immediately say, man, you need to go see Vic Chestnut.
Guest:You would like that.
Guest:He's the best songwriter in town.
Guest:I was like, who is this best songwriter in town guy I need to see?
Guest:So I saw.
Guest:And then it was like, oh, okay.
Guest:He's...
Guest:fuck town he's the best songwriter in the world you know i mean i'm i'm convinced that someday they will be studying his work in in classrooms and shit i'm sure they are probably already are and especially in europe probably did you did you develop a relationship with him yeah we became we became
Guest:came friends you know and and uh i didn't get to spend a lot of time with them because we were both touring all the time but we we had a we really hit it off and uh and uh the little time i did spend with him was something i'll always treasure you know and uh
Guest:Because he was pretty sick by then, right?
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:I mean, he had a hard, you know, it was hard.
Guest:I mean, God, you know, being a touring musician is hard.
Guest:Being a touring musician in a fucking wheelchair.
Guest:I mean, you know, who's, you know, paraplegic.
Guest:And, you know, I went out...
Guest:The way I got to know him involved a trip we made to play a Christmas benefit that Jay Farrar was putting on in St.
Guest:Louis.
Guest:And we flew up together, and there was snow on the ground.
Guest:And he was...
Guest:just never would have occurred to me because i'd never spent a lot of time with someone in a wheelchair the amount of terror that inflicts because because you know that's a a big deal you know to get snow on you and it it it you don't feel it and it can cause you can burn your skin and you know it's i mean it's just you know things you just never think about until you've spent you know a little bit of time doing that and uh
Guest:and just watching him and then how he would just come alive on stage.
Guest:And I mean, it was just so moving and life-changing.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Truly.
Marc:Yeah, I found him pretty astounding.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Did you know him?
Marc:Did you know him at all?
Marc:No, I didn't know him at all.
Marc:And there was a period there where I got very into it and bought all the records and really filled my head with it because he had a sort of...
Marc:an ability to to to go pretty deep and pretty dark but he had a very so funny and yeah an amazing turn of phrase amazing wit yeah just like you know bordering on hilarious oh yeah yeah truly yeah and and uh i i don't like i i know that he ended his own life didn't he yeah yeah and you know it's so brutal were you at the funeral oh yeah yeah
Guest:Yeah, and we played a big memorial.
Guest:I think it was a two-day event that a bunch of people put on at the 40-watt, which was just one of the most beautiful things I've ever been to.
Guest:Do you ever cover his tunes?
Guest:We covered when I ran off and left her off the Drunk album.
Guest:I worked it up for that, and then the truckers recorded it.
Guest:It was like an extra track on the Go-Go Boots sessions.
Guest:yeah well that's it so he was he's probably the most profound influence on you oh he's a huge one huge one all right so you moved to athens moved to athens and you and cool you're back in it uh not long after that it was like you know we we'd we'd he follow you up there no he's never lived there and uh as he says i like athens way too much to fuck it up by moving there you know he he he he kind of likes it being the place he goes to work so where is he he's in birmingham
Guest:and he loves it and birmingham has been good for him and cheap cost of living and you know good place for you know for the family and his wife's uh a nurse so there's a lot of work a lot of hospitals a lot of health care stuff there and uh so uh yeah i moved to athens and uh i got a job working at a club doing sound and uh which and i just immersed myself in the music scene there it's like wow i finally live in a town that has a scene who was it then
Guest:There were hundreds of bands.
Guest:I mean, there were literally 300 bands in a town with 120,000 people in it.
Guest:So it's just, you know, the depth and density of the scene was amazing.
Guest:And, you know, everywhere you went, whoever was waiting on your table was a musician and, you know, whoever.
Guest:And you liked it.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I just fell madly in love with it and started drinking coffee.
Guest:And, you know, it was one of the most profoundly...
Guest:Most liberating, life-changing things ever did was when I moved there.
Guest:And like I said, 20 years ago, like in about three weeks.
Guest:So I moved on April Fool's Day, 1994.
Guest:And the day I moved into the house that I rented there.
