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By Joe Samuel Starnes

When Joe Samuel Starnes, novelist, and friend of The Georgia Jukebox offered to write a review of The Drive-By Truckers Philadelphia show for the jukebox, we were honored he'd use our website to publish thoughts on one of his (and our) favorite bands.

I grew up near Cedartown, Georgia, in a white clapboard farmhouse that had been in my mother’s family for generations, sitting on a low hill at the end of a red dirt driveway about half a mile from the paved road, not too far from the Alabama state line. We were so far out in the country that if anyone drove up our road you knew that they were: a) coming to see you; b) lost; c) hunting for somewhere out of the way to drink and smoke something illegal and/or consummate an illicit relationship that would have brought worlds of hurt down on their heads if they had taken it into their bedrooms at home.

Today I live in a Philadelphia row house where the sidewalk passes right by my living room window and in the afternoon Catholic school kids pass by cussing at each other like demented sailors and expectorating loudly in the street. Sometimes late at night from our third floor bedroom with the windows closed tight and the curtains drawn we can hear drunks caterwauling, either singing if they are happy or cursing up a hell storm if they are not. There aren’t enough letters in the alphabet to list the possible intentions of people walking past my door.

It has been a quarter of a century since I called that house out in the country home. For the past eight years I’ve been in the Northeast, but that vast space of pine trees and hardwoods and fields where in the summertime the whippoorwills and bobwhites called all night still resonates deep inside me. Cedartown was a place where I knew just about everybody and everybody knew me and my parents, and if they were old enough, they knew my mother’s parents before (often that familiarity was a good thing; other times, when people were up in your business, not so much). I think about my home there all the time, the good and the bad. And I’ve never heard a band that takes me back to that place and captures that world, the vivid stories of small town southern lives, as the Drive-By Truckers do in their songs. These two divergent worlds of mine merged happily Thursday night, March 27, when DBT played Philadelphia, packing the spacious Fillmore at the TLA (formerly the Theatre of the Living Arts) on South Street and kicking out a great show of songs both old and new.

I could write a long string of fat sentences about how damn good the band sounded, how tight the guitars, smooth the keyboards and strong the drums, as well as the juxtaposition of Patterson’s high, slightly raspy voice and Mike Cooley’s deep tone, a voice that somehow manages to mix humor, lonesomeness and a little bit of threat into one sound. Shonna Tucker’s sweet voice often comes in and rounds it all out. They are a fantastic rock band with streaks of the best elements of country music; imagine if the Rolling Stones were from North Alabama and had a touch of Johnny Cash. But instead I want to focus on the stories in the songs, the great attention to detail and rhyme that bring these stories to life as much as any poem, fiction or movie. A lot of bands write songs that have lyrics that sound pretty and paint you an image or two—a DBT song, however, takes you somewhere, and you enjoy the ride. They know how to write a line, and they know how to tell a story as well as anyone recording today.

They opened the show Thursday with “Goode’s Field Road,” Hood’s song from the near the end of their new record, “Brighter than Creation’s Dark.” It’s a relentless rhythm in the voice of a man in serious trouble about to meet his maker in a murky deal that has gone bad, or more likely he’s planning to end his life to avoid going to prison, but the listener is never told exactly “what went down on Goode’s Field Road.”

Keeping in sequence from the album, they played “A Ghost to Most,” a Cooley specialty with one of his many unforgettable lines: “But skeletons ain’t got nowhere to put their money/nobody makes britches that size/and besides you’re a ghost to most before they notice/that you ever had a hair or a hide.” Literary critics could write long articles about this one and never quite decipher the ultimate meaning, concluding, if they are honest, that it’s cryptically fascinating, not to mention a little dark but also funny as hell. According to Hood’s liner notes on their web site, he overheard a friend ask Cooley what the song meant and he replied, “It's really hard for me to find a suit that fits me right." Ultimately, asking the band what some of their songs mean is like asking Cormac McCarthy to explain what happens to The Kid at the end of “Blood Meridian.”You got to come to your own conclusion.

Patterson followed with a new song that is getting a lot of airplay in Philly on WXPN-FM, the alternative station at the University of Pennsylvania where David Dye’s show World Café is hosted. “Righteous Path” is about a family man trying to stay on the straight and narrow in spite of all the temptations life presents. It’s a grown up rock’n’roll song. During this tune, of course, was when an overly-endowed young woman riding on the shoulders of an apparently very strong man chose to pull up her shirt and reveal her abundance to the band. If they noticed her, they didn’t act like they did. And she was hard to miss, bless her heart.

The new album which they are touring in support of is the first since the departure last year of Jason Isbell, the talented young songwriter, singer and guitarist who laid claim to a number of songs, including the brilliant “Outfit” and “Never Going to Change,” one song poignant and the other downright defiant. Isbell, who recorded with the band from the albums “Decoration Day” in 2003 through “A Blessing and a Curse” in 2006, was certainly no slouch. But most bands don’t have one songwriter on par with Hood, Cooley and Isbell, and I doubt any band has room for three for the long-term. It sounds unkind to Isbell to say I didn’t miss him because I greatly admire his work, but I didn’t miss him Thursday night. Hood and Cooley who have been playing together since the eighties have more than enough material to crank out long shows like they did, digging all the way back into the albums of the late nineties, “Pizza Deliverance” and, still my personal favorite, “Gangstabilly.”

While Isbell is gone, David Barbe continues to work with DBT, producing, engineering and mixing “Brighter than Creation’s Dark,” as well as playing on a few tracks. Barbe was at one time bass player for Bob Mould’s band Sugar, but for me he will always be the front man for Mercyland, my all-time favorite Athens, Georgia group. Mercyland is easily the most underappreciated rock trio of the last century.

