Both Hood and Mike Cooley, the band’s other songwriter and musical partner for 35 years, had a hard time striking that balance even as they wrote separately.With the new music, together with 2016’s call to arms “American Band,” an outfit that’s been around for more than two decades has come into its own as social commentators. The goal isn’t to write polemics, but songs that will touch people and not immediately feel dated. Sign … In “21st Century USA,” Hood writes of “men working hard for not enough, at best” and “women working just as hard for less.” “Heroin Again” sadly touches on the drug’s reemergence, and “Babies in Cages” is self-explanatory. I’m still pissed off.”Still, it was a struggle. Make the competition a little stiffer by expanding the criteria to bands no longer active — the Velvet Underground, Big Star, Sonic Youth — and they still make the top ten.Drive-By Truckers fans represent a wide spectrum: young and old; men and women; hipsters and frat boys; professors and rednecks; novelists and stock car racers. The top ranked albums by Drive-By Truckers are The Dirty South, Southern Rock Opera and Decoration Day. They simply have too many good songs. I don’t have all the answers, but at least you can try.”Yet his final two words are “awaiting resurrection,” revealing Hood as, ultimately, an optimist.Politics is hardly foreign to the Truckers’ work - and Hood, 56, recalls writing a song about Watergate when he was 8 years old - but never as overt as now, said Eric Danton, a music critic for Paste magazine.“They’ve always been working class champions, a band that roots for the underdog,” Danton said.
The top rated tracks by Drive-By Truckers are Where The Devil Don't Stay, Zip City, Outfit, Carl Perkins' Cadillac and Goddamn Lonely Love.This artist appears in 533 charts and has received 0 comments and 14 ratings from BestEverAlbums.com site members. Is that the best you can do? You’re a little white kid.’ Then I had to explain that to him, which was even more painful.”In the days before the 2016 election, when the Truckers began playing “What it Means” at a California gig, more than a third of the audience protested, holding up “blue lives matter” signs and then leaving en masse. Taking this into account, I don’t believe it is too optimistic to view the band’s success as indicative of rock music’s continued power as an ecumenical and equalizing force.
For the rock band Drive-By Truckers, it's demoralizing to release angry songs about Donald Trump's America just as the president's impeachment trial is winding down toward an acquittal. Hood’s song from that year, “What it Means,” where he tried to put Trayvon Martin and the events in Ferguson, Missouri, in perspective and came up wanting, was pivotal in that transition. August 2, 2013 Comments. Drive-By Truckers are perhaps the greatest extant American rock and roll band. The band consists of Mike Cooley (lead vocals, guitar, banjo), Patterson …