Guest:was the day they found kurt cobain and uh so it was just like pretty mind-blowing darkness place to be yeah and came over the town it was a crazy spring you know that was going on and and and the oj simpson thing was all all happened right at that time yeah and um i was just you know going out every night and seeing bands and seeing as many bands as i could and and um and writing just like crazy i mean i i wrote
Guest:I probably wrote 100 songs the first year I lived there.
Guest:I mean, I just wrote and wrote and wrote, and some of which became my second solo record, the Murdering Oscar record.
Guest:A lot of that was written right at that time.
Guest:And then I came up with this idea that I wanted to put together this...
Guest:I kind of had a specific idea for a band.
Guest:I came up with the name and I started writing songs for it before I even had the band.
Guest:It was like I was going to start over with brand new songs, brand new thing.
Marc:What was the idea?
Marc:And it was Drive-By Truckers.
Marc:But when you say you had an idea for a band, what did you picture?
Guest:I had an old friend or a new friend that I just made, a guy named Jim Stacey, who actually has a restaurant, a really successful one now in Atlanta called Palookaville.
Guest:But he and his then-girlfriend, Debbie, went on this little weekend trip up to the mountains with my then-wife and I. And they brought all these, like, cassette tapes of just –
Guest:Honky-tonk, great old-timey country music and garage rock from the 60s.
Guest:Some of it I'd heard on the periphery, but I grew up, you know, country shit, I don't listen to that.
Guest:But all of a sudden, the first time I'd heard it with new ears as a grown-up.
Guest:and probably, you know, with the right combination of chemicals to make my mind open to it.
Guest:But I fell madly in love with it.
Marc:With the combination of honky-tonk and psychedelic garage music?
Guest:All of that, plus I was really into hip-hop.
Guest:And so I was like, well, you know, I think I can write in this format, this kind of old country format, but infuse it with, you know, more the subject matter that the hip-hop artists are writing about, but from the perspective of, you know,
Guest:white you know white redneck male who grew up you know uh witnessing all this shit you know and uh and so it just kind of you know one thing led to another and i wrote uh i think the company i keep was the first song i wrote for the uh which is on our second album for for this band and um right around that time i wrote
Marc:pretty much most of the first two my parts of the first two albums well isn't it funny though that that your conception of this band you know to to include you know uh you know country music uh hip-hop sensibility and rock and roll is is is exactly what you come from
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I mean, exactly.
Marc:It's black music, it's country music, and it's rock.
Guest:And a lot of it is stuff that I'd spent part of my life running from, and all of a sudden it caught me.
Guest:It caught up with me, and I knew immediately that Cooley had to be the guitar player in that band.
Guest:It absolutely was essential that he be part of this project.
Guest:I mean, that was the that was the key ingredient for this band in my head that I wanted.
Guest:And so I had to lure him back in.
Guest:And and I mean, there was like it was like a strategy involved because he was living in Birmingham.
Guest:He had his own life going and and.
Guest:Was he working as a musician?
Guest:He was playing guitar, and he was like the only white guy in a funk band, and doing funk, like Brick House, you know, playing those songs, which he's really good at.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I mean, he can play the shit out of it, and hence him being the white guy in the band that they called on.
Guest:I mean, he could play, but...
Guest:But at the same time, I knew he wanted to do original stuff.
Guest:So I opened it up to him.
Guest:I was like, how about I'm going to put together this band, but there's an open spot.
Guest:And whenever you're free and want to come play, the door is open.
Guest:But if it's not going to work out for you, if you've got a gig or you've got to work...
Guest:you know we'll carry on and play and so the first six months open door policy for the guitar player yeah and in the first six months he probably missed four or five shows but not for long i mean it was like he obviously loved doing it yeah and it clicked and uh and even in those very beginning days we were
Guest:were more successful than any band we had ever had.
Guest:So it was kind of encouraging.
Guest:Because of Athens, probably.
Guest:We had 50 people coming to see us and they all loved it.
Guest:Wow, this never happened.
Guest:Yeah, I'll come back and play the next one.