DBT on Thursday played a long, strong opening set of about two hours—you always get more than your money’s worth—and returned after a quick break for their encore, kicking it off with what may be my favorite song, Cooley’s “Marry Me.” This song definitely has what I think is their best opening line: “Well, my daddy didn’t pull out, but he never apologized.” I once saw Maya Angelou on TV say that George Jones’ “He Stopped Loving Her Today” has more story than most writers can get into a 300-page novel, and the same sentiment goes for many DBT songs, especially this one. “Marry Me” manages to tell one man’s entire life from conception to his own pending unplanned fatherhood and conveys his perspective on the world in only five stanzas, including this declaration on his desire to stay in his hometown: “This old town’s all right with me, there’s nowhere I’d rather be.”

The encore concluded with Hood’s contrary “Buttholeville,” a song that shows while some folks love their humble hometowns and would never leave, others are dying to get away, are flat out “tired of living in Buttholeville.” Unlike the narrator in Cooley’s “Marry Me,” the dude in this song is one day going to put the town in his rearview mirror and is “never going back to Buttholeville.”

Thursday night’s show was the first time I’ve seen The Drive-By Truckers in my four years of following the band that they didn’t finish with Jim Carroll’s dark rocker “People Who Died,” but instead ended with a medley that wove a souped-up version of Bruce Springsteen’s haunting “State Trooper” embedded in the middle of “Buttholeville.” I thought DBT’s ending each show with Carroll’s song might be a tradition that would last like Willie Nelson’s thirty-year run of starting every concert with “Whiskey River,” but I guess not. It doesn’t matter. Like Springsteen whose repertoire is so intertwined with his home turf in New Jersey that for some it defines the state, DBT has carved out a marvelous body of work over the past ten years that paints a vast canvas of the hardships and joys of life in the modern, rural South. Covering Springsteen, who in my mind Hood and Cooley are up on par with at the highest level of songwriting, seems just right by me.

Buy Sam's 1st Novel "Calling" on Amazon, visit his website, and continue to support those who make Southern culture the envy of the rest of the world.

Buy Black Crowes' War Paint
Buy it On Amazon | or download it on

"Goodbye Daughters Of The Revolution" - From War Paint

War Paint, The Black Crowes first studio album in 7 years is now available on CD via Amazon, and download via iTunes. This Georgia band has been rocking the world for almost 20 years. Well the reviews are out on the latest effort, and it looks like The Black Crows will continue to rock us for some time

Rolling Stone -

"The Black Crowes have fallen out, broken up and been written off as washed-up. Hell, these guys did their Behind the Music almost ten years ago, and Rich Robinson isn't even forty yet. They've now been around as long as some of their own idols were when the Robinsons first started. But with Warpaint, for the first time in a long time, the Black Crowes seem like a band with a future. "

All Music guide -

"They're old-fashioned, but in the best sense: they're in it for the long haul, which the superb Warpaint proves beyond a shadow of a doubt. "

Billboard -

"Warpaint mines the same Allmans-to-Zappa synthesis of influences that's been the Crowes' stock in trade but finds the group fortified by sharp songwriting and lace-tight, live-sounding performances. "

Black Crows War Paint: New Album, Same Sound

Pop music has changed in the last 18 years, but the Black Crows continue to make the kind of music that endears fans, and keeps them coming back album after album, and show after show.

According to Chris, Warpaint is the complete package of the Georgia-born Crowes’ passions and influences. “It’s got all the roots,” But it’s also got a psychedelic feel." “Oh Josephine” is, Chris says, “one of the best things Rich and I have ever written.”

If you watched Nashville Star last year, you no doubt saw Zack Hacker battle his sister for the title. Since then, the LaGrange Alabama native has been working on "Get Your Love On".

Zac grew up in LaGrange, AL, with his four sisters, mother and father. His family is full of talented musicians, singers and songwriters, who are all active in the music industry. Zac's father was one of the original Hacker Brothers.

Zac Hacker - Nashville Star Only The Beginning

At the age of eight, Zac let his fingers do the walking on his first guitar. Not long after, Zac played with musician Gary Nichols, and both were involved with the first FAME Tuesday Music Club. In only two years, Zac has had the privilege to write with well-known singer and songwriters such as Robert Byrne (Two Dozen Roses, What I'd Say), Russell Smith (Third Rate Romance, Keep It Between The Lines), and Dave Gibson (Ships That Don't Come In, Queen of Memphis).

Learn More About Zac Hacker Music

Zac Hacker Music website
Zac Hacker Fanpage
Zac's myspace page
Zac Hacker's Nashville Star Page

Zac Hacker Video

Buy Tift Merrit Music at


I first saw Tift Merritt, a North Carolina native, perform at the House of Blues in Cambridge, MA. She rocked her red guitar as much as she rocked her high heeled boots. A couple albums later she's back with Another Country. She has packed her spring schedule with dates all across North America to support the album, and show this country (and Canada) what she can do.

Another Country isn't just another country album. You will find it on itunes or at your favorite record shop (if you still go), with the rest of the country albums. Although, I'd rather call it easy going rock and roll with a twang, and a soul. Merritt balances gracefully between sweet and sincere vocals, and honest and heart-filled song writing. The lyrics are simple, but not dumbed down. The band is supportive, but not overbearing. A well balanced artist; a well balanced album.

A great third effort for Merritt. Check out this Joni Mitchell, and Emmylou Harris influenced artist on Itunes or anywhere you like to buy music. Also find out when she'll be rockin' near you at www.TiftMerritt.com