The world is a dark place and if you spend too much time dwelling on the perpetual storm of chaos and injustice – especially in the White House – you might as well never get out of bed. But if you look in the right places, you’ll find voices of reason out there, fighting against the shitshow with fiery yet logical defiance, often through art. Though they have been going strong for over two decades, the Drive-By Truckers have emerged as one of the loudest voices against the bullshit with the release of their 2016 album American Band. On Thursday, February 1st, the Alabama rock and roll band hit the Roseland Theater in Portland, Oregon.
Lilly Hiatt’s 2017 album Trinity Lane made it on to a handful of best-of-the-year lists, including Glide’s. It was songs from this album that dominated her opening set, and damn did they impress. Hiatt and her monstrously talented band floored the crowd with alt. country-tinged, universally appealing songs like “All Kinds of People” and “Trinity Lane”, slow burning soul tune “Everything I Had”, and “Records”, an ode to vinyl. She also showed her power as a storyteller with “So Much You Don’t Know”, “The Night David Bowie Died”, and the country rocker “Different, I Guess”. With her sleek black Rickenbacker, Hiatt was effortlessly cool as she focused on the music and charged through her set without a single screw-up. It was clear she feels confident in her new material, and for good reason. If Hiatt is the new face of rock and roll, the future is looking bright.
Properly rocked by Lilly Hiatt, the crowd was primed and ready for the main attraction. The Truckers opened on a somber note with the acoustically strummed “Guns of Umpqua”, only to follow it up with Mike Cooley’s rousing tune “Ramon Casiano”, which he closed with a scorching guitar solo. Both songs address gun violence, thus proving to be a powerful pairing live. Later in the show they would offer a similar pairing with new song “The Perilous Night” and “Surrender Under Protest”, both of which address issues of race and protest. Multi-instrumentalist Jay Gonzales, who is definitely the band’s secret weapon, nailed a blistering guitar solo on “Marry Me”. The band would pay tribute to both Tom Petty and their own heritage with the poignant cover of “Southern Accent”, with Patterson Hood laying into a jagged but beautiful Neil Young-style solo. Already on a high, they followed it up by inviting local fiddler Colleen King to the stage for three tunes: “Heathens”, “A Ghost To Most”, and “My Sweet Annette”. King’s fiddle flourishes added emotional depth and texture to the songs.
Soon the band would take things back to where it all began, playing a song they wrote as Adam’s Housecat, “Runaway Train”, which captures that special dynamic between Mike Cooley and Patterson Hood with its simple lyrics and literary insight. “Shit Shots Count” exploded with Rolling Stones energy and the gutbucket country tune “The Company I Keep” featured a rollicking piano solo from Gonzales and Cooley wailing away on guitar. One of show’s most fun moments came when perpetually smiling bassist Matt Patton led the band in a Southern rock rendition of the Ramones classic “The KKK Took My Baby Away”. Compared to other Drive-By Truckers shows, the Portland performance was a bit less rowdy and whiskey-soaked. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing as the musicianship was fine-tuned and on point the whole night. Most interesting was the fact that even so far into their career, the Drive-By Truckers and the messages they express in their songs are more relevant now than they ever have been. The world may be a dark place but as long as the Truckers are making music we’ll be just fine.
All photos by Greg Homolka.
