Georgia Today: Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers on 'Decoration Day'; Reuniting with Jason Isbell

Orlando Montoya: Hello and welcome to the Georgia Today podcast. Today we bring you a special edition of the podcast, a Christmas Eve show featuring rock and roll and one of our favorite Southern storytellers. Patterson Hood of the iconic Southern rock band Drive-By Truckers, tells Salvation South editor Chuck Reece that even though he moved away 10 years ago, he still thinks of Athens, Georgia as his home. 

Patterson Hood: I lived in Athens for 21 years and Athens I will always consider Athens home, even more than my hometown I grew up in. That community enabled me to become who I became. 

Orlando Montoya: Today is Wednesday, December 24th. I'm Orlando Montoya and this is Georgia Today. 

Credit: Stacy Reece

Last month, iconic Athens Southern rock band Drive-By Truckers released the definitive Decoration Day, a box set commemorating the 22nd anniversary of their classic 2003 album. To mark the occasion, they reunited with former member Jason Isbell after 22 years for a performance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Salvation South editor Chuck Reese talked with Drive-by Truckers founding member Patterson about how that performance came together. And the lasting legacy of Decoration Day. This is an extended version of the conversation we featured previously on Georgia Today. 

Chuck Reece: How did the whole idea of including Jason in the performance on Colbert come about? 

Patterson Hood: He was nice enough to do it. To be totally blatantly honest about it, I seriously doubt we would have gotten on for a reissue of a 23 year old record. You know, I doubt they were going to put us on TV, but when they pitched it about doing it with Jason, I was like, well, you know, if he's willing to do and I'm in, you, know, absolutely he said, yes. And I'm like, hell yeah. You know, and Cooley was like, hell yeah. I mean, we're all friends. We're all good. We've been good for a long time. We all got there about 10 minutes before our rehearsal soundcheck thing. And, uh, we got up there completely cold. I mean held the band's been off. You know, the band hadn't seen each other in several months and, uh. And we walked up there and plugged in and they asked us to run through it a few times so they could get camera things. The first take of it sounded as good as what we did on TV. 

MUSIC: Drive-By Truckers - "Hell No, I Ain't Happy" [from The Late Show With Stephen Colbert]

Patterson Hood: Jason Isbell. He's a freakish talent, and he was freakish talent before we met him. At that time, he was so young. We left for that tour, and his mama dropped him off for us to all get in the van and leave together. And his mama, she comes up to me, tears in her eyes. It's like, don't let my boy die. Don't kill my boy, you know? I'm like, I won't. I promise. I mean, I'd say the last. Five or six years, you know, I mean, we're closer than we ever were when he was in the band. And he was like a, almost like a kid brother to me or something. You know, I always loved Jason and, uh, you don't know, no one's prouder than me, you know, maybe his mama. 

Chuck Reece: I'm curious why you wanted to put this definitive thing out now, because it's not a milestone anniversary. 

Patterson Hood: We can't do anything right. Like my new record tells like a autobiographical story of my first 30 years, but it tells it backwards. And even that the timeline gets screwed up. And I mean, I can't keep doing anything right? Uh, you know, it, we, we just play it like we feel it. 

When I look back at my life now that I'm an old man and look back my life. I mean, the first half of 2002... Was probably the most idyllic six months of my life. I mean, it was exciting, man. We had a, you know, we got four stars at Rolling Stone and we were making these year-end lists in the Village Voice and you know we're selling out everywhere we play. Still play in small rooms, but you know they're like, I mean people are. Excited when we come to town. I'd never experienced that. I've been doing this, you know, literally 16 years. By that point, I'd been playing empty rooms. When the Drive-By Truckers were all of a sudden pulling 50 to 100 people a night everywhere we went, we were excited, man. It's like, we got something that's clicking with people. And so we were pedal to the metal, man, it's like this is our chance. 

It was a very fertile time. I was going through a divorce. The band had gone through all their battles we had making Southern Rock Opera, which almost broke up the band. And there was a lot of turmoil and personal lives at that era. So there was lot of fodder to write about. I had very much a clear vision of what that record was going to be. I never really talked about that to Cooley, but he evidently had the exact same vision about it, judging from what his songs were for it. 

The very first song I wrote for Decoration Day was "The Deeper In". I'd get off work at 2:30 in the morning and I'd go home and I was living out on Jefferson Road, old Jefferson Road and this big white haunted house, I think you probably came out there at time or two. There is a railroad track that ran right across our front yard. So I'd come home from work and take my guitar out on the front porch if the weather was okay, and drink a beer and play my guitar for about an hour every night when I'd get home from work, and watch the train go by. I wrote "Deeper In", and it probably took me 15 minutes to write. I mean, it just wrote itself, it's just, I mean barely longer than it takes to play it. I knew when I wrote it, it was the first song on the record. 

The working title was always Heathens. We changed the name of the record. When we were mixing it, which was fall of 2002, we were mixing the record and David Bowie, Oasis, and someone else in about a two month period put out records with Heathens in the title. And it's like, God, you know, I can't begrudge Bowie. So it's, like, we got to find another title and Decoration Day was the obvious next choice. In retrospect, it's better that it worked out the way it did, because that's the perfect title. And it's even better than Heathen's. But I'll always refer to those as my Heathens songs. 

Chuck Reece: And there are about 200 of them. 

Patterson Hood: About 200 of them. Yeah. I mean, there's not 200 keepers. 

Chuck Reece: This whole album was coming together at a time when you guys were back and forth between Athens, where you lived at the time, and Atlanta, constantly. 

Patterson Hood: Constantly. I lived in Athens for 21 years and Athens, I will always consider Athens home. Even more than my hometown I grew up in. That community enabled me to become who I became. And, uh, and so, you know, as far as I'm concerned, the drive-by truckers will always be based in Athens, Georgia. And I'll always consider, Athens, George home. 

We're about to make a new record. We're starting a record in February. We're going to start at Athens. I don't know. Where it will lead us, but we're gonna go in and we're going to start recording and you know, we want to do something different too because we've got a lot of records, there's no need of doing another one that's a lesser version of something we've already done. 

Orlando Montoya: That was Patterson Hood of The Drive-By Truckers speaking with Salvation South host Chuck Reece. And for more of Chuck, you can listen to the Salvation South podcast. Available wherever you get your podcasts. 

And that's it for today's edition of Georgia Today. In this season of gratitude and looking back, I want to say thank you for your listenership this entire year. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. Find the latest Georgia news at GPB.org/news. Hit subscribe on this podcast to stay current with us in your feed and send us feedback at GeorgiaToday@GPB.org. I'm Orlando Montoya. Have a great holiday! And I'll talk to you again soon. 

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For more on these stories and more, go to GPB.org/news

Salvation South editor Chuck Reece comments on Southern culture and values in a weekly segment that airs Wednesdays during Morning Edition and All Things Considered on GPB Radio. Salvation South Deluxe is a series of longer Salvation South episodes which tell deeper stories of the Southern experience through the unique voices that live it. You can also find them here at GPB.org/Salvation-South and wherever you get your podcasts.