After fighting writer’s block for four years, Drive-By Truckers singer/guitarist Mike Cooley is now back to work. English Oceans (ATO) is Cooley’s return to full-on songwriting—splitting the tracklist right down the middle after letting bandmate Patterson Hood steer the ship for the two albums prior—and is a return to form for the group as a whole. While DBT has never been a band to slack on the road or in the studio, English Oceans has the vigor and exuberance that made it one of America’s best rock groups. Cooley, Hood, bassist Matt Patton and multi-instrumentalist Jay Gonzalez will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Drive-By Truckers feature.
Hood: Peers and friends for decades, Alejandro Escovedo and Peter Buck just completed a short tour together in a collaboration that will hopefully continue into an indefinite future. Joined by Susan Voelz on fiddle, a long-time collaborator with Mr. Escovedo who has played with everyone from Poi Dog Pondering to Nirvana, as well as Buck’s long time touring companions Scott McCaughey, Kurt Bloch and Bill Rieflin. A band that reads like a who’s who of the last 30-plus years of punk and rock ‘n’ roll history.
As great as the collaboration might have seemed on paper, nothing, including my long time fanship of all of the individual bandmates, prepared me for how amazing an evening it turned out to be.
Buck kicked things off with songs from his two recent solo albums. Garagy affairs with snarled hoarse vocals and the fun quotient turned up to 10, he seems to have side-stepped all of the post-R.E.M. expectations by taking what he’s always been great at and instead of over-thinking it, just doing it. This has resulted in two killer albums in the last year and a half and his first ever shows as a frontman. Road warriors to the nth degree, Peter has been touring with Scott, Bill and Kurt off and on (mostly on) for years in various projects, collaborations and incarnations. Kevn Kinney joined the fun for an over-the-top version of Drivin ‘N’ Cryin’s “Honeysuckle Blue.” They make for a mighty machine.
(Full disclosure: I joined them onstage for Buck’s spoken-word “Southerner”)
Alejandro has racked up his own impressive mileage dating back to before the dawn of punk. His bands the Nuns, Rank And File and True Believers burned up the highways and dive-bars for years before the start of his phenomenal solo career in the early ’90s. Since then, he has released some of the finest records of the last 20 years, was named No Depression‘s “artist of the decade,” nearly died of hepatitis, then rebounded with an even more stellar run of records and shows.
Their combined show made for one of the finest evenings of rock I’ve witnessed in many moons. The band played that wondrous perfect combination of tight and loose that the best bands aspire to. Effortlessly. That it was being applied to some of the finest songwriting of the last quarter century made it even sweeter.
After a raucous hour or so, the band exited the stage, leaving Al and Susan alone to perform a few songs culminating with “Rosalie” from his 2001 masterpiece, A Man Under The Influence. A performance that brought goosebumps to my neck. Afterward, the band came back out for a raved up cover of Iggy’s “I Wanna Be Your Dog” complete with Kurt standing on his Les Paul grinding the Bigsbee into the stage with roaring feedback.
Here’s hoping that they continue this collaboration for more touring and better yet an album. It was really something special.
