The start of the Drive-By Truckers tour schedule for 2008 was still three weeks away when frontman Patterson Hood took time out for an extensive mid-January phone interview.The group's eighth CD, "Brighter Than Creation's Dark," would be in stores in a few days, and Hood was obviously eager to get back to live touring.
"We're all rested and revitalized, and we're ready to take this thing out on the road and see what's next," Hood said.
Just 18 months earlier, the members of the Athens, Ga., band couldn't have felt much different.
"We were burned out, and we were tired, and we were kind of angry and frustrated," Hood said. "We had built this machine, and all of a sudden we realized the machine was driving us. We weren't driving the machine anymore. And we started trying to get control of the wheel, and we started going into a bit of a spin. It's really miraculous that this band didn't break up."
A split nearly did occur. As touring wound down in fall 2006, Hood and his bandmate of more than 20 years, guitarist-singer Mike Cooley, got together in the bus during a tour stop in Louisville. They faced head on the question of whether the Drive-By Truckers had run its course.
After considerable discussion, they realized they wanted to continue the band.
But changes had to happen. The biggest one was the departure of guitarist-singer Jason Isbell, who had actually started work on his 2007 solo album, "Sirens of the Ditch," before joining the Truckers in 2002.
Hood said Isbell had grown increasingly frustrated in the Truckers. With Hood and Cooley as primary songwriters, the band couldn't offer the creative outlet Isbell really needed, Hood added.
"He was a great songwriter, great singer and great player," Hood said. After being unable to release "Sirens in the Ditch" while in the Truckers, Isbell is now pursuing a solo career. "There was a fantastic chemistry with all of us. Toward the end of the time he was in the band, he was, I really think, wanting to move into different directions that the whole band wasn't going to move into."
Perhaps what the band (which also includes bassist-singer Shonna Tucker, drummer Brad Morgan and multi-instrumentalist John Neff) needed most, though, was just a breather.
Since releasing its second CD, "Pizza Deliverance," in 1999, the band had been on a nonstop cycle of touring that, except for very brief breaks, was only interrupted by quick stints in studios to record the five albums that led up to "Brighter Than Creation's Dark."
The strain was showing within the band. And some fans thought the music had begun to suffer on "A Blessing and a Curse." That 2006 CD scaled back on the band's more eclectic musical tendencies and focused in on a fairly straight-ahead rootsy rock sound. Fan reaction was mixed and some felt it was one of the group's most uneven efforts.
"We weren't happy campers, and I can hear all of that in the record when I hear it now," Hood said. He said he still thinks the CD still has several very strong songs.
Hood has no mixed feelings whatsoever about "Brighter Than Creation's Dark," which was recorded after the band finally took a few months off in late 2006 and early 2007.
The new CD finds the Drive-By Truckers returning to the group's sprawling musical ways. It includes 19 songs and stylistically is perhaps the widest-ranging Drive-By Truckers CD yet.
There are, of course, several songs ("3 Dimes Down" and "The Righteous Path") that feature the group's signature brand of bare-knuckled Southern-tinged rock.
The band also lets its country roots - an influence that has been largely absent since the first two albums - re-emerge on songs like "Lisa's Birthday" and "Bob." The band's long-established ability to write quieter, yet equally intense, rock-oriented material is also on display in songs like "The Purgatory Line" and the ghostly "You and Your Crystal Meth."
Hood puts "Brighter Than Creation's Dark" in a class with the best Drive-By Truckers albums, and some early rave reviews suggest that critics feel the same way.
"I forever will have a sweet spot in my heart for this one," Hood said. "This one, 'Decoration Day' (2003) and 'Pizza Deliverance' are the three that are just kind of sentimental to me."
Fans can expect the Drive-By Truckers to play many shows that run two hours or longer on the band's current tour. While set lists will change from night to night, Hood is eager to see how the new songs fit into the band's repertoire and how they evolve over the course of the tour.
"It's exciting to me to go out with so many new songs," he said. "That's a pretty idyllic feeling because we do like to change it up from night to night."
If you go
What: Drive-By Truckers, in concert.
When: 9 p.m. Feb. 15.
Where: Roseland Theater, 8 N.W. Sixth Ave., Portland.
Cost: $17.50 through TicketsWest, 800-992-8499.
Information: ticketswest.com .
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