“I can get it to a point where I know I could probably do it better, but…”
-Mike Cooley
Georgia-by-way-of-Alabama’s Drive-By Truckers are by nature what so many bands today aspire to be by artifice: authentic, American, rootsy rock’n’roll. They first hit the national radar with their third album, Southern Rock Opera, an ambitious double-album which used the story of Lynyrd Skynyrd as a metaphor for the decline of the South as a whole.
Ever since, even while weathering lineup and label changes, they’ve cranked out a great new record on a near-yearly basis in a decade-long winning streak that few bands have equaled.
Part of the reason for this consistency has been that the band has always contained at least three of the best singer/songwriters working today, starting with the core duo of Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley, and including guitarist Jason Isbell, who left the band in 2007, and his then-wife, bassist Shonna Tucker, who remained and grew into an accomplished songwriter in her own right.
Hood seems to be the frontman of the group if there is one, but Cooley’s songs – while as scarce as his words in conversation – are as key to Drive-By Truckers’ records as George Harrison’s were to the Beatles.
Read our exclusive interview with Mike Cooley on SuicideGirls.com.
