In the days before heading out on tour in support of his new solo album Murdering Oscar (and other love songs), the follow up to 2004's Killers and Stars, Drive-by Truckers' frontman, Patterson Hood sits down to talk with me about his new back-up band The Screwtopians, his father, and all things Truckers.
Q: How is recording and performing solo different than working with Drive-by Truckers for you?
Patterson Hood: It’s all good. It’s just a little different. There was a chance when we did this record for me to work with some friends that I’ve really admired but never gotten actually work with much, like Will Scott from Centr-o Matic. And of course David Barbe, who’s been producing Truckers records for almost a decade now, but I’d never really gotten to play with him as a musician before, so he’s the bass player for a lot of Murdering Oscar, and that was really cool, he’s a phenomenal player and I’ve been a fan of his bass playing for a long time. So that was cool. Also, I got to work with my dad, which I had never gotten to do before, and that was really great. He’s a great bass player.
So it was just kind of stretching out. It’s not a huge departure as far as that goes. I mean Brad is my drummer on this record as well as with the Truckers, and all the Truckers record on it. Considering the current line-up of the band, the band on Murdering Oscar is a lot closer to the current line-up of the Truckers than the line-up we had at that time. Because John Neff is back in the band full-time, and he’s all over the record, in fact playing on the record kind of led to him getting back in the band. Because we had such a good time working with him on Murdering Oscar, I started pushing for him to go back out on the road with the Truckers again, and that led to him ending up becoming a member again.
Q: What was it like being the head honcho, and being the one that your father answered to in the studio?
PH: [Laughs] I don’t know if he answered to me. [Laughs again] I don’t know if I could say that. [Continues laughing] But it was great working him. He’s a great player and I had wanted to do something like that for a long time. It was pretty collaborative when he came in, I certainly didn’t tell him what to play, in fact, on one of the songs he did pretty differently from what I had meant to do or had in mind. But I love what he did; it was just very different from what I expected. That was the song “I Understand Now”. I think I was kind of expecting a little more of a Muscle-Shoals-sounding bass part, but the part he actually played sounded more like a Motown part, which is pretty different then how he normally plays. But it’s real cool, it’s like, God, I never thought about that. It definitely changed the feel of the song, quite dramatically, from what I had anticipated. In a good way of course.
Q: You’re kind of a man of many hats you write, you sing, you produce, where do you feel the most comfortable?
PH: The thing I do best is write. I was a writer first before anything else. Everything else kind of came about because of the writing. I started writing songs when I was 8 years old, which I was way too young to hold a guitar properly, or much less sing at that time. So I had been writing a long time before I played in my first band. In the past few years I’ve made some strides to become a better player and hopefully a better singer. But the writing part has always been the best thing I can do.
Q: I have to ask, is the title of the album Murdering Oscar {and other love songs} a clever reference back to Derek and the Dominoes’ Layla {and other assorted love songs}?
PH: Maybe a little bit. I certainly was aware of that title when I did this. It might be a little bit of a nod to that, even though it’s not very much like that record at all. That is a record I love, I mean, I really love that record, so yeah, it’s probably a little bit of a nod. It just kind of struck me as funny, ya’ know? “Murdering Oscar…and other love songs,” I don’t know I kinda like it. And it’s true; it’s a true statement, ‘cause I think you can make an argument for each one of those songs, in one way or another, of being somewhat of a love song. And I’m not necessarily known for writing love songs. And my take on the love song is not exactly going to put Lionel Richie out of business...let’s put it that way.
Q: “Pride of the Yankees” is one of my favorite songs that you’ve probably ever written where did that come from?
PH: I did have a baby. Having my daughter certainly inspired it. That, and probably a little bit 9/11. It was kind of a weird process because I wrote another song first that had that piano line and the same basic melody, and it wasn’t a good enough song to really pursue further. It was just something I wrote and the song didn’t really quite work, but I really liked that melody and that piano line so I kept them, and about a year later I wrote “Pride of the Yankees”. By that time we pretty much thought I was done with this record – but when I wrote that, it was like: “Oh, that’s gotta go on that record.” It was like a missing piece of the puzzle that I didn’t even realize was missing until I wrote it. So we went back and recorded it after the fact. It’s my favorite song on the record, I’m particularly proud of that one.
Q: You’ve been working on this album for a long time, in fact I saw you about five years ago in Nashville and you were still singing the lyrics of “Back of a Bible” off the actual back page of a Bible it was written on. So how far back do these songs go? Is five years about it?
PH: Some of the songs go back fifteen years. I wrote “Murdering Oscar” and “Heavy and Hanging” and “Screwtopia” and “Walking Around Sense”, all back in ’94 when I first moved to Athens, Georgia. I didn’t have a band then, and I didn’t money for studio time, but I made a cassette tape in my house of this group of songs that I wrote around that time, and I called it Murdering Oscar {and other love songs}. I gave copies of it away to people when I met ‘em, because I had just moved to a new town, so when I’d meet somebody I’d give them my cassette. That kinda led to me forming the band, actually. Because some of the people I met that way, we started friendships through that, and then ended up becoming band mates; ya’ know Brad [the band’s current drummer], the original drummer in the Truckers Matt, John Neff, and some of those folks.
The album came about because I dug that tape out in the fall of ’04, really just looking for songs. I was looking for potential songs for a future Truckers record, at the time. I stumbled on that tape and thought, “God, ya’ know these songs still kinda hold up.” I’m so different now I couldn’t see doing a whole album of those songs because I had changed a lot in those intervening ten years. So I wrote some new songs that kind of were answers to the old songs; more from the point of view where I was, about to have a child, happily married, things were all pretty different than I was in ’94 when I wrote the first batch. It’s kind of like ten years of songs all put together, and they sort of counterpoint each other.
Q: When you look at these songs side by side do you see how much you’ve grown? Does some of the old stuff embarrass you?
PH: Oh no, I think the songs themselves hold up. I mean “Pollyanna” is the oldest; it dates back to ’91, when I was still with Adam’s House Cat, which is the band I had in the 80’s with Cooley [current guitarist/singer/songwriter with the Truckers]. That song dates back to those days. So I think it holds up as a song, but me as a person I’m very different than when I wrote it. I’m real pleased that the work itself holds up, but I’m also happy that my point of view has evolved and changed a little bit. So I kinda like looking at the two things side-by-side, having old songs with the new songs right next to each other where you can see a certain amount of personal evolution in it.
(to be continued... part 2 of my interview with Patterson Hood will go up in the next couple of days).
Levon Helm