Guest:So next thing I know, we're all quitting our jobs and taking off in an Econoline and playing 250 shows a year all over the country.
Guest:I mean, it was pretty quick.
Guest:We just threw ourself in it.
Guest:And it's like everybody quit our jobs the same day.
Guest:And that was before you put the first record out?
Guest:Right after the first record.
Guest:Actually, right as Pizza Deliverance came out is when we all quit our jobs.
Guest:The second record.
Guest:Yeah, the second record.
Guest:We all quit our jobs.
Guest:It's like, this is our chance.
Guest:It's now or never.
Guest:The best shot at this shit we're ever going to get is right now.
Guest:And if it don't work, at least we'll have tried.
Guest:And so we did.
Guest:And here we are.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's interesting, though, because the ideology or, you know, the conceit of what you wanted to do, it remains.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That, you know, with Gangster Billy and then, you know, Pizza Deliverance, that you were struggling.
Marc:It seemed like to me that your agenda, either through...
Marc:a point of view that you were manufacturing, that obviously comes from your heart, but the idea that you were trying to reconcile something that I think the Muscle Shoals guys tried to reconcile too, which is race, the reputation of the South, what's good about the South, what isn't good about the South.
Marc:It seemed like to be a very conscious part of the project.
Guest:yeah yeah definitely and as fate would have it or right at that exact same time i was separately working on this other thing that morphed into southern rock opera and uh you know the some of the writing of southern rock opera even predated the starting of the truckers and and for a while when i was working on what became that record it didn't even occur to me that that would be the next trucker record there was just this other thing i was kind of working what was driving you to work on that
Guest:I mean, in the very beginning, it was a guy named Earl Hicks who produced Pizza Deliverance and our live record, Alabama Ass Whoopin', and then became our bass player for a while in the band.
Guest:He and I had this idea we were going to try to write a screenplay.
Guest:about a fictitious rock band in the 70s and kind of base it on some of the you know i knew a lot of stories growing up around bands and and the stuff i'd hear on the periphery and in particularly a lot about the leonard skyndard mythology because they had recorded in muscle shoals early on and well yeah they knew them well that that that part of that story that what's his name jerry the the guitar who produced those jimmy johnson jimmy johnson
Marc:you know recorded that that a lot of stuff that was on the first record but couldn't couldn't sell it right he couldn't get him a record label and but he he laid down what 13 or 14 tracks yeah one of them yeah and they left him right and a so okay and then they wrote sweet home alabama is kind of a olive branch because you know when they left him i mean it was you know hurt feelings and
Guest:You know, a little bit of anger, I'm sure, involved.
Guest:But they but, you know, you know, they wrote Sweet Home Alabama.
Guest:That whole verse about Muscle Shoals was kind of men as an olive branch to Jimmy Johnson, as was my song Ronnie and Neil, because Jimmy had such hard feelings.
Guest:towards me for uh you know buttholeville and some of my punk rock behavior as a a younger as a younger gent and uh so he uh so i wrote ronnie and neil as kind of an olive branch towards jimmy uh for that and uh and how'd he respond oh we we it worked it we we're fine now but uh he speaks to me and uh he might even halfway like me now but uh
Marc:But so it started as a screenplay idea and you had all this stuff kicking around your head from your dad's world and from, you know, just being the age we are and loving Skinner.
Marc:I imagine I love Skinner.
Marc:Do you?
Guest:I did as a kid, but then I went through a real period of not, you know, the whole, you know, the whole punk rock thing and, and, and the whole rebel flag thing was a big turnoff.
Guest:And, and, and, you know, and actually in, in researching, cause I, like when we were writing Southern rock opera, I mean, we got really,
Guest:You know, I mean, I mean, I researched like you were, you know, like you dissertation.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I really did.
Guest:And in a lot of my research, I kept finding that they were really trying to distance themselves from some of that right when the plane crashed, you know, and they were kind of in a period of.
Guest:You know, they weren't wanting to be this Southern rock thing.
Guest:They wanted to be a world-class rock and roll band.
Guest:And they were, you know, doing away with some of that.
