The Alabama rock band Drive-By Truckers have long been one of the hardest working and most thoughtful outfits working today. Now, they have a worthy biographer.
Music writer Stephen Deusner is a native of McNairy County, Tennessee, a place immortalized on the Truckers' 2004 album The Dirty South. Stephen first encountered the Truckers through the band's 2003 album Decoration Day. Since then, he has been hooked. Where the Devil Don't Stay (which takes its name from a Mike Cooley song about a backwoods Alabama bootlegger), is his first book. DBT will be pleased.
Where the Devil Don't Stay tracks the Truckers from their beginnings in north Alabama to their disastrous Memphis move, eventual breakthrough in Athens, Georgia, and making their mark via the two-disc, Skynyrd-inspired opus Southern Rock Opera. Since then, the music has kept coming, most recently on the band's 2020 offering, The New OK.
So, fellow Lot Lizards, drop your Buford stick and grab your Betamax guillotine, it's time to talk some Truckers!
Music used in this episode: "Where the Devil Don't Stay," "Zip City," "Santa Fe," and "Goddamn Lonely Love."