Bootlerockets

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The Drive By Truckers are playing in New York City tonight with The Hold Steady.  Tickets are still available.

Yesterday I caught up with Patterson Hood, who has set the history of the South to music, and asked him about Barack Obama’s election. 

Wolfson: Given that it’s the day after the election, I wanted to start with a couple of political questions, if that’s all right?

Hood:  All right.

Wolfson:  You know, you have written so much about the history of the South and the recent history of the South.  What did it mean to you last night to have the country elect our first African-American president and have at least one state and maybe two from the “Old Confederacy” vote for him?

Hood:  I think it’s great.  I think it’s fantastic.  I really do.  I’m just – I’m almost – I’m kind of speechless about it all and, actually, he was actually my first choice at the very beginning when he first jumped in and it was such a long shot.  So kind of watching the whole thing play out is pretty amazing.  It’s kind of – it almost hadn’t sunk in yet today.  Today I’ve been kind of walking around in a daze from it all.

We were off yesterday and so we all, The Hold Steady and us both had vans parked together at a parking lot at a state college and we were all kind of taking turns in each other’s buses watching the returns come in and cooking a bunch of food and occasionally setting off some bottle rockets whenever there was good news, so it’s been kind of a long couple of days.

Wolfson:  What do you think it says about the changing nature of the South or the demographics of the South or, you know, the changing nature of Southerners or Americans, that we could get to this place?

Hood:  I mean, I think all of the above.  I think it’s time, you know?  The footage last night of Jesse Jackson standing there with tears running down his face kind of said it all.  I can’t even really imagine what he must feel like or what any of the people who, you know, stood next to King when he was shot in ’68 and are now getting to see this happen, you know, what must be going through their minds?

I know how I feel as a white guy from Alabama about it, you know, just – I feel like this is a big next step in the healing of something that’s been kind of our national disgrace, you know?  I think the biggest blemish on all of our lofty talk of, you know, setting an ideal for the rest of the world to see about democracy.  I think the big blemish on that and black eye on that has always been our relations in terms of race and our history with race and slavery and Jim Crow and, you know, King getting assassinated and all of the different steps along the way like that have always been kind of a negative and, to me, this is a huge, huge – I think there’s going to be implications from what happened last night that we really haven’t even started to grasp or fathom yet that I think are going to be very positive.  And I don’t tend to be that optimistic that often because I’m pretty cynical. 

Wolfson:  Well, we all have had reason to be, especially over the last eight years. 

Hood:  Yeah, god damn, no shit.  It’s like the eight-year national nightmare is hopefully lifting.  So, you know, it’s been – as someone that’s just kind of lifelong obsessed with history, watching all of this play out all year has just been really incredible and overwhelming anyway, too.  I’ve been nearly – now, I’ve always been a – pretty much a political junkie as far as keeping up with it all and watching it play out and TV and then, of course, now the Internet.  And so, you know, for someone that’s kind of so obsessed with history, watching such a historical election year on so many levels, you know, even long before it got to this point, it’s been really an amazing thing to watch happen and I –

Wolfson:  Well, it’s funny.  I was watching last night and I said, you know, I sort of said, Patterson Hood is going to have to update the Southern Rock Opera. 

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Ronnie and Neil

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Wallace

Hood:  Yeah, you know, good, that’s a good thing.  I mean, that was written from a very different point in time and point of view.  You know, it’s such a weird irony that that record came out essentially on 9/11 and we had our first show of the tour on the 12^th of September 2001 and we picked up our albums at the manufacturer that morning, on the 12^th.  We were supposed to get them the day before, but they closed early, of course, because of 9/11.  And we didn’t feel like driving down there anyways at that time.

So, I mean, it’s – thinking how much the world has changed just since we put that record out, you know, and, of course, the writing of that record was, you know, a lot of that dates to several years earlier from when it actually came out because it took us so long to get it made.  So, yeah, you know, I don’t really mind seeing – you know, hopefully some of our songs are rendered obsolete, you know.

Wolfson:  Well, it still is a – it’s a portrayal of history that still is relevant; it’s just a lot more in the rearview mirror than it was back then. 

Hood:  Right, absolutely.  And, you know, I wish that this would be the moment where now we say that everything would be okay, but, of course it won’t be, you know?  It’s going to be – you know, it’s a big, big major step in the right direction towards some sort of healing, but it’s not the final step by any means. 

Wolfson:  All right, well, let ask a couple of music questions.  I assume the tour is going well?  You’re enjoying hanging out with The Hold Steady?

Hood:  Yeah, it’s been fantastic.  We’re really enjoying them as a band and getting to watch them every night and jump up there with them for a few songs and have them play with us.  There’s a real good camaraderie already between the two bands, which I expected to happen.  But you never quite know until you actually are out there together how the personalities will mesh.  But it’s been real cool.  And they’re great guys.  And what a great band.  I’ve been really loving their records for a while anyway.  But this is the first time I’ve gotten to see them live because we’re always touring.  So you know, like they’ve played Athens twice in the last year but I’ve been gone both times.  And so it kind of takes touring with them to get to see them.

Wolfson:  Right.  Is there a difference between the typical Hold Steady fan and the typical Truckers fan?

Hood:  There’s a lot of common ground, actually.  And there’s certainly some common fans.  But it surprised me just how much it is.  You know, I mean, it’s almost like we’ll do really similar things – like almost like similar bands from parallel universes or something, although I’d say their fans might be a little younger.  And I don’t know, it’s hard to tell because so far we’ve done – I guess – just five nights and they’ve been pretty evenly divided between towns that were – towns that tended to favor us and towns that tended to favor them.  And so, it’s been kind of interesting to see how it plays out.

You know, in all cases, I’ve felt like both bands have been pretty well embraced.  I mean, it’s not been any kind of thing where half the crowd gets up and leaves after the first band plays, fortunately.

Wolfson:  It was a pairing that I would never have thought about.  But once I heard about it, I was like, oh, this makes perfect sense.

Hood:  Yeah, to me there’s more similarities than differences.  But I always look at things a little differently too because I don’t really segregate along certain musical sound lines.  And I never really have because I listen to stuff so all over the map.  But the areas that we have in common, you know, it’s definitely a storytelling aspect in both bands’ songs.  And even the way they’ve embraced the geography they come from, it’s very parallel.  It’s just a different geography, you know.

Wolfson:  That’s right.  Well, and an emphasis on live performance too.

Hood:  Yeah, yeah, absolutely.  So to me, the common ground definitely outweighs the other.  And the other just makes it more interesting.  So it’s cool.  I’m having a great time.  I’m looking forward to coming to New York tomorrow.  It’s going to be fun.  New York was one of the first cities we really did well in, which was a fortunate thing to have happen for a band.  So you know, really early on, we would just try to make it to New York and then do well enough there to kind of stay out for another week up in that region.  But it was always one of the towns that we kind of did the best in.

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