Guest:You know, they were starting to realize that people were misunderstanding what they were intending with the flag and all that kind of stuff.
Guest:But at any rate, they...
Guest:I was writing this thing, but I was touring all the time.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I'm very obsessive.
Guest:And it kind of dawned on me.
Guest:It's like, you know, I don't have no means whatsoever to make a movie.
Guest:That world is a million miles away from where I am.
Guest:But I've got this kind of kick ass band.
Guest:Why don't we just turn this into like a, you know, a rock opera, you know, which was, you know, the most out of out of fashion, out of style thing at that era that you could possibly think of.
Guest:So, of course, that appealed to us in itself.
Guest:The fact that, you know, fuck you.
Guest:And also, yeah, and also, you know, our rock opera kind of pokes fun at the whole notion of a rock opera.
Guest:I mean, you know, there's definitely a lot of middle finger and a lot of, you know, a lot of a lot of humor and poking fun and just the pure notion of a rock opera because rock opera, because it is it's a silly thing, you know, and sure.
Guest:And so so it was.
Guest:So that was part of the idea on that, too.
Guest:And.
Guest:And then in the midst of writing that, George Wallace died.
Guest:And one and I was I was at home and turn on the TV.
Guest:And there it all is.
Guest:There's the fire hoses and the police dogs and all the just horrible, terrible shit that, you know, that, you know, that they were known for, you know, especially my home state.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And in something like snapped in my head and all of a sudden the, you know, Betamax guillotine, which was the original name of Southern Rock Opera.
Guest:That's when it kind of became this other thing was I was watching all that footage and I got so just I got fucking pissed.
Guest:I mean, I was just so mad.
Guest:And I wrote the Wallace song that's on Southern Rock Opera, which is from the devil's point of view, welcoming George Wallace into hell and telling him why he's there.
Guest:It's like, okay, maybe you weren't a racist, but you perpetuated all this bullshit to get votes.
Guest:And that might make you something even worse.
Guest:I don't know if there's anything, in my opinion, worse than racism.
Guest:the most evil of evils and i think is the root of so many of our world's problems and uh but uh but if there is anything worse than that it might be perpetuating that bullshit for votes and not even you know not maybe not even believe in some of that shit but but playing that card you know thank you for playing that
Marc:Right.
Marc:And you had to research that because like in that song, you know, you were able to sort of document through through the George Wallace story that, you know, he was willing to change his views when the public was willing to turn.
Marc:So, you know, his he was more he was obviously a bad guy, but, you know, it was more about politics and it was about belief.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And he had been a progressive.
Guest:I mean, before that, he had been a progressive.
Guest:You know, his first election he ran for, he ran as a moderate on segregation and, you know, had his ass handed to him.
Guest:And so he reinvented himself as...
Guest:the George Wallace that we all knew that ruined the reputation of your state, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I wrote, I wrote that song really quickly.
Guest:I later wrote the three great Alabama icons and that kind of gives the backstory and all that.
Guest:But, but I wrote the Wallace song really quickly on the same night that I also wrote.
Guest:I also wrote, let there be rock.
Guest:And I wrote angels and fuselage.
Guest:I wrote all three of those songs on the same night.
Marc:and let there be rocks great song these in there all it's what i love about the way you write songs is that you know despite the the perhaps the the the despicable nature of either the the character in the song or the voice the narrator of the song is that you humanize them right you know and because that's the real trick to it because people you know these characters are they're they're multi-dimensional they're complex yeah and they're still people
Guest:You know, his George Wallace's grandson's a drive by trucker fan.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And and I mean, I've run into him when we've played in the town he lives in, you know, and he came up to me.
Guest:He thanked me for that song.
Guest:I'm like, are you kidding?
Guest:Did you listen to it?
Guest:You know, but he's like, you know, hey, he's like, you know, look, my, you know, my grandfather did what he did, you know, and and.
Guest:At least you told the truth about it.
Guest:You didn't make it this black and white thing.
Guest:You told the other side of the ugly story, and he appreciated it.
Guest:And I do try to be fair to the people I write about.
