Concert review: Drive-By Truckers at House of Blues (October 28)

by Mike Orren

DALLAS — The Drive-By Truckers have been an acquired taste for me. While their consciously-redneck Muscle Shoals rock should be right up my alley, I never really "got them" until I saw them at the Austin City Limits Festival a few years back. It's not that the studio isn't kind to the DBTs, but this is a band that was made to be heard live and loud. Plus, they seem at their best when they're not worrying about connecting the dots on a double-disc song cycle but just having a blast playing songs they love. Maybe that's why their two current discs are my favorites of their career. One is live. The other, odds and sods collection The Fine Print, has them blazing through covers and cast-offs.

We were late to the show, missing always-excellent opener Telegraph Canyon, but catching most of DBT's first tune. I was pleased to see that they went right into Warren Zevon's "Play It All Night Long" (mixed with a bit of "Not That Pretty at All"), foreshadowing that we were going to get a set that matches the current material.

They plowed their way through a healthy two-hour set of old favorites and several new songs that will be on one of their two releases in 2010. Bassist Shonna Tucker (who really drives an amazing groove) took more lead vocal than I'd seen in the past -- it was a shame the crowd talked so much over her mellower tunes.

But that's really the only quibble -- with three guitars that can take lead and three lead vocalists, maybe the band can maintain a higher energy level than most mortals. They rock with an intensity and consistency I've rarely seen in many hundreds of shows, managing to stay melodic while blowing the roof off.

There was a heavier use of keyboards than I'd seen with them in the past, perhaps belying an influence of their recent project with Booker T. Jones.

They're clearly having fun, even while screaming "Hell no, I ain't happy!" They're continually looking at each other with this amazed expression of "Hey! We're on stage in front of people who love our music. Rock!" Frontman Patterson Hood was dancing anytime he wasn't soloing or slugging from a communal bottle of Jack Daniels and co-frontman Mike Cooley clearly went to the Ron Wood School of guitarist mugging.

The show gradually built in intensity, with much of the very eclectic crowd dancing through the set. It was a strange crowd mix: There were bona-fide geriatrics in the front of the hall; lots of sorority girl types; obligatory bearded flannel-wearers; some cowboys; some yuppies; and lots of booze. It was an unusually drunk crowd for a Wednesday night, with a couple folks being dragged out by security and lots of stumbling about. That vibe carried up on stage as the band swilled beers as fast as the roadies could bring 'em and passed a bottle of Jack like it was a talking stick. By the end of the night, Tucker handed her bass off to a roadie to fill in and took charge of the bottle and a mic.

The energy was so intense, I wondered what they could do for a satisfactory encore, and halfway through the first song I got my answer as Brent Best (Slobberbone and The Drams) ambled onto stage with a guitar in hand. But then, as four guitars were clearly not enough, bandmate Jess Barr showed up for the show closer, a rousing cover of Jim Carroll's "People Who Died."

Afterwards, a fair number of people stood around marveling at the show -- it was like we were all so jacked up from the finale that we just couldn't go home. Plus, our Miller High Life tall boys weren't quite dead yet.