The Look Back is an occasional column in which we dive into a notable album from a band or musician with a deep discography before they perform in Louisville.
In the mid-to-late 60s and early 70s, when Alabama Gov. George Wallace was shooting off racist slogans like segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever, white and black musicians were working together to make hit records in Muscle Shoals, an area in the northern part of the state. Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett recorded at Rick Halls iconic FAME Studios in Florence. A young, unknown Duane Allman camped in the parking lot, sometimes coming in to play solos. Numerous legends played with the session musicians in Florence, who were known as the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, which included David Hood on bass.
Years later, Davids son Patterson grappled with the juxtaposition of the widespread, politically-charged racism that seemed to define the state he grew up in, and the unity he also saw as a child. Both were present, and neither told the entire truth. He called it the duality of the Southern thing on Southern Rock Opera, a concept album his band Drive-By Truckers made in 2001.
And, like most of us, Hoods perspective of his home and his understanding of how outsiders perceived it didnt fully snap into focus until he left, which he sang about on what could be considered Southern Rock Operas thesis statement, the tongue-in-cheek-titled Three Great Alabama Icons. The song is more spoken word than rock and roll, and toward the end, as hes talking about Wallace currently residing in hell for his actions, Hood remembers the generalizations people cast on where he is from: When I first ventured out of the South, I was shocked by how strongly Wallace was associated with Alabama and its people. Racism is a worldwide problem, and its been since the beginning of recorded history.
A slobbering, mad dog, morally-bankrupt, race-baiting, political-opportunist governor or, say, president with a legion of feeble-minded followers, doesnt entirely define a particular place. Although, it does say something about it. Southern Rock Opera, at its core, is about contradictions.
The hour-and-a-half-long double album chronicles growing up in the South, using historys ghosts as a vehicle Wallace, football coach Bear Bryant, the rise and fall of Lynyrd Skynyrd and their tussle with Neil Young. While Hoods songs on the record deal mainly with sociopolitical issues intertwined with rock icons, the bands second songwriter and guitarist, Mike Cooley, dug into evocative story songs based on down-and-out Raymond Carver-like characters.
Southern Rock Opera is enormous in scope. Addiction. Isolation. Dangerous highways, plane crashes and the lingering past. Deconstructions of where youre from and what that means. All paralleled to the trajectory of a rising rock band. From the subject material to the roaring, ominous, three-guitar attack, everything on the album is heavy and complicated. Sometimes it feels like a direct statement and sometimes it feels like a hazy fever dream packed with allegories. Its the album that broke the Drive-By Truckers into the mainstream, because it was more ambitious, serious and focused than anything theyd done before it.
Drive-By Truckers
Saturday, Sept. 14
Old Foresters Paristown Hall
724 Brent St.
kentuckycenter.org/paristown-hall
$30-$60 | 8 p.m.