2024 Occasional Albums Thing 011 - Drive-By Truckers “Plan 9 Records July 13, 2006”

On Thursday the 13th July 2006 Alabama's Drive-By Truckers were asked to play a benefit for the Harvey Foundation at Plan 9  Records in Richmond Virginia, on the occasion of the shops 25th anniversary. The Harvey Foundation, based at Plan 9, was setup to do charitable work in the name of Kathryn and Bryan Harvey. Kathryn owned a shop, World Of Mirth, situated opposite Plan 9 Records and she and Bryan were big Truckers fans. They and their children were brutally murdered on New Years Day 2006. The Truckers fee for the gig was a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon and two bottles of whiskey. There was none left by the end of the encore.

Here we have prime-time Drive-By Truckers. The three songwriter/guitar attack of Patterson Hood, Mike Cooley and Jason Isbell was still in place, Shonna Tucker (Isbell’s wife) on bass, Brad Morgan on drums and on the Pedal Steel is part time Trucker John Neff. This lineup (sans Neff) had made the superb album “The Dirty South” just 2 years previously and, 3 month before this gig, had released its follow up “A Blessing And A Curse” which many regard as disappointing but I really like (c’mon any album containing a song like “A World Of Hurt” deserves some love). Jason Isbell departed the Truckers less than a year later in April 2007.

The 3 LP set was released on Record Store Day in November 2020, presented to look like a bootleg in a plain white card sleeve with variously coloured photocopied sheets stuck to it with minimal details. The labels claimed it was released by “Trademark of Truckers”, mimicking the famed bootleg label Trade Mark Of Quality. Alongside the 3 LP’s was an A4 sheet explaining the story behind the gig, a reproduction Wes Freed poster and gig ticket. The set list itself reads like everything you’d want from a Truckers gig at that time. Tracks from all their albums up to that point plus a cover of the Stones “Moonlight Mile”.

This is the proper “rock show” the Drive-By Truckers are famed for. It starts out relatively easy (pardon the pun Mr. Isbell, IYK,YK) with a couple of songs from their 2nd album “Pizza Deliverance”. They’re followed by 4 songs from their then current album “A Blessing And A Curse”. Then from the 2nd track on side 2, “Sink Hole” from their 2003 album “Decoration Day”, the wheels on this truck are really rolling. “Sink Hole” tells of a farmer whose farm has been passed down from father to son through the generations, but he’s in financial trouble and the “banker man” is here to foreclose on his loans and take his farm, and we find out how all that works out. Patterson Hood rips into the song with all the menace and venom it deserves.

Cooley absolutely tears into every song he sings here, like a man thinking he’s singing just to keep one step ahead of the hell-hounds on his tail, even the usually sedate “Zip City” is lifted to a snarling level of vitriol and if nothing else we get to repeat its greatest of put-down lyrics “Keep your drawers on girl, It ain’t worth the fight, By the time you drop ‘em I’ll be gone and you’ll be right where they fall the rest of your life”…OUCH!…followed by some killer Jason Isbell guitar.

I have to admit to never having heard “Sticky Fingers” in full so can’t make a comparison twixt the Stones and the Truckers takes on “Moonlight Mile”. I will say that this record would not suffer at all from its absence. It does seem a strange choice sequenced right ahead of the teenage rock ‘n’ roll testimonial that is “Let There Be Rock” with its chant of “And I never saw Lynyrd Skynyrd but I sure saw AC/DC, With Bon Scott singing, "Let There Be Rock” Tour”.

Side 6 is a riot. “Nine Bullets” sees Patterson Hood tell us all the people he’s gonna shoot with the titular 9 bullets in his room-mates gun. Cooley relishes the tale of how his Daddy taught him how to fix up jalopies for racing and how to race them in “Daddy’s Cup”.  Jason Isbell relates the shocking story of the feud between the Hill’s and the Lawson’s in East Tennessee and apparently every word of “Decoration Day” is true. Everything comes to a shuddering close on the behemoth of a riff that supports “Lookout Mountain”

Altogether it sounds like a show that was an absolute joy to attend, the band on fire and the audience singing and whooping and a-hollerin’ them on to greater heights…lucky, lucky people to have seen the Truckers in what I think of as their absolute pomp…jealous ? Not ‘arf!

Sink Hole - https://youtu.be/fa1BH2HUd_I?si=EiUnw_B6eoFFDN2x