#246: Drive-By Truckers - Southern Rock Opera (2001)

Zack: I was mildly interested in listening to this up until the time I saw it was a double album. Country and Southern rock have been so hit-or-miss for us that I was terrified of investing more than 90 minutes into something I might come to loathe. I pushed it back a few days. Finally, I figured, I was going to have to listen to it eventually and I might as well try and enjoy it. I’m glad I made it a point to go in with an open mind, because this album is a really impressive feat of musical ingenuity. Southern Rock Opera is, as the name suggests, a southern rock (with some alternative country and even a dash of cowpunk here or there)-styled rock opera that aims to deconstruct the Deep South mythology. If it wasn’t for the three-guitar based assault that’s constantly whirring about, it would practically be academic. Drive-By Truckers have no interest in glorifying the South and its larger-than-life figures, a la Lynyrd Skynyrd, or even condemning its – ahem – checkered past like Neil Young famously does in Southern Man and (the fabulous track from Harvest) Alabama – a well-known dispute touched upon on SRO in the second track, Ronnie and Neil. Instead, they want to focus on the grey that lies between those two extremes. Or, as it’s put in a few songs, breaking down “the duality of the ‘Southern Thing.’” And when their attention is clearly devoted to that goal, SRO is magical. I think things tend to get a bit hazy when they jump into the secondary theme of exploring things from Skynyrd’s point of view, and the insistence on doing so adds quite a few unnecessary tracks, especially on the album’s shaky back end. But when Drive-By Truckers are trucking along in their investigation of southern dichotomy, they take both the southern rock and alternative country genres to a level of intelligence and sophistication I haven’t seen elsewhere.

Favorite Tracks: Birmingham; Wallace; The Southern Thing

Emily: True to its name, Southern Rock Opera tells quite an operatic story of the South. By personifying the different experiences and elements of the "Southern thing" through icons such as Lynyrd Skynyrd, George Wallace, and Neil Young as well as other unnamed Southerners and members of the Drive-By Truckers themselves, Southern Rock Opera creates a nuanced image of the South in the 1970s and beyond. The first half of the album is especially successful. Southern rock and country provide a backdrop to the story, which could effectively work as a staged musical. Well, maybe not one with a cohesive story, but perhaps a series of vignettes that all tie together as elements of the band's Southern thing. This idea really came to mind while hearing The Three Great Alabama Icons. The rock of this song is more subdued to make way for a spoken-word story of the narrator, a young Southerner, and his interpretation of the great looming figures of his home state - Ronnie van Zant (of Lynyrd Skynyrd), Bear Bryant (Alabama's head football coach in a football-loving state), and George Wallace (the infamous Alabama governor who became the face against the civil rights movement in the '60s). The storytelling was so vivid that I could envision the scenes being acted out as the narrator spoke, and it continued into the next song, Wallace, which describes George Wallace's entrance into hell - from the perspective of the devil. Unfortunately, the second half of this double album wasn't nearly as unique or successful. But the first half? It presents the South in music from an original, honest, and realistic perspective, a perspective that seems to be lacking in most other country and Southern rock music.

Favorite Tracks: The Three Great Alabama Icons; The Southern Thing; Birmingham

#224: Lynyrd Skynyrd - (Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd) (1973)

Zack: We have a system for picking albums that essentially works with me picking a whole bunch of possible albums and Emily deciding on the final batches. For some reason, she decided to double down on the southern rock subgenre, as we will be listening to The Allman Brothers Band At Fillmore East sometime within the next two weeks or so. I’ve already listened to that album like a dozen times, and I’m super excited to talk about what a perfect example of southern/jam rock it is. And I think the comparison with Skynyrd will be interesting. But it brought me to this larger question of where Skynyrd ranks as far as southern rock goes. The almighty Wikipedia begins the list of influential southern rock bands with – in order – Allman Brothers, Skynyrd, and ZZ Top. Now, at their best, ZZ Top are ridiculously cheesy, which is what I thought about a few songs of this album (and what I think about Sweet Home Alabama in general, but that’s a discussion for another day). But when the Allman Brothers are at their best, what could conceivably be a short song gets whipped up into an extended slide guitar jam session, freewheeling around in perfectly synchronized chaos. Sounds a lot like Free Bird, doesn’t it. And that’s what I came away with. This album was inconsistent enough that it flipped between being reminiscent of these other two bastions of southern rock. And I’ll stand by that assessment for every track, except Simple Man. That song, I maintain, is damn near perfect while still being stripped down (at least compared to Free Bird). In Simple Man, I hear a lot of influence for a more modern southern rock-influenced band that I love, My Morning Jacket, especially their earlier works. Simple Man is, for me, more than enough reason to appreciate Skynyrd.

Favorite Tracks: Simple Man; Free Bird; Tuesday’s Gone

Emily: Lynyrd Skynyrd is known for a few things in my mind. One, that half of the band died in a plane crash. Two, that Sweet Home Alabama has become a Southern anthem of sorts. And three, Free Bird has become the universal sign of douchebaggery when yelled for at a concert - especially one that's completely unrelated to the genre (though it was kinda funny when a guy held a Free Bird sign from his balcony hundreds of feet away from a free Switchfoot concert we went to last summer). These don't exactly combine up to fandom in my mind, and after listening to Skynyrd's entire debut I'm still not all that into it. Southern jam rock just isn't my thing - I prefer my songs on the shorter end, minus the oft-repetitive musical interludes. Perhaps I'll like the Allman Brothers better though; we'll find that out in a few days.

Favorite Tracks: Free Bird; Tuesday's Gone; Simple Man