I was told by the folks who would tell me such a thing that we needed a new bio. In the past it was preferable to then find some talented young writer, or perhaps respected sage to pontificate on how great some new album is or something of that order, but as we aren't touring behind a new album and are basically reinventing and redefining ourselves in front of an audience as we do this tour and prepare to make our next album I thought that I would write out a few words to try to explain a little of what we're up to. Remember that making this up as we go along is part of the plan so don't necessarily hold me to every specific as we very well might get distracted by one element or another along the way, and that's part of the plan (for now).
I think that we all came away from last years album and tour thinking of it as some sort of closure. The life of this band has always been of cycles and phases and periods of transition. In the fall of 2001 we launched the Southern Rock Opera Tour and basically toured non-stop through the release of four albums that were all recorded on short breaks for the actual touring of the previous album. This cycle began in 2-300 seaters with us touring in a 1995 Dodge Ram with our gear all packed into the cage and us crammed (with our beloved then-tour manager Dick Cooper) into the front for stretches of months at a time to last fall's shows in some beautiful historic theatres in a tourbus with a four-piece crew. Along the way the band had morphed and grown into a well-oiled machine and hit what felt to me like an apex of how far this could go. We were playing more consistent and able than I had ever imagined. I was also feeling the cracks under the surface, as the strain from that much time on the road was starting to affect my mental well-being and I know I wasn't the only one. So we all went home for a while.
Back home, my wife had converted a screened-in porch into an office for me (my last one had become a nursery) and after a few weeks of decompressing and walking around in circles and adjusting to the fact that the floor wasn't traveling at 70 miles an hour, I began writing more songs than I had written since the turn of the century. Around this time I also reconnected with a tape of a show we had played back in the fall of 2001 in a living room at a farm outside of Durham NC. We had just released SRO (ourselves) and were in the process of trying to explain to everyone we met what this thing was that we had done and were doing. It was about two weeks into the tour and we were starting to figure out how to tell this story and present this show when we found ourselves in that living room, passing around a bottle and singing the songs and telling the stories and suddenly (on stage) it all started coming together. Oh, to listen to it now, it's a colossal mess of drunken rambling and out of tune caterwauling, but something magical happened that better prepared us for the journey we were about to take.
Flash forward to the present. I'm sitting in the back lounge of yet another bus, but this time, after the longest stint of time off we've had since the fall of 98, I feel rested and rejuvenated. The past few months has seen a major personnel change, time spent on family and a couple of really productive and fun side-projects, I've just demoed 14 songs for consideration on our next album and Cooley just sent me a CD of 5 brand new ones. He and I each wrote another one last week to add to the list. Once again reinvention is in the air and spirits are high.
This past weekend was the first two shows of a project we've been calling The Dirt Underneath. The initial plan was to reconnect with our songs and perhaps our audience in a more personal way by stripping everything down then rebuilding it again.. The negative by-product of the great strides we've made as a band in the last six years has been a disproportional emphasis on big, loud and bombastic. On our records, the quieter moments have always co-exhisted with the epics fine, but as we've moved into bigger (and often nicer) venues, it is easy to draw on the sure-things.
The Dirt Underneath is both our chance to strip it back down to the essentials of songs and stories and a chance to work up the songs for our next album in a quieter and friendly setting, an intimate gathering of drunken friends and new songs. John Neff is playing pedal steel and double duty on guitars. He was an original member of the band and has been touring with us full-time again for nearly two years. Also joining us for this tour is legendary keyboardist and songwriter Spooner Oldham. Spooner has played with everyone from Neil Young and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young to Bob Dylan and Aretha Franklin. His farfisa graced "When A Man Loves A Woman" and his Wurlitzer set up the introduction to "I Never Loved A Man (The Way That I Love You)" He is joining us for this tour and playing on our next album.
The Dirt Underneath Tour plans to add some more dates and legs in the fall. Recording on DBT-8 will begin in June 2007 and the untitled new album will be out in early 2008.
DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS 2007: Mike Cooley, Patterson Hood, Brad Morgan, John Neff, Spooner Oldham and Shonna Tucker