Drive by Truckers Thoughts and Prayers Updated

Drive by Truckers Thoughts and Prayers

EDITOR'S Notation: Bulldoze-By Truckers are No Low's Spotlight band for Jan 2020. Await for more on the ring and their new anthology, The Unraveling (out Jan. 31), all month long.

There'south an interesting juxtaposition on the cover of Drive-By Truckers' new record. The artwork is a photo of two young kids standing on the beach, shoulder to shoulder, staring into the horizon. It conveys a sense of peace, perhaps even promise.

The bottom of the cover, though, says something different. Next to the ring's proper noun, the LP's championship is displayed: The Unraveling.

"That'south my son and his friend on the cover," says Truckers co-frontman and co-founder Patterson Hood. "I love the moving picture because it could be construed equally hopeful, simply it's night and apocalyptic, too. It's beautiful, and I think this tape is beautiful. At that place are a lot of emotions in what nosotros're doing now."

Though Drive-By Truckers take e'er written socially minded and politically active songs, The Unraveling, out Jan. 31, is their heaviest, most poignant record, and in that location's something most the cover —hope coupled with a reality of an unraveling world — that sets the phase for the 9 new tracks.

"It may exist political, but it'due south very personal," says Hood, "considering all of this shit is very personal to me. I take shut friends and family who are directly afflicted by aspects that go touched on past every single song on this record. Y'all better believe when my kids come home from school and they're talking about lockdown drills and shit like that, I'm destroyed. I'm trying to be hopeful every bit we move into this next election cycle, but I'm non getting a lot of comfort from annihilation I run into."

A gloomy tone settled into the record naturally, says Truckers co-founder Mike Cooley, the result of a band continuing its long tradition of making music virtually what'southward on their minds in the moment.

"We didn't give it any thought virtually how heavy it would be," Cooley says. "Nosotros just went from one song to the next, the way we ever do whenever we volume studio time. We didn't really remember about the whole thing in context."

While Hood is quick to share his excitement well-nigh getting The Unraveling out to fans, Cooley is more reserved.

"I don't get excited about things. Excited people get on daddy'due south fretfulness," he says, nearly lyrically. "I didn't find this album to be personal to me. I wanted information technology to be, only I wasn't there when I was writing information technology. It'southward a good tape, don't go me wrong. But I need some reassurance that I'm non done, and I'g not finding it."

Cooley's worry is rooted in a bout of writer's block both he and Hood experienced over the last few years. When The Unraveling was starting time announced, the news and press releases played upwardly this fact.

"Writer's block seems to be part of the narrative, just this time the narrative happens to be true," Cooley says. "That's rare in this business."

Finding Words

Cooley and Hood, though open about the difficulty of writing their latest tape, pay little mind to the phrase "writer's block."

Cooley rejects "block" birthday and points out how family needs and other demands can accept time and energy abroad from writing. Hood finds no lack of textile, but the topics can be hard to translate into words and riffs.

"The hardest affair was trying to find a way to clear this fucked up situation we're in, in a way that'southward musically or lyrically compelling," Hood confesses. "There was only this whole long inner debate we were all going through, how we should follow upward American Ring."

When American Band came out on Sept. 30, 2016, Hood and Cooley were optimistic about a Hillary Clinton presidency. "We thought nosotros'd tour hard for two months and and then everybody would be washed and we wouldn't have to exist talking about it anymore," Hood says. "We could motion on."

Hood takes a interruption as he thinks about that optimism from four years ago.

"And then all hell broke loose."

Living inside the opposite balloter issue, both Hood and Cooley admit that a driving forcefulness backside The Unraveling was an unwillingness to back down from speaking prophetically and boldly.

"I wouldn't want everyone who sent us the hate tweets to think nosotros were bankroll downwardly. Fuck them," Cooley says. "That's not how I practice things."

Hood says he felt a sense of responsibility with the album that would follow American Band. "At that place came a point in time where I felt similar if we don't address this shit, we're kind of backing down after the stand up we made terminal fourth dimension, and Cooley came to that verbal same conclusion at the same time. We just knew we needed to plunge forward with this motherfucker."

That plunge was far from piece of cake. "Unremarkably writing brings me a certain amount of joy," Hood explains, "fifty-fifty if I'yard writing something actually dark, because it's getting information technology out of me, and that makes me experience better. Information technology lifts the burden and makes me less depressed. That wasn't the case this time. I'd write a song and then just be depressed nigh it, and that made me question everything."

Hood found himself constantly asking himself, "Is what I'm doing wrong? Does it suck? Is information technology shitty? Is my brain telling me I shouldn't exist doing it?"

What finally broke that feeling was "21st Century USA," a song ready amid anonymous strip malls and suburban scenes in one American town that could extend to simply about whatever of them. When the lyrics, about the places and circumstances that connect people even amid modern isolation, came to Hood, he began to experience better.

The song came to him while he was on tour — which is rare, he says, since he has so many things fighting for his attending in that setting. But there was something different about "21st Century USA." The Drive-Past Truckers had wrapped up a testify in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and hit the road toward Missoula, Montana. On the way, they fabricated a end outside Gillette, Wyoming, and then the driver could take a nap.

