SOUTHERN ROCK OPERA
ARTIST: Drive-By Truckers
RELEASE: 2001
INTERVIEWEE: Patterson Hood
"I grew up in the concept album era," says Patterson Hood, songwriter, singer and guitarist in Drive-By Truckers. His love of storytelling and movies carried over to an appreciation of records that had a storyline. So it stood to reason that he might eventually make a concept album of his own. But the music of Drive-By Truckers fits -- if somewhat messily -- into the Southern rock category, a subgenre not always known for subtlety. And in Hood's view, the era of the concept album has long since come and gone.
But he made one anyway.