Drive-By Truckers’ two principals, Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley, began the band in 1986 when they were both living in Athens, Georgia. They shared roles as co-singers-guitarists-songwriters. Hood was steeped in a very southern kind of music; his father David Hood was bassist with the crack Muscle Shoals rhythm section The Swampers, who played on sessions for Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Percy Sledge and more.
From their earliest days, the Truckers’ line-up was fluid. The core elements of their sound, though, have remained rocksolid. Theirs is a gumbo of southern rock, country, classic rock, 60s soul and R&B. Hood and Cooley’s lyrics are populated by hard-bitten characters living harder lives in the milieu of the Deep South.
