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ACL: How much Drive-By Truckers is too much?
For my money, the two best bands in America right now are the Hold Steady and the Drive-By Truckers. They’re doing some dates together these days, and my wiseacre colleague Joe Gross has suggested that if I were to see both bands on the same stage, my head would likely explode.
Fortunately for my still undetonated cranium, the Hold Steady isn’t with the Truckers on this swing into town for the Austin City Limits Music Festival, but the Truckers are tacking on an Emo’s appearance and then a surprise, last-minute taping of the “ACL” TV show. And this gave me the opportunity to see one of my two favorite bands three times over two days. Yes, I know. I need help. But the band often and not entirely inaccurately described as Lynyrd Skynyrd meets Nirvana write great big, brooding songs that seriously rock and break your heart at the same time. I took guitarist-singer-songwriter Jason Isbell’s departure a couple of years back like my dog had died; he took some of the band’s best songs with him but the creative core of the band, Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley, remains intact. And Isbell’s departure brought founding member John Neff, one heck of a pedal steel player and guitarist, back on board.
Friday 3 p.m.: So this is what happened: About a week before her scheduled taping, Erykah Badu canceled her scheduled taping of an “ACL” episode on the UT campus. As the show’s executive producer, Terry Lickona, put it Friday afternoon just before the show, “We were disappointed Erykah canceled but glad we had these guys on standby to help out.” I groveled my way into tickets. (April Burchman, you’re a great human being.)
“I used to watch this as a kid so it’s great to be here,” Hood told the crowd at the beginning. The set, which lasted about an hour and 10 minutes, and started out a little on the quiet side (this is, after all, for public television) with Cooley’s “Perfect Timing,” from the newest record, “Bigger Than Creation’s Dark,” and Hood’s “Heathens.” Bassist Shonna Tucker got a spotlight for her “I’m Sorry Huston,” her first foray into songwriting with the band. And they also threw in “18 Wheels of Love,” the latter a song from 1998’s “Gangstabilly” that Hood wrote to commemorate his mother’s marriage — in Dollywood.
“This has been one of the greatest times of my life,” Hood said as things were winding down. It sure sounded like he meant it.
With one of three shows in the bag, next up was:
Friday 10:30 p.m.: The show with the Truckers and Shooter Jennings at Emo’s was way sold out, and it was hotter in the club than it had been at Zilker Park earlier in the day. And let me just say that after you experience the state-of-the-art sound in ACL’s studio, not to mention great sight lines and no drunks sloshing beer on you, a club show requires something of an attitude adjustment — and for the band, too. In contrast to the taping, it was an all-electric set, opening with the doomed howl of “Sink Hole.”
Let me just say: At this point in their career, these guys have a lot of songs. Maybe three or at most four repeated from the afternoon taping. Instead, the crowd got “Women Without Whiskey” (sort of Cooley’s Souther rock version of “Leaving Las Vegas”), Hood’s “The Night G.G. Allin Came to Town,” “Hell, No, I Ain’t Happy” and “Lookout Mountain,” yet another of the band’s explorations of debt and suicidal (or sometimes murderous) tendencies.
Oh, and they closed with Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World,” because nothing can follow that, and earlier covered Van Halen’s (!) “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘bout Love.” Having seen DBT twice in one day, I could die a happy man, except they haven’t done “Carl Perkins’ Cadillac,” which leads us to:
Saturday 2:30 p.m.: Stay tuned for an update.
Photo: Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
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