Patterson Hood & Mike Cooley Join Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit At ShoalsFest

Drive-By Truckers members Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley joined their former bandmate Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit at the Jason Isbell-curated ShoalsFest in Florence, Alabama on Sunday. The sit-in followed Isbell joining DBT during their set on Sunday.

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit kicked things off with “Overseas” from their 2020 album, Reunions. All told, Isbell would deliver seven of the 10 tracks on Reunions including “It Gets Easier,” “Dreamsicle,” “Be Afraid,” “Only Children,” “What’ve” I Done To Help” and “St. Peter’s Autograph.” Isbell also fit in staples like “24 Frames,” “Hope The High Road,” “If We Were Vampires” and more. Isbell would deliver a tune he wrote during his tenure with Drive-By Truckers, “Never Gonna Change,” ahead of a cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Oh Well” before closing the set “Cover Me Up.”

Isbell returned to the stage for the encore and introduced his “good, good friends” Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley. Hood and Cooley co-founded Drive-By Truckers in 1996 and Isbell joined the band in 2001. All three musicians hail from the Shoals region of Alabama where ShoalsFest was held. Isbell would leave DBT in 2007 to pursue his solo career and reunited with his Drive-by Truckers bandmates for the first time in Florence, Alabama in 2014.

For this most recent Florence teamup, Jason Isbell told the crowd, “We’re gonna do a couple of the old songs for you.” Jason Isbell And The 400 Unit, Hood and Cooley then got the encore underway with “Outfit.” Hood added high harmonies to the song alongside Isbell on the Decoration Day track. Isbell and his former bandmates would close out the encore with the song “Decoration Day.”

Watch fan-shot video of “Outfit” and “Decoration Day” below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PwbF1YF17Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfd3nsuqvjY