Drive-By Truckers Look Beyond the South in New Songs

Barring some unforeseen shift in public perception, Patterson Hood will forever be associated with the American South. That's what you get for naming your band Drive-By Truckers, cutting albums called 'Southern Rock Opera' and 'The Dirty South' and amassing a mighty catalog of Dixie-centric story songs -- tales of rebels and lowlifes and regular folks just trying to get by.

While the singer and guitarist is comfortable with his legacy, Hood tells Spinner that he and the Truckers have made an effort to expand their scope and write about the world beyond the South.

"When I open my mouth, everyone knows where I'm from," says the native Alabaman. "I talk the way I do and have the accent I have, or whatever, and there's certain things that come with the way we came up and where we came from that are inescapable. But at the same time, we've always, especially for the last seven or so years, really tried to push the boundaries."

His ability to do so, he says, has come with his newfound worldliness, the result of touring the globe with a successful rock 'n' roll band.

"When we started this band, I'd never really been out of the South," says Hood. "But over the last 10 years, we've toured Europe 11 times. We live on the road, and I've seen a lot of things. I think, definitely, we push the geography outward. I've always felt like the last record [2008's 'Brighter than Creation's Dark'] was more of an American record than a Southern record."

In writing songs for the Truckers' eighth studio album, 'The Big To-Do,' out now on ATO records, Hood followed his muse across the Atlantic.

"We have one song on the vinyl-only version that's set in England," he says. "Granted, it's sort of a Southern guy's perspective of touring in England in the summer and playing British festivals, but it is [set] over there, and it has the word 'bloke' in it, which rhymes with [the title] 'Girls Who Smoke.''"