Darling Bride and I sprung for front row tickets to one of my favorite bands, the Drive-By Truckers. This was at the Missouri Theatre in Columbia, MO October 27, 2011 and a cow punk girl group called Those Darlins opened. DBT are promoting their new album "Go Go Boots" which dropped in February of this year I believe. In any event, what a great concert. I had not previously seen one of my favorite bands (and certainly favorite band of the 21st century), before. They were loud, hard, and a whole lot of fun.
Along with the great seating, our hard-earned cheese bought us a meet-n-greet with the band. All of them were very, very kind and considerate. I am sure the last thing anyone wants to do is visit with some rubes from CoMo when they are trying to chill before they go to work. They took pictures with us, gave us their new greatest hits CD, t-shirts, just about anything you could imagine. Plus we made out with band autographed copies of their "Go Go Boots" tour print and a large glossy poster specific to the CoMo event. Sweet!
Then what they did from beginning of the show to the end was rock our goddamn socks off! They probably played a song or two off every album along with crowd cover favorites of The Jim Carroll Band's "People Who Died" and Warren Zevon's "Play It All Night Long". The live verision of "Let There Be Rock" from "Southern Rock Opera" was probably the main great tune that I so enjoyed that night. So, so good...great to perfect I mean!
It can probably not be overemphasized how important this band is in American music right now. Like their Northeastern brethren The Hold Steady they make classic rock cool. If these were in existence any time between 1976 to 1983 these guys would be playing football stadiums and on heavy rotation on FM AOR and classic rock radio stations. But don't be fooled, like many contemporaries of mine they have a nice rounded love of punk rock.
Their latest release is called "Ugly Buildings, Whores & Politicians (Greatest Hits - 1998-2009)" which is an excellent annotated bibliography of their career. This would be a New West release. They have been on ATO records for two albums now, so it rounds out with their final album for New West "Brighter Than Creations Dark". This album will be an excellent introduction for the novice and it's a great compilation for the superfan who can't make up their mind of
which album to play.
Thank you DBT you are the most important Southern Rock touring group today and probably the top 1 or 2 Rock & Roll bands touring today. God bless you!
