If you didn’t know better, it would be easy to write off Drive-By Truckers as a prolific, hard-touring band. But the songs and the stories behind them have always presented a complex group. With Where the Devil Don't Stay: Traveling the South with the Drive-By Truckers Stephen Deusner digs into the stories that formed the band, as well as the complex social factors that continue to fuel the songs. The American South, from Muscle Shoals, AL, to Athens, GA loom large. Race and its inescapable legacy are part of the band’s DNA but also, as Deusner relates, the fact that not everything in the South is good or bad.
These shadows of nuance and a strong social conscience go a long way to define the band. The author also mines another key factor—both Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley, the band’s primary songwriters were strongly influenced by their maternal grandmothers. “The idea that women might deserve a little more respect was something I started getting hip to at a young age,” says Cooley.
Drive-By Trucker play Summerfest, September 4, 8p.m. at the Johnson Controls World Stage
