Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley have made 11 albums together as part of Drive-By Truckers; their latest, American Band, releases Sept. 30, 2016. "It usually just kind of all comes together pretty good," Hood says about assembling albums, "although I don't think ever as well as this one. This one, one of my favorite things about it is how the songs kind of interlock."

American Band is being hailed as Drive-By Truckers' "most explicitly political album in their extraordinary canon." In town for a show at First Avenue in Minneapolis, Drive-By Truckers — Hood and Cooley, along with Jay Gonzalez (keyboards, guitar), Matt Patton (bass) and Brad Morgan (drums) — visited The Current's studio for a session hosted by Sean McPherson. The band played new songs from the upcoming album, and Cooley and Hood candidly discussed the songs' meanings.

"Every time I turn on the news or look at my phone, some other just horrendous thing has happened, and often it's so senseless," Hood says. "It's been going on for so long; it's not like it's something new. It's just that now, it's getting photographed — everybody has a camera in their pocket."

That awareness, along with the news of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, inspired Hood to write the song, "What It Means," the first song written for the new record. "I wrote it, and I just figured I'd record it on my acoustic on my phone and put it up online and be done with it," Hood says. "Unfortunately, it's timelier than ever this week."

Cooley, meanwhile, felt similar motivation on the song "Ramon Casiano," the first track on American Band. The song revisits the 1931 killing of a young man in Laredo, Texas, by the man who would eventually go on to be head of the National Rifle Association and convert it from a marksmanship- and sport-related organization to a political-action group. "Most of my stuff has been a little more abstract," Cooley says. "With that one, all I really had to do was make it rhyme. It was just there. It's a compelling story; to get to where we are now, in a way, it doesn't have anything to do with it, and in a way it has everything to do with it. ... I couldn't walk away from it."

With American Band, Drive-By Truckers demonstrate their choice to not look away from today's political and social issues. "When you think about it, if you look at our band, just on a purely demographic scale, we basically look like the Trump-voter demographic: I am a white, middle-aged, Southern male, college dropout," Hood says, "but they're not speaking for me."

"I hear these people described and I think, 'They're talking about me'," Cooley adds. "They're not speaking for me, he's not speaking for me, he's not speaking for the people who raised me. What these people are calling 'political correctness' — or what our Southern, Christian, hardworking grandparents taught us — was just common decency. He's not speaking for us."

When it comes to the trajectory of Drive-By Truckers, Hood acknowledges the band has gone through a few different eras in its 20-year existence and is now in a great place. "This lineup here is coming up on five years together," Hood says. "It's a really tight time for the band, tight enough that we went in and recorded this record in six days. It's really fun. We have a good time with it."

Listen to the complete session using the audio player above.

Songs Performed

"Ramon Casiano"
"What It Means"
"Once They Banned Imagine"
All songs from Drive-By Truckers' album, American Band, out Sept. 30, 2016, on ATO Records.

Hosted by Sean McPherson
Produced by Anna Reed
Engineered by Michael DeMark and Jalen Russell
Visuals by Leah Garaas
Web feature by Luke Taylor

Resources

Drive-By Truckers - official site

Gallery

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