{"id":5981,"date":"2012-12-12T12:21:24","date_gmt":"2012-12-12T18:21:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stylusmagazine.ca\/?p=5981"},"modified":"2012-12-12T12:21:24","modified_gmt":"2012-12-12T18:21:24","slug":"hillbilly-highway-dbt-haulin-solo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2012\/12\/12\/hillbilly-highway-dbt-haulin-solo\/","title":{"rendered":"Hillbilly Highway – DBT, Haulin’ Solo"},"content":{"rendered":"

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by Sheldon Birnie<\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s been a busy year for Drive-By Truckers, both present and past, even though 2012 marked possibly their least active road-schedule since the early days of their 15+ years out on the Hillbilly Highway.<\/p>\n

I’ve talked about my obsession with the Truckers here before<\/a>, so I’ll spare you all of that right now. Suffice to say that when I drove myself down to Minneapolis last October to see DBT, I caught them at the tail end of about a dozen years of long, hard travelling, and it was clear something had to give. A month or so later, long-serving bass player Shonna Tucker left the group. Coming into 2012, the group decided it was time to slow things down a little, and for the first time in years, they booked well under their regular 200+ shows.\u00a0However, considering that playing music is how these fellas pay the bills, it came as no surprise that the boys got busy with other projects quickly.<\/p>\n

Mike Cooley, who rarely performed solo gigs, set up a string of them early in the year, which were streamed online for nerds (like me) who don’t live in Athens or Atlanta or who didn’t buy up the tickets lickety-split. Luckily, the shows were recorded, and just yesterday Cooley released his first solo record<\/a>, The Fool on Every Corner. <\/em>While the disc is made up mostly of Cooley’s DBT tracks played solo, it does include one new tune, “Drinking Coke & Eating Ice<\/a>,” along with a cover of Charlie Rich’s “Behind Closed Door.” The disc itself is a great, intimate, boozy affair, complete with plenty of hollering and mumbled stage banter. One highlight for me comes during “3 Dimes Down,”<\/a> a tune complete with Tom T Hall references and a line lifted from Bob Seger’s “Rock N Roll Never Forgets,”<\/a> one of rock’s best pump-you-up-for-a-night-of-boozin-anthems. Towards the end of “3 Dimes Down,” Cooley goes off on the Seger line and gets right into “Rock N Roll Never Forgets,” until he forgets the words and trails off.<\/p>\n

Not to be outdone, the ever prolific Patterson Hood released an album<\/a> of his own earlier this fall. His third solo disc, Heat Lightning Rumbles in the Distance<\/em> is easily his strongest solo release yet — though I still prefer his stripped down, Nebraska-<\/em>esque Killers & Stars.<\/em> Strong writing and great arrangements are present throughout Heat Lightning<\/em>, though, much like Murdering Oscar<\/em>, as solid a record as it is, it leaves me wanting the chemistry of the Truckers.<\/p>\n

As if that wasn’t enough, well, buckle up. Former Trucker Jason Isbell<\/a> has been touring, recording, producing, and guesting with pals\/artists like Ryan Adams<\/a> and Justin Townes Earle<\/a>. If that weren’t enough, he put also put out a rocking live album with his touring band The 400 Unit, titled appropriately Live From Alabama. <\/em>Definitely the most rocking of the three releases here, Live From Alabama<\/em> is a must have if you’re a Truckers fan, and definitely recommended listening if you’re at all into hard-travelling songwriters who work the Hillbilly Highway for a living.<\/p>\n

With so much going on, I for one look forward to what 2013 will bring. Of course I got my fingers crossed for another DBT record, and a Winnipeg date. But I’ll take what I can get. Here’s to hoping, though…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Sheldon Birnie It’s been a busy year for Drive-By Truckers, both present and past, even though 2012 marked possibly their least active road-schedule since the early days of their 15+ years out on the Hillbilly Highway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[31,281,432,806,861],"class_list":["post-5981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","tag-alabama","tag-drive-by-truckers","tag-hillbilly-highway","tag-rock","tag-singer-songwriter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5981\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}