The Southern Affliction
Reviewing Southern Rock Opera by Drive-by Truckers.

By Michael Long, a director of the White House Writers Group.
November 3-4, 2001

hose of us born and raised in the rural South are accustomed to at least a little abuse. We assume that the only notoriety we get in the North is the occasional newspaper item that boils down to, say, "a truck done drove off-en the bree-udge in Arkansas while Bubba was tryin' tuh open his bee-uhr." Then there is the literary appraisal of southern life, which usually amounts to Peyton Place crossed with Hee Haw, infested with toothless illiterate incest survivors. When Dennis Miller calls our home "Darwin's Waiting Room," well, yeah, we get it — ha ha. Some days, we're fed up with all that. But on other days, we actually like the dissonance, because we know the reputation doesn't match the reality.

Into this part-real, part-imagined mental oppression roll the Drive-by Truckers. With their new album, "Southern Rock Opera" ("SRO" for short), this unfairly overlooked band has produced a masterpiece of both southern rock and southern gothic. The record rocks and talks on how many of us are both honored to be southerners and angered at how the title's been sullied; how we can love southern culture and resent and revere its reputation; and how we live with what Drive-by lyricist Patterson Hood calls "the duality of the southern thing."

Drive-by Truckers — their name conjures up a collision of Wu-Tang Clan and Red Sovine — almost single-handedly keep the flame alive for the three-guitar attack pioneered by that old giant killer, Lynyrd Skynyrd. The Truckers are the first band to sound much like Skynyrd since Skynyrd. Molly Hatchet took a whack at it, and .38 Special tried, too, with members of Skynyrd itself, but in both cases producers burred off the rough edges, and those corners were key. Skynyrd couldn't be duplicated: Ronnie Van Zant sang soulful, easy and proud, while Gary Rossington, Allen Collins, and Ed King pounded out the "redneck roar" that is the most under-appreciated glory in the catalog of rock 'n' roll.

"SRO" is the Skynyrd story mixed with a recounting of southern life, and it is offered, just as it is ambitiously advertised, as a rock opera. The opening tunes recount standard southern high-school folklore, post-1970, including the fabled graduation-eve car wreck, with "Free Bird" blasting from the 8-track as the ambulance rolls up. With the atmosphere set, the Truckers take on the demons, asserting first that the world takes the South for Bigotry Central, then shredding the reputation with facts and licks: "'Southern Man' and 'Alabama' certainly told some truth / But there were a lot of good folks down here / and Neil Young wasn't around," they sing, reviving Skynyrd's charge from "Sweet Home Alabama."

Somehow, the Truckers preach without sounding preachy — maybe it's that guitar-chord pulpit: "Ain't about no hatred / better raise a glass / It's a little about some rebels but it ain't about the past." And: "Proud of the glory, stare down the shame / Duality of the Southern thing."

The Truckers save plenty of heat for George Wallace. In a harsh but at least accurate account of his career, Hood damns him literally to Hell for what amounts to "knowing better." In the spoken word piece "The Three Great Alabama Icons," Hood finds a scapegoat for the burden of the southern reputation: "Racism is a worldwide problem and it has been since the beginning of recorded history, and it ain't just white and black. But thanks to George Wallace, it's always a little more convenient to play it with a Southern accent."

Act II of the two-disc set recalls teenage road trips to 70s arena rock shows and the killing attraction of alcohol ("It don't make you do a thing / it just lets you"). Finally, "SRO" gets around to a sustained focus on the real career of Lynyrd Skynyrd, ending with the plane crash in a Louisiana swamp that took four members of the band, including its heart, 29-year-old lead singer Ronnie Van Zant. This passage includes the best song on the record, "Shut Up and Get on the Plane." At a near-thrash beat, the Truckers deliver a blunt, fatalistic anthem, a perfect reflection of our terror-aware minds just now, and it is at once callous and right: "When it comes your time to go, ain't no good way to go about it / Ain't no use in thinking 'bout it / You'll just drive yourself insane."

In the last two verses come more fatalism and fortitude: "Ain't nothing I'd rather do right now than just go on home and lay around / but that ain't never an option for a working man like me … Dead is dead and it ain't no different than walking around if you ain't living / Living in fear's just another way of dying before your time."

With "Southern Rock Opera," Drive-by Truckers move to the front ranks of the alternate-country movement. Groundbreaking alt-country bands such as Uncle Tupelo often seemed to be in competition with REM for some prize in obscure lyric-writing. While that tack has given us some great music, alt-country needs the Truckers, too; they are the second coming of loud, proud and smart Southern rock. They tell stories you haven't heard and they blast out that great Skynyrd sound, and rock 'n' roll doesn't get much better than this.