Reality on the Rise: Drive-by Truckers

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PATTERSON HOOD IS watching his back in West Tennessee. "I have this fear I'll be driving somewhere and my car's going to break down in McNairy County," he says. "I don't think I'm very popular there."

McNairy County is the home of former Sheriff Buford T. Pusser, the legendary lawman immortalized in the 1973 movie "Walking Tall." On the 2004 album, "The Dirty South," Hood's band, the Drive-By Truckers, told the other side of Pusser's story, giving voice to the small-time criminals and moonshiners Pusser put away. Hood received some angry letters.

"I don't really have an opinion about Buford Pusser," says Hood, who hails from nearby Florence, Ala. "Those songs weren't from my point of view; they were from the point of view of someone who was trying to kill him, explaining why."

Such negative reactions are the rare downside to the Drive-By Truckers' firebrand Southern rock, which takes an almost literary interest in real Southern lives, whether notorious or not. Their albums include songs — by Hood as well as by founding Trucker Mike Cooley and former members Jason Isbell and Rob Malone — about Southern musicians, politicians, suicidal friends, family scandals and small-town widowers dealing dope.

On the Truckers' most recent and arguably best album, "Brighter Than Creation's Dark," Hood penned two songs about the real-life tolls of the war in Iraq, through the eyes of a conflicted soldier in "That Man I Shot" and through the eyes of a family back home in "The Home Front."

"The family that inspired 'The Home Front,' they come to see us any time we're in that region," Hood says. "It's always really intense and kinda beautiful. They were happy with what I wrote, and I'm grateful because the last thing I'd want to do is write something that would cause them grief. They're really lovely, great people."

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Written by Express contributor Stephen M. Deusner
Photo by Jason Thrasher