Guest:I do even...
Guest:The worst of them, almost every person, there's more to them than just the facade, you know, and so I try to get past that.
Guest:And just like some of the more likable characters are also very flawed, you know, and so I really always strive to be fair.
Guest:No, don't always nail it.
Marc:No, but I thought that like Southern rock opera was this, like it, I learned something from it because, you know, I grew up judging the South in a very, in a very broad way.
Marc:And, and the truth of the matter is, is that, you know, guys like you grew up knowing that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So to me that, that album in its entirety is, is an attempt to, to sort of reconcile, uh, the different parts of the South and the different parts of, of what the, the stereotype is.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Humanize it.
Guest:I mean, the South gave us Booker T and the MGs.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:I mean, if nothing else, you know, if Faulkner and Booker T and the MGs were the only two things that had ever... Good that had ever happened down there.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's a lot.
Marc:And also, it seems to me an unconscious continuation of what your father was involved with.
Marc:For sure.
Marc:For sure.
Guest:Because they didn't see color lines in that studio.
Guest:And my dad...
Guest:he totally got that about what we were doing that was that record was the moment when he realized that maybe maybe i was on to something with this music thing i was so obsessed with oh that's maybe i did have a chance and uh and he was uh and it's funny because when we were working on that record you know and and that is obviously the record that put us on the map i mean that record you know is is why i get to support my family doing what i love and and
Guest:and why when i tour now i ride on a bus instead of a van right no but uh but at the time we were making it everyone said we were crazy you know it's like it's like you're you're gonna throw away you know y'all kind of got this little momentum going you're gonna throw it away to go do this this thing about leonard's you know what the hell you know and and and so of course we reveled in that you know me and you know me and cooley both are kind of
Guest:And by that time, Brad was in the band and all the guys that were in the band in that lineup, Rob and Earl, we all kind of reveled in the fact that everyone thinks we're really fucking up, but we're doing this thing that if we can just complete it, it's going to be cool.
Marc:I've come back to Skinner because when I was a kid, I had all the records and I was upset when they died.
Marc:Sure, me.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And and, you know, and then I didn't go like I didn't say fuck Skinner.
Marc:I just felt ashamed of it.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:And if you're playing in a band and we had our little punk rock band in North Alabama and we'd be playing a club.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The people yelling Freebird weren't being ironic.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, no, they actually would be waiting for you outside and want to kick your ass because you wouldn't play Freebird.
Marc:they were not being ironic at all right but the interesting is that the argument you make in southern rock opera is that you know they were misunderstanding some of the intention sure absolutely were you know and now what did did gary rosington ever ever did any of the survivors ever talk to you about this did you ever meet them yeah we we did some shows we actually had the same management briefly
Guest:uh is them right around the time not long after southern rock opera came out when we we ended up getting a major label because of that and we signed a lost highway and we got picked up by a management company briefly that uh that also managed them and so we did a few shows with them it was really awkward and kind of weird and uh you know gary's always been nice to me but i don't think he particularly cares for what we do and uh and i understand that i don't you know is he a good old boy or what i
Marc:i i i don't know i don't i don't know him i i i just you know i've met him he's always been nice to me but i i don't really you know and at that point though that was a juggernaut of a business and and and you know the the necessity for that band to survive no matter what and maintain the status that they once had what must have been it must have felt like real full-on show business
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I'm sure they didn't know quite what to make of what we were doing.
Guest:Because they didn't know how to take it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Artemis Powell was the one in that, because he didn't play with them by then.
Guest:Did he pass away?
Guest:No, he's still alive.
Guest:The drummer.
Guest:The drummer.
Guest:But he really liked Southern rock opera.
Guest:He was very complimentary.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:came to see us in Asheville, North Carolina, where he was living, and came backstage and told us some amazing stories and all of that.