"Nosotros're all hungry, so nosotros checked into our rooms and so met up to discover some lunch," Hood recalls. "There was a 3-star Mexican restaurant on Yelp a few blocks away, and you know exactly what you lot're going to get: everything covered in cheese, unhealthy, and delicious."

On the way to that repast, Hood was struck by something he saw in the hotel parking lot, a scene at present immortalized in the opening line of the vocal.

"Our omnibus was parked nether this gigantic billboard for the Oasis Tanning Salon," he says. "But it was freezing cold. It'south Jan in Wyoming. We're all wrapped in our winter clothes. I don't know why, just it just struck me every bit funny. From there, the song was happening every bit we walked to that iii-star Mexican restaurant. I could hear it in my caput. I wrote the first verse downwards on a napkin, and as soon equally we finished eating, I ran dorsum to my room and wrote the rest of the song."

Hood says that'south the first time in years he wrote a song like that. "Everything before that, I was fighting for every fucking line," he says. "Then this happened and I was like, 'Okay, I can nevertheless do this shit.' I was able to kind of go along it going."

Cooley says he withal hasn't experienced any such quantum in his writing. "I stress about it a lot," he admits. "I experience a little sick to my stomach pretty often. I don't deal well with it at all, and touring doesn't assistance. I guess touring helps me feel more of a sense of accomplishment, just information technology doesn't exercise anything for creating new cloth."

Cooley pauses.

"I've been here before. I freak out every fourth dimension, but this is the worst it's always been. Information technology's not a skillful time for me." He laughs and seems ready to move on in the conversation.

Long Shelf Life

In spite of his own struggle with writing new songs, Cooley has written for The Unraveling what volition be one of the virtually important songs of the last twenty years, "Grievance Merchants." Centered around the lyric, "Give a boy a target for his grievance and he might get it in his head they need to pay," Cooley crafts a timeless indictment of American society and the country'south endless cycle of senseless shootings.

"Since I finished writing that vocal," Cooley laments, "that same thing has happened again and once more. I've lost track how many times it's happened since I wrote that song, and I wrote it considering it had already happened so many goddamned times. Seeing that same guy who fits that aforementioned contour doing the aforementioned matter the same way for the same reason, and give all the aforementioned reasons, and everybody goes, 'Gee, why does this keep happening,' like it'southward some kind of mystery — I'chiliad tired of it. How many of them accept to spray pigment their reasons on the wall over the dead bodies until you realize there actually isn't much of a mystery?"

Cooley and Hood understand the importance of the songs they've written for their electric current fourth dimension, merely they also realize, sadly, that these songs will have a long shelf life.

"I stopped worrying virtually these songs going out of style," Cooley says. "Nope, this is non going to become irrelevant anytime soon."

The Drive-By Truckers don't wallow in any kind of misery, though. All of America is held answerable on The Unraveling equally Hood and Cooley — and bassist Matt Patton, multi-instrumentalist Jay Gonzalez, and drummer Brad Morgan — speak truth to power on tracks like the gut-wrenching and all-likewise-existent "Babies in Cages" and the foretelling "Armageddon'south Back in Town."

"What I experience similar we ended upwardly with is a more personal have of living through this shit — and what it does to your soul," Hood says.

That personal take is front end and centre on "Thoughts and Prayers," another middle-piercing reflection on the never-ending tragedy of gun violence. Hood takes on the phrase lifted upwards by Christians and politicians on social media — a phrase that likewise finds its fashion into Cooley's "Grievance Merchants" — and turns information technology into a elementary call to activeness: "Stick information technology upward your ass with your useless thoughts and prayers."

"I was dragged to a fundamentalist church equally a child," Cooley says, "and I remember fundamentalist, evangelical, conservative Christian sermons dedicated to the concept of faith without works. Pray all you want. If you're a educatee and you have a test or a paper, pray that you make a good grade without studying and run across how that works out for you. Get back to me on that. Thoughts and prayers? Information technology'south utter absurdity."

A Dark Time

Though the album encompass may convey hope and darkness, the reality is that, throughout The Unraveling, the latter overpowers the former. With the adjacent presidential election months away, it's impossible to mind to Bulldoze-By Truckers' new music without acknowledging and confronting the divisiveness and vitriol that saturates the country.

"It's uncompromisingly dark in the lyrics," Hood says with little optimism. "All of our records are dark, but this one is darker. It's a dark fourth dimension. Information technology'due south a fucked up fourth dimension for anybody who doesn't accept their caput upwards their ass. It's a fucking dark time. I love my state for better or worse, and I hate seeing it like this."

Some balls bankrupt through the darkness, even so, when the Truckers came together in the studio.

"That was a blast. It was exhausting and draining on every level: physically, mentally, every possible level," Hood says. "Simply it was cathartic and actually, really fun."

It's obvious that, given the journey he and Cooley have been on leading to the release of The Unraveling, Hood is proud of this new addition to the Drive-By Truckers catalog.

"It gave me a good feeling virtually how it's going to be touring this record, considering it fabricated u.s. all experience so much ameliorate and kind of even joyful. I'm happy virtually that. I feel like that was important for this tape, that there would exist some sense of joy in the playing of information technology. And there is."

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