Music

I've been listening to the Drive By Truckers at home, at work and in my truck pretty much constantly for months now. As I've grown older I find it much harder to connect with music the way used to. I don't know what that is about, I imagine it has something to do with my increasing emotional stability, but when I do find a band I connect with these days I figure its high time I spread the word about them.

A big part of what I find intriguing with their music is this whole love / hate struggle with the south. Even though I grew up in the land of the yankees, I was brought up the blue collar son of a southern dirt farmer who came north as a young Marine and stayed, settling in suburban NJ. Coming back to the south to live as an adult has been strange for me. There is a familiarity and comfort yet at the same time a sense of being an outsider who will never belong here.

The stereotype of the southern American male is usually the NASCAR watching NRA member, or drunken trailer trash, or the human equivalent of Foghon Leghorn, but the south also gave us Atticus Finch, Harry Truman, Jimmy Carter, and Millard Fuller (the founder of Habitat for Humanity) to name just a few. All men of quiet strength and dignity, men of action and conviction, men with a core sense of what is right and a sense of responsibility to do what is right above all else. I find these songs give me cause to examine what it means to me to be a man and a father and to think about what kind of man I want to be. These questions may have been bouncing around in my head regardless of if I ever heard these songs but they make a damned good soundtrack to what's been going on in my head lately.

Bottom line is, this band rules my world lately. Take this this song for example:

OUTFIT
You want to grow up to paint houses like me, a trailer in my yard till you're 23
You want to be old after 42 years, keep dropping the hammer and grinding the gears

Well, I used to go out in a Mustang, a 302 Mach One in green.
Me and your Mama made you in the back and I sold it to buy her a ring.
And I learned not to say much of nothing and I figured you already know
but in case you don?t or maybe forgot, I?ll lay it out real nice and slow

Don?t call what your wearing an outfit. Don?t ever say your car is broke.
Don?t worry about losing your accent, a Southern Man tells better jokes.
Have fun but stay clear of the needle. Call home on your sister?s birthday.
Don?t tell them you?re bigger than Jesus, don?t give it away.

Six months in a St. Florian foundry, they call it Industrial Park.
Then hospital maintenance and Tech School just to memorize Frigidaire parts.
But I got to missing your Mama and I got to missing you too.
So I went back to painting for my old man and I guess that?s what I?ll always do

So don?t try to change who you are boy, and don?t try to be who you ain?t.
And don?t let me catch you in Kendale with a bucket of wealthy-man?s paint.

Don?t call what your wearing an outfit. Don?t ever say your car is broke.
Don?t sing with a fake British accent. Don?t act like your family?s a joke.
Have fun, but stay clear of the needle, call home on your sister?s birthday.
Don?t tell them you?re bigger than Jesus, Don?t give it away.

Don?t give it away.

Lyrics and Music by Jason Isbell
? 2002 House of Fame Publishing (BMI)
Pedal Steel: John Neff / High Harmony: Clay Leaverett

Buy their records or download them on iTunes. If you have any bizarre urges to make me happy for a while, you can always get me their Southern Rock Opera album.

If you have a fast enough connection check out this video or some video from the upcoming DBT DVD.

If that ain't enough for all y'all check out this review I happened upon: DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS: The Dirty South to get a better idea of what I'm takling about...