Guest:But, yeah, you know, it was a crazy experience going, you know, becoming kind of famous for this or semi-famous for this weird thing that, you know,
Marc:people have a lot of people misunderstand and still and particularly people who have never heard it probably can easily write it off as this thing that isn't at all what it is supposed to be let's get into the jason isbell period because you know i talked to him it was interesting because i was on a show with him and i wasn't familiar with his solo work really and then people were like you got to talk to jason then i like i had to you know sit down with his work and
Marc:and then make the connection with you two guys, because I knew he was with the band, but I didn't know what that yielded for you, but it seemed like the sensibility and the depth of emotion that that guy's capable of as a songwriter and as a player.
Marc:He's amazing.
Marc:Sort of complimented and really fit into the vision that you had had for Drive-By Truckers.
Guest:Another one of those moments.
Guest:My life, I've had a series of moments of clarity that have happened at various times, usually in the nick of time right when it's most needed.
Guest:And one of which was the idea that became the Drive-By Truckers.
Guest:And one of them was the idea that became Southern Rock Opera.
Guest:And meeting...
Guest:meeting jason at the exact moment i met him counts i don't guess that's a moment of clarity but it was definitely like a a a life-changing moment in time that happened you know we were we had a mutual friend we were both at that friend's house your dad well well yeah but that wasn't it was a a friend of ours named dick cooper yeah who uh ended up working for the band for a few years and he had been um and ironically he had been uh the
Guest:tour manager for the opening act for Skynyrd on the Street Survivors Tour.
Guest:And he's just a guy, Muscle Shoals guy, that had been on the periphery of a lot of stuff.
Guest:He's always that guy behind the scenes that made shit happen.
Guest:He was one of those guys.
Guest:And I was staying at his house, and Shauna was his roommate, and Jason was...
Guest:in town visiting shauna i don't think they were dating but they were they were friends yeah maybe beneficial friends even and and uh he was and we were all at dick's house and sitting around everybody had guitars dick's other roommate was a guitar player uh scott boyer and uh we're all sitting around kind of passing the guitar around
Guest:and um i was in the finishing process of like finishing southern rock opera so i'd play a song off that and then jason would play this like amazing song he was like god you know actually one of the songs he played was tva which later came out on uh one of our records and uh
Guest:And he was just, you know, it's like, God damn that kid, you know, and he looked I mean, he looked 14.
Guest:He looked like, you know, he was heavy and he was overweight and and and very baby faced.
Guest:He was he was in truth, I guess, 2021.
Guest:But he looked, you know, early teens.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And.
Guest:And it's like, God damn, that kid can play.
Guest:And God damn, that kid can write, you know.
Guest:And so I played some solo shows that summer and I would take him out with me and he'd play a few songs kind of opening and then back me up for part of my set.
Guest:And, you know, and then as luck would have it, we were in the middle of the first leg of the Southern Rock Opera Tour and things went south with Rob and the band.
Guest:And for various reasons, he kind of left suddenly and kind of wasn't there one night when we needed him to be.
Guest:And Jason happened to be there that night.
Guest:And we were playing this acoustic thing.
Guest:It was kind of a sit-down thing.
Guest:And Southern Rock Opera had just kind of started taking off.
Guest:And Spin Magazine had sent...
Guest:a writer, Eric Weisbard, into town to cover it.
Guest:And so we're playing this show.
Guest:We're missing a guitar player, and Jason's sitting there.
Guest:I was like, hey, man, grab a guitar.
Guest:You know these songs.
Guest:You've been hearing me play them all summer.
Guest:And so he jumped in, and then the next day got in the van and took off with us.
Guest:And the first two weeks he was in the band, he wrote Outfit and Decoration Day.
Guest:And so we were touring behind Southern Rock Opera, but we were already writing...
Guest:the record that became Decoration Day.
Guest:And those three records... And already working those songs up.
Marc:Those three records that he was on, I mean, it just seemed like you guys, sensibility-wise, really complemented each other.
Guest:Oh, it was amazing.
Guest:It was amazing.
Guest:It was an amazing chemistry, and it was a lot of fun, and he was this...
