Drive-By Truckers co-founder Patterson Hood has announced his landmark new solo album, Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams, arriving via ATO Records on Friday, February 21, 2025. Pre-orders are available now.
Produced by Chris Funk (The Decemberists, Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks) at various studios in Hood’s current hometown of Portland, OR, Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams marks the singer-songwriter-guitarist’s most expansive and ambitious extracurricular effort to date, supported by a stellar cast of friends and fellow musicians including Waxahatchee, Brad and Phil Cook (Megafaun), Kevin Morby, Wednesday, Brad Morgan and Jay Gonzalez (Drive-By Truckers), Steve Berlin (Los Lobos, The Blasters), David Barbe (Sugar, Mercyland), Nate Query (The Decemberists), Steve Drizos (Jerry Joseph and The Jackmormons), Daniel Hunt (Neko Case, M Ward), and Stuart Bogie (The Hold Steady, Goose). The 10-track collection is heralded by today’s premiere of the first single, “A Werewolf and a Girl,” featuring additional vocals from Lydia Loveless, and is available everywhere now. A lyric video directed by Jason Shevchuk is streaming now on YouTube.
“‘A Werewolf and A Girl’ was written in August of 2021, around 40 years after I fell for my high school sweetheart,” says Patterson Hood. “The song juxtaposed our falling in love and our breakup a year later. Once I cut the demo, I knew I wanted a woman to sing the choruses from the girl’s point of view. And in my head, it was always going to be Lydia. I mean, I didn’t really even have a second choice. The subject matter’s kind of provocative, so I wouldn’t have wanted to ask somebody that I didn’t feel was a friend. I wouldn’t want someone to be uncomfortable and then just not want to talk to me anymore. What I didn’t count on was that when I asked Lydia if she would be interested in doing it, she actually happened to be in the studio and did it the next day. And that’s what’s on the record.”
