Two of the most tried and true acts in rock and roll music are Deer Tick and the Drive-by Truckers. Resilience, quality songwriting and musicianship, and an ability to stand the test of time are all qualities they share despite one hailing from the Northeast and the other from the South. And this was just about all the motivation that they needed to link up for a co-headlining summer tour across the country. Neither band is promoting a new album, so their Charm & Decadence tour is truly about bringing their respective time-tested rock and roll to the people. On Tuesday, June 10th, Deer Tick and the Truckers brought that very tour through Portland, Oregon for the first of two nights at Revolution Hall.
Following a rowdy and fun opening set from Thelma and the Sleaze, Deer Tick hit the stage and immediately launched into a stampede of guitar-driven glory with “Easy,” with John McCauley’s vocals slicing through the heavy beat. Part of the magic of Deer Tick has always been the way they can balance combustible bar band looseness with top-notch playing and group chemistry. Their hour-long set in Portland embodied this dynamic as they ripped through tunes like the twangy and swinging “If She Could Only See Me Now,” “Forgiving Ties” with McCauley and Ian O’Neil tag-teaming the vocals over its bouncy exuberance, and a jangly, shuffling version of longtime favorite “Art Isn’t Real (City of Sin).” In between songs, McCauley cracked jokes about wanting an endorsement from Twisted Tea and prefaced news of the band’s next album before sharing the fresh track “Mary Singletary,” a crashing power pop number. The band saved some of their best moments for the second half of the set, with drummer Dennis Ryan taking the vocal reins on the charming ode to canine companionship “Me and My Man” that ended with an shimmering surf rock breakdown, the positively explosive and upbeat “Jumpstarting,” and a nearly flawless cover of the Drive-by Truckers’ “Play It All Night Long.” The biggest moment of the set came when they closed out in dramatic fashion with a sprawling and guitar-jam-drenched version of their revelatory tune “The Real Thing,” winning over any person in the audience who wasn’t already a fan.
“We’re celebrating, motherfucker, because we’re alive!” Midway through the Drive-by Truckers’ set, co-frontman Patterson Hood announced that the night was a milestone in the band’s history, proclaiming it to be the 29th anniversary of the band’s first studio session. The Truckers’ set reflected Hood’s sentiment for the moment as it twisted and turned through Southern backroads and worked in a career-spanning array of tunes starting with “Maria’s Awful Disclosures” off their most recent album Welcome 2 Club XIII complete with Jay Gonzalez laying down wavy bursts of psychedelic guitar. Longtime favorite “Puttin’ People on the Moon” hit with extra topical potency as Hood swapped some of the lyrics for modern-day references. “Sinkhole” hummed along with its ominous twang before Mike Cooley took the audience back even further in time with the early alt-country tune “Uncle Frank.” Always a crowd pleaser, Hood blazed through a particularly eerie version of the dark and stomping rocker “Goode’s Field Road” laced with funky Southern grease from Gonzalez’s organ before the band segued straight into Cooley’s anthem “Shit Shots Count” to make for a perfect combo of Alabama swagger that saw dueling guitar action from the Dimmer Twins. In a nod to the current protests going on as well as the 2020 protests in his adopted hometown of Portland, Hood dove into an extra passionate version of “The New OK” found Cooley unleashing some of his most vibrational guitar soloing of the night.
While songs like “Where the Devil Don’t Stay” and “Tornadoes” captured the band’s deep lexicon of Southern storytelling through snarled rock, two of their oldest tunes – “Bulldozers and Dirt” and “Panties In Your Purse – showcased their ability to lock into quieter, more poetic fare. Two of the set’s most standout moments came towards the end, with Cooley’s timeless country number “Women Without Whiskey” getting beautiful organ treatment from Gonzalez and “Hell No I Ain’t Happy” dropping into a dueling guitar run that left scorched earth in its wake. This ability to keep their songs and performances so exhilarating after three decades is precisely why you never want to miss a show.
If there is one thing Deer Tick and the Drive-by Truckers have in common, it’s their working-class, no-frills approach to writing killer songs that sound even better live. Over the last few decades, both bands have honed this skillset to the point that their performances are about as dialed in as you will ever see a band. This is perhaps even more true for the Truckers, who remain one of the all-time greatest live rock acts out there. Onstage in Portland, there wasn’t a single dull moment as they struck a perfect balance between spontaneity and well-oiled performance. There was charm and there was decadence, but mostly their was a plethora of the kind of damn fine rock and roll that makes this current tour a must-see.
All photos by Greg Homolka
