Drive By Truckers

Drive-By Truckers’ 12th studio album and first new LP in more than three years – the longest gap between new DBT albums – The Unraveling was recorded at the legendary Sam Phillips Recording Service in Memphis, TN by GRAMMY® Award-winning engineer Matt Ross-Spang (Jason Isbell, Margo Price) and longtime DBT producer David Barbe. Co-founding singer/songwriter/guitarists Mike Cooley and Patterson Hood both spent much of the time prior doing battle with deep pools of writer’s block. “How do you put these day to day things we’re all living through into the form of a song that we (much less anybody else) would ever want to listen to?” says Hood. “How do you write about the daily absurdities when you can’t even wrap your head around them in the first place? I think our response was to focus at the core emotional level. More heart and less cerebral perhaps.”

Welcome 2 Club XIII, DBT’s 14th studio album, marks a sharp departure from the trenchant political commentary of their last three records. A reckoning with the dualities of the things that make you alive and how they sometimes can kill you. A life affirming flashlight for the dark nights of one’s soul. The title track is a tongue in cheek homage to a local dive that founding members Cooley and Hood played in the early days. As they say in the song “Our glory days did kinda suck”.

DBT released The Unraveling on Jan. 31st 2020 and set out for what was supposed to be a full year of touring. We completed the first leg of the tour at DC’s beloved 9:30 Club on Feb. 29th. We all went home for a brief break before resuming at Vogue in Indianapolis on March 12th. We were two songs into the soundcheck for that show when we were told that the entire tour was to be postponed indefinitely due to the Covid-19 pandemic. We packed up the trailer and headed home where we’ve pretty much been ever since.

Musicians play music. That's what they do. Unless they suddenly can't go out and perform for people because, say, there's a global pandemic that has almost entirely shut down live music. Life in a divided nation under the rule of Donald Trump was already weighing heavy on the minds of the Drive-By Truckers on 2016's American Band and 2020's The Unraveling, and being stuck at home and unable to tour, with little to do but watch their nation burn, hasn't made them feel any better. In many respects, 2020's The New OK is an album that came to be because the DBTs couldn't do much else.