Guest:bright-eyed fresh-faced kid you know and and uh he was like a kid in the candy store you know and and we were all getting our first taste of some sort of success you know we were you know all of a sudden we were starting to move into bigger rooms and and we were touring just unbelievably relentlessly really hard but uh but we were having so much fun with it that you know it didn't even seem like work at first and uh
Guest:And so it was great, you know, and then that we did Decoration Day with him and he's such a big part of that.
Guest:And then we did, you know, we were already working on Dirty South by the time Decoration Day came out.
Marc:I love those two records.
Guest:And so we, you know, just working and working and working.
Guest:And, you know, and I think we broke ourselves.
Guest:We worked too hard and without any kind of breathing room.
Guest:And Jason was so young.
Guest:He was going hard.
Guest:He was going hard.
Guest:And we were all, you know, 12, 15 years older.
Guest:And, you know, so we had already been through some of the stuff he was going through and kind of come out the other side and probably not totally always patient with, you know, with the young kid going through it.
Guest:And he really didn't like being considered the young kid either, you know, as anyone in that age isn't going to like.
Guest:And, you know,
Guest:and and you know and then started thinking you know god these guys they're old you know these old fuckers trying to tell me not to drink you know slow down on the blow we certainly weren't weren't saying well that part we've definitely he did not need to do blow but uh no one needs to do blow but uh but the um i mean he talked about this by the way i'm not speaking out of school i know i know he's been he's been very candid about it and uh we
Guest:We were a hard-drinking band, a very hard-living band, but it got different with him.
Guest:And I think he didn't quite know how to handle the success yet, either.
Guest:That's a tough pill.
Guest:It was hard at 35, so I can't imagine what it would have been like.
Guest:Being, you know, 22, it was his first real serious band.
Guest:He'd never really been in a band before.
Guest:He'd always just played his songs.
Guest:He was a singer-songwriter.
Guest:And he was writing all these songs, way more than could fit on any one of our records, especially with two other writers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and so it was it was inevitable it was going to clash.
Guest:I mean, I knew when he joined that it was just going to be a temporary thing.
Guest:And then Shauna joined and that was all great for a little while.
Guest:But then for then their marriage started falling apart.
Guest:So we're all cooped up together and there's all this drama and all this tension and awkward shit.
Guest:That's some good raw meat for songwriting.
Guest:Yeah, fuck that, though.
Guest:I've been divorced twice myself.
Guest:I have plenty of fodder, plus my parents' divorce.
Guest:I don't need new angst.
Guest:I still have a lifeline of angst I can dip into at any point in time.
Guest:The river of fury.
Guest:Yeah, it runs deep.
Marc:I got it, man.
Guest:Well, you know, did you like his new album?
Guest:I thought it was phenomenal.
Guest:Beautiful, right?
Guest:I think Elephant's one of the best songs I've ever heard anybody write.
Guest:I think it's just incredible.
Guest:And yeah, it's a beautiful record.
Guest:And I'm really proud of him.
Guest:I'm really proud of him.
Guest:I think Amanda's great, and I'm really proud of him getting his life together.
Guest:And, you know, I never would have said that he wouldn't do it, but I wasn't sure he would do it either.
Guest:I mean, I never wanted to underestimate him, but at the same time, you know...
Guest:It didn't look too good at times.
Guest:When he drank, he was not good to be around.
Guest:And then, like I said, adding in all that other baggage and other bullshit.
Guest:When he left the band, it was time.
Guest:That was the only way for our band to continue forward was for us to part ways.
Guest:And it was painful and it was terrifying because I didn't know if our fans would even...
Guest:totally revolt if we would lose everything but it would seem like it was the only choice we had moving forward and um you know i think worked out it has we've we continued on and you know i think we're in a really great place now and i'm i'm great i'm thrilled to see him in such a great place yeah well that's good to hear i mean the record's great and i'm you know i'm glad you guys are okay and you know it's it's one of the weird concessions if that's the right word that we have to make you know being in the fields we're in is that you know you see guys go down
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And, you know, you know, you got to get out of the way.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You got to do what you can.
Marc:But, you know, you have to sort of, you know, kind of accept in yourself that like, I don't know.
