Drive-by Truckers

Drive-by Truckers

Gangstabilly (Soul Dump/New West)

Drive-by Truckers

Pizza Deliverance (Soul Dump/New West)

Certain Southern minds imagine a world where Kinky Friedman wins elections as easily as George W. Bush loses them, and the Drive-by Truckers are as big as Led Zeppelin. Or, shit, at least 3 Doors Down. A world where DBT sell-out the Erwin Center instead of the Parish. Now that would be rockin'. Still, any place where a local label reissues the band's out-of-print first two albums can't be all bad. Fans fuzzy on everything before Southern Rock Opera might be surprised to discover the Athens/Alabama road dogs' roots are far more country than rock, but not that the songwriting was there from day one. Side one of debut Gangstabilly, cut live over two days in 1997, is as acoustic as a garden-variety Gourds album, but "The Living Bubba" and "Panties in Your Purse" still rank among Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley's most powerfully vivid work. Side two is where they plugged in and found the cornerstones of their live set: "Steve McQueen," "18 Wheels of Love," "Why Henry Drinks." And if you want to talk Zeppelin, try the breaking levees of "Buttholeville." The band was already making regular stopovers at the Hole in the Wall when Pizza Deliverance came out in May 1999, at shows that threatened to drown the tiny room in a tide of Lone Star. Pizza's songs were written before Gangstabilly, but Cooley's gift for flinty character sketches was taking shape ("Uncle Frank"), as were rambling Hood narratives like "The President's Penis Is Missing" and "The Night G.G. Allin Came to Town." The rest is academic: By the time SRO won the band the wider audience they deserved, Gangstabilly and Pizza Deliverance had already provided more than enough raw material to make them every blue-state Southerner's favorite red-blooded rockers.

(Gangstabilly)

(Pizza Deliverance)