by T-Bone
Some old people down home tell me that Greg and Duane are somewhere in our family tree. If not, I'd like to invite them personally. What would it be worth to watch Duane Allman, one more time, shut his eyes and play his guitar like a man who knew he would die violently? You can't say you wouldn't pinch off a few Andrew Jacksons to hear Stevie Ray Vaughn squeeze sweet Jesus out of that steel axe again.
Like so many Southern teenagers in the 1970s, I was in bands - and I still have the hair and scars and memories to prove it. So it stands to reason that we should burn some good verbiage about Southern music. It's one of the few parts of the South that seems to have escaped stereotyping by people who think they know better, the other one being food. There are more than a few legendary Southern bands and I don't need to name them. You know who they are. But if you don't know the Drive-By Truckers, you need to crank up your iPod and aim it south.
If you have ever sweated or been in love or drunk or drove too fast on an Alabama back road or dodged beer bottles in front or behind a chicken-wired stage, you need to listen to these descendants of Ronnie Van Zant riffs and Dickey Betts' red guitar; they can make your iTunes smoke like it was 1972 all over again. It's hard. It's rock. It's Southern.
I am listening to their iconic Southern Rock Opera as I write this. It helps me remember why I love the South and love this band's music. The words are not just props for the tunes. The words do some heavy lifting. This band knows their history - shared history that I can appreciate.
Looking out the window, the trees are getting closer it seems
These angels I see in the trees are waiting for me
Angels and fuselage
Southern rockers are not just good at writing music and singing it. They're good at dying while doing it. Too many have done just that. My father worked in Andalusia with a man who started the trend of living fast, dying young and leaving a good-looking corpse: Hank Williams. I have the “duality of the Southern thing” soaked, smoked and bred into me.
The Drive-By Truckers pour out the kind of music that plays in the backgrounds of a lot of Southern lives. It's not always pretty or clean or right. But it's always real. It faces up to the truth of who we are and why we are and where we came from. It sounds good woven between two guitars and a broken heart. And who can't understand that.
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