Guest:I mean, by that time we all had kids, you know, it's like it's like, you know, it's like, you know, this this thing we do is also our job now.
Marc:Yeah, and also you don't want to catch a bullet because someone else is an asshole.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And, you know, I'm likely enough just for my own assholery without that, you know.
Guest:If I'm going to take it, it needs to be for something I did.
Marc:If I'm going to take it, it needs to be for something I did.
Marc:That's a life lesson right there.
Marc:Well, I love the new record, and I love talking to you.
Marc:Do you want to play a song off of it?
Marc:Or any song?
Marc:Do you feel comfortable doing that?
Marc:If you'd like, I can do anything you like.
Guest:All right, yeah, let's mic it up.
Guest:All right.
Guest:I want to tell you thanks for having me over, by the way.
Guest:This is great, and it's an honor to get to do this.
Guest:Yeah, I'm thrilled.
Guest:And I love your book.
Guest:I mean, just, God, it's amazing.
Guest:It's great.
Guest:Great.
Guest:Thanks, man.
Guest:But this is the last song on our record, and it's a song called Grand Canyon that I wrote about a part of our trucker family.
Guest:He was our...
Guest:His official job was he was our merch guy, but he was actually kind of our ambassador.
Guest:He worked the merch table on our tours for seven years.
Guest:But in the course of doing that, he got to know, like, literally hundreds and hundreds of our fans, like, intimately.
Guest:He just had this kind of photographic memory for people and names and really built relationships and was kind of like, you know, the guy that they all knew.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he and I were... He was close friends with all of us, too.
Guest:And he died really suddenly about a year ago.
Guest:And we were not long before we made the record.
Guest:And we were all just kind of devastated.
Guest:And the first tour we had to do without him was like the week after he passed.
Guest:And we...
Guest:I wrote this song for him on that tour, and it's the last song on the record, which we dedicated the album to him.
Guest:But his name's Craig Liske, and the song's called Grand Canyon.
Guest:I went to Grand Canyon
Guest:And we stood at the expanse And we watched the rocks change colors And we watched the shadows dance And we probably didn't say anything As the sunset turned to night We led the spirits to the talking Through cascades of fading light
Guest:And we drove across the desert Saw the mountain range at dawn Heard the thunder rumbles echo Against the rocks that gods were made from And we drove across the wastelands Till we finally reached the sea
Guest:And I wonder how life so sturdy Could just one day cease to be There's never one to wonder About the things beyond control I stare off into the darkness And I feel the highway roll I feel the highway roll
Guest:And we run in the darkness Till the nighttime turns to day All our sorrows, pains and angers And we turn them into play There's no time to dwell upon it It's this life that we chose That made it all worth living
Guest:And it's the sorrows that life throws The recently departed made the sunsets Say farewell to the ones they left behind There we're taking the color hues To see our sadness through As the sun of wrath and say goodbye Say goodbye
Say goodbye.
Guest:Out my window, soft lit and fading light.
Guest:Watch it stirring through the clouds, watch it running through the night.
Guest:In my dreams I still can see them, flying through a western sky.
Guest:And I think about Grand Canyon And I lift my glass and smile I lift my glass and smile
Marc:Great.
Marc:That sounded great.
Marc:Thanks, man.
Guest:All right.
Marc:Thanks for doing it.
Marc:It's a great song.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:And good luck with the new record and good luck with everything.
Marc:I'm glad you're doing all right.
Guest:Man, thank you so much.
Marc:Sweet conversation and sweet music from Patterson Hill, the drive-by truckers.
Marc:Go see them if you get the chance.
Marc:Buy their records.
Marc:There's a ton of them, and they're all pretty fucking good.
Marc:So that's our show.
Marc:I am Marc Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:That's how I ended if I was a radio guy.
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com.
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Marc:You can leave a comment.
Marc:You can, you know, do the thing.
Marc:I'm just happy you're listening.
Marc:All right.
Marc:We got a lot of good shows coming up.
Marc:Everything's okay.
Marc:I just got to stop.
Marc:I got to stop.
Marc:I just got to stop.
Marc:Boomer lives.