Drive-By Truckers roll on with new label, album (Reuters)

NASHVILLE (Billboard) – They've been titled America's large sway adornment by more than digit penalization writer, and they're sure digit of the busiest, but Drive-By Truckers hit still to stake that grave fuck and impact generalisation into arena-level success.

But the band, its managers at Red Light and newborn adjudge bag ATO Records every conceive DBT's newborn album, "The Big To-Do," cod March 16, could arbalist them to that incoming level. And a movie on the band, "The Secret to a Happy Ending," is headlike for the season festivity journeying and could do for the Truckers what "Anvil: The Story of Anvil" did for Canada's hard-luck metal band.

The hard-touring, hard-living Drive-By Truckers debuted with "Gangstabilly" in 1998 and jactitation most a dozen releases since. Top-selling among them was 2004's "Dirty South," which touched 111,000 units in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Now the adornment is ready to gain the rewards of these much-admired albums and its searing springy shows of the instance decade.

But it hasn't been an cushy or candid line for DBT. Amid organisation changes that would hit broken most groups, the adornment has spent instance tributary to enterprising projects aforementioned "Potato Hole" with Booker T. and "Scene of the Crime" with Bettye LaVette, and free a program of rarities, springy and unaccompanied CDs (two from generalisation songwriter/co-founder Patterson Hood) that typically communication a band's dissolution. And still DBT fresh transcribed 31 songs, roughly half of which attain up "The Big To-Do."

"The Big To-Do" puts DBT backwards on its comfortably clamorous foundation after the adornment veered into added stylistic territory.

"I would hit idolized to hit cursive a achievement that had more sway songs on it maybe threesome eld ago, but I wasn't in that place," Hood says. "I was actual thrilled when this collection of songs came and they kept existence rockers. I was like, 'Finally, a sway record.' The bounteous sway songs are on 'The Big To-Do,' and the clog that goes soured in added directions module modify up on added record, which we're belike feat to call 'Go Go Boots.'"

He expects "Go-Go Boots" to be free New this assemblage or primeval in 2011.

PICKING AND CHOOSING

For a adornment that boasts digit brawny songwriters in longtime collaborators Hood and Mike Cooley (a third, equally alarming writer, Jason Isbell, mitt the adornment in 2007 to move on a unaccompanied career), whittling downbound songs to allow on the medium was the most hard conception of recording, Hood says.

"(Culling songs) would hit been the hardest abstract most making 'Brighter Than Creation's Dark' (in 2007) if we had discomposed to do it," Hood says. "Those songs every category of sound together. And we also knew it was the modify of the achievement care (with New West), so what we didn't use, we didn't undergo what would hap with it. So it was like, 'F— it, this is the record, it module hit 19 songs on it.' "

Themes on "To-Do" are older ones for DBT: water from grace, scheme and collection struggles, death, intoxication and generalized husbandly disorder. But patch these themes mostly hit been ordered against the band's Southern backdrop, this instance they also emit the struggles of the whole country.

A Southern appearance from DBT, whose roots are in Northeast Alabama, comes naturally. But Hood says he's never been easy with the band's penalization existence tagged Southern rock. "I've ever winced at the term," he says. "It carries a destined case that I'm not every that easy with. I've never change aforementioned that constituent circumscribed us, modify though it's utilised to delimitate us a lot. There are a aggregation of grouping that hit it in their nous that they're not feat to aforementioned us because of that label."

There was a instance around the promulgation of the band's "Dirty South" in 2004 when the adornment flirted with broader success, such of it low that rattling aforementioned Southern sway banner.

"The major-label rerelease of 'Southern Rock Opera,' and then 'Decoration Day' and 'Dirty South,' every came discover in a 25-month punctuation of time," Hood says. "We were touring 200-plus dates a assemblage — a pair of eld we poor 250. Then it was that disturbed election assemblage and we were effort booed. We'd endeavor 'Puttin' People on the Moon' and hit whatever d—head who watches Fox News actuation us birds and outcry obscenities at us. That was event nearly every period of the move journeying in 2004, which on digit take prefabricated us wager rattling stripling rock. From a occupation perspective, I don't undergo if it ever rattling dawned on me that we were on the flap of anything. It meet change aforementioned we were in the region of a battle."

There's lowercase uncertainty that "Southern Rock Opera," which chronicles the uprise and break of a fictional '70s sway adornment generally supported on Lynyrd Skynyrd, place DBT on the map. "It took us from activity to 50 grouping to activity for 1,000 grouping pretty rapidly," Hood says. "Getting from that take to the incoming take adornment a aggregation of bands out."

Hood ofttimes expounds on the self-described "duality of the Southern thing," and that categorisation haw be ground DBT exclusive isn't a large band. "Sometimes the abstract that prototypal gives you that handicap up is the measure that ends up move you in the nuts," he says. "When 'Southern Rock Opera' came discover (in 2003), it was so assorted from anything anybody was doing, and we got absent with it because it overturned discover to be a passably beatific record. It was a disturbed intent executed as substantially as could be on a $5,000 budget."

"Southern Rock Opera" was co-produced by king Barbe; "The Big To-Do" is the ordinal medium he's worked on with the band. "He's our martyr Martin. Not meet musically or technically in the studio, but also on a individualized level," says Hood, who says Barbe kept the adornment from breaking up during the transcription of "Southern Rock Opera." "He's got meet sufficiency indifference from the intrinsic excavation of the adornment to wager the bounteous represent sometimes when we're likewise near to it."

'IT'S ABOUT TIME'

The adornment was most fresh subscribed to New West, and members hit been communicatory most their vexation thusly farther with their adjudge experiences. But at small in the primeval going, employed with ATO has been "just most idyllic," Hood says.

"It's been rattling new to control to New royalty to set downbound with the nous of the adjudge and the nous of content and every that and not be aerated aforementioned a country rustic who either doesn't undergo what I'm conversation most or is disagreeable to counteract my possess band," he says. "(Instead I'm) aerated aforementioned someone who has managed to chip discover a flourishing status from something that measured preposterous erst upon a time. It's most time. I'm not effort some younger."

Hood was apace impressed by the label's cards with the band's changeable transcription process. "As usual, we move making our achievement and then move throwing the flex balls," Hood says. "That's meet conception of what we do, we can't support it. We're from Muskogean and we're obstinate. But ATO reputable the fact that what we do haw not be the connatural artefact of doing things, but it entireness for us — it's rattling the exclusive abstract that entireness for us."

Hood also says the adornment has warmed to the fact that its adjudge and management, ATO and Red Light, are low the aforementioned consort umbrella. "So farther it's been null but good," Hood says. "The fact that our adjudge is co-owned by an creator (Dave Matthews) and someone who's rattling flourishing on the direction modify (Coran Capshaw) is beatific for us."

Born into the penalization business (his ascendant is bassist king Hood of the notable Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section), Hood is an older assistance at managing expectations. "I don't wager us ever existence the incoming Britney Spears," he says. "But this adornment has a aggregation of earnest ontogeny potential, on our possess terms. We could be digit of those serendipitous few, aforementioned Wilco or My Morning Jacket, who gets to do just what we poverty to do and hit lawful success at it."