I kinda feel bad for the Drive-By Truckers. Not that the post-Skynyrd Southern rockers, who play an acoustic show at the World Cafe Live tonight, find themselves in a pitiable situation. They just backed up ascendant 61 year old soul singer Betty LaVette on her new album, Scene of the Crime, due in September. Spooner Oldham, the great session man and songwriter who's played with Aretha Franklin and Neil Young, is on the road with the band for their promisingly titled The Dirt Underneath tour. The Truckers are on of the few great American rock bands alive, and in Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley, they've got two formidably talented guitarist-songwriters.
But they used to have three. The one gone missing is Jason Isbell, who announced he was leaving the band (amicably) in April and whose excellent solo debut, Sirens of the Ditch, came out last week. (That's him next to last from the back in the photo above, with Cooley to his left, Hood to his right.) Isbell played the North Star this past Saturday and his lengthy set showed why he had to go. It's not that Isbell's detailed, richly evocative songs didn't fit in perfectly alongside Hood and Cooley's. And it's not just that he and Shonna Tucker, the bass player picture up front, used to be married and aren't anymore. It's that Isbell, who joined the Truckers on the tour to 2002's Southern Rock Opera, is too talented to be the third wheel in somebody else's band. That was clear from the two or three standout cuts he was writing on each of the last three Truckers albums, like the typically complicated statement of Red State identity "Never Gonna Change," which he and his Jack Daniels-swigging five piece band tore up on Saturday.
And it's readily apparent on Sirens of the Ditch, which is full of compelling narratives like the swampy "Down in a Hole," which contains about as a concise of a summation of the universality of human weakness ("She was trouble/But aren't we all?") as I can remember hearing in a pop song. Isbell writes songs with hooks aplenty, and he's a superb lead guitarist to boot. The killer cut on Sirens is "Dress Blues," a soldier's story that's not the least bit abstract, but sounds like it was written by someone who actually knows someone who's gone to war. Sure enough, the babyfaced Isbell dedicated the song at the North Star to a high school buddy who died in Iraq, before singing a chorus that observes that "Mamas and grandmas love you/You showed us what we had to lose/But you never planned on the bombs in the sand/Or sleeping in your dress blues."
Philly.com discussions are intended to be civil, friendly conversations. Please treat other participants with respect and in a way that you would want to be treated. You are responsible for what you say. And please, stay on topic.
These boards are monitored by Philly.com staff. We reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us in our sole discretion and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. Personal attacks, especially on other board participants, are not permitted. We reserve the right to permanently block any user who violates these terms and conditions.