Drive-By Truckers park for show at Rev Room

Patterson Hood of the Drive-By Truckers is at home in Portland, Ore., and he's happy to be there.

"I've been gone a lot, so it's amazing being home, actually," he says.

He won't be there for long, though. The band was about to get back on the road for a short tour that brings them back to the Rev Room in Little Rock tonight.

Hood and the other Truckers -- singer-guitarist-co-founder Mike Cooley, bassist Matt Patton, drummer Brad Morgan, and guitarist Jay Gonzalez -- recently recorded the band's 12th studio album in Memphis.

"The majority of it is in the can," he says. "We cut it [in September] in Memphis at Sam Phillips Recording, the coolest studio I've ever worked in."

There's no solid release date for the as-yet-titled album, Hood says: "We're pretty busy through spring and want to take time off this summer before plunging into putting out a new record and doing press and touring, so we're probably looking at maybe early next fall."

The album is the follow-up to 2016's righteous, politically charged and critically praised American Band.

Hood, who was a 2015 speaker in the Frank and Kula Kumpuris Distinguished Lecture Series at the Clinton Presidential Center and who wrote a New York Times Magazine op-ed piece called "The South's Heritage Is So Much More Than Just a Flag," says politics inform the new album, though maybe not as obviously as on the previous record.

"The people that the last one p** off will probably be p** off by this one," he says. "It's a more personal take on what going through these last few years has done to everyone's state of mind. It was a beast to write, but I'm really happy with it, and the band's never played better."

Hood grew up in Alabama, the son of David Hood, bassist in the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, also called The Swampers, who played on seminal albums by Aretha Franklin, Paul Simon, the Staple Singers and many others and were name-checked in Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama."

The Truckers were formed in 1996 by Hood and Cooley from the ashes of Adam's House Cat, their first band (more on that bunch in just a bit).

The band's wry humor and warped Southern rock were evident on its first two albums, Gangstabilly and Pizza Deliverance.

It was on 2001's Southern Rock Opera, though, that the Truckers really hit their stride. A double-album concept piece that tackled Southern identity, rock 'n' roll, Lynyrd Skynyrd and former Alabama Gov. George Wallace, the record was a breakout for the band and revealed Cooley and Hood as powerful, perceptive writers who weren't interested in Old South imagery or tropes.

Fellow Alabamian Jason Isbell soon signed on, and for a while the group was a hydra-headed songwriting monster. Albums like Decoration Day, The Dirty South and A Blessing and a Curse were loaded with rough-hewn story songs and richly detailed character studies that melded '70s riffs, indie rock and country influences into a whiskey-fueled whole.

Isbell left in 2007 for a solo career while Hood and Cooley motored on with an ever-fluid Truckers lineup, touring constantly and knocking out albums including 2008's Brighter Than Creation's Dark, The Big to Do from 2010, and Go-Go Boots from 2011. Hood also has recorded three solo albums, with the most recent being Heat Lightning Rumbles in the Distance from 2012.

The Truckers' concert experience was wonderfully captured on 2015's It's Great to Be Alive, which was made over three nights at The Fillmore in San Francisco.

The first track on that live album was the crusty "Lookout Mountain" from Dirty South. But it's a song that was originally written by Hood when he was in Adam's House Cat, the band he formed with Cooley in Muscle Shoals, Ala.

In September, the band's lone album, the long-lost Town Burned Down from 1991, was finally released.

"Pulling up those tracks and mixing the record definitely shook loose some memories and some things I hadn't dealt with at the time," Hood says, referring the deaths of former members John Cahoon and Chris Quillen.

Hood re-recorded his vocals and longtime Truckers associate David Barbe mixed the album. The final result doesn't sound that far off from late '80s, early '90s college rock and indie rock of bands like Buffalo Tom. There's also the loose-limbed, staggering spirit of Hood's beloved Replacements in there as well. Still, the bones of the Truckers' sound are evident in Hood's songs about feeling trapped in a small town that favored Top 40 cover bands.

"I wasn't prepared for how good it would sound," he says with a laugh. "I knew the band was good, and I knew our drummer [Chuck Tremblay] was great, but it was better than I remembered."

Style on 11/13/2018