Drive-By Truckers wrapped up their 17 date winter tour with a three night run in their hometown of Athens, Georgia. Just before that however, the band played a two hour set to a capacity crowd at New York’s Webster Hall. Kyle Craft kicked off the night around 7:30 before Patterson Hood, Mike Cooley, Brad Morgan, Jay Gonzalez, Matt Patton wasted no time once they began around 8:30 quickly filling the venue with their scuzzy guitars and generously liberal political message.
Drive-By Truckers most recent album American Band (ATO Records) is their most political yet and has drawn a slew of critical adoration. The band led the show with two of the new tracks, “Surrender Under Protest” and “Darkened Flags on the Cusp of Dawn”, making it transparent they had a message to share. Introducing the racial-discussion of “What It Means”, Hood spoke on how he wrote the song a couple of years back using the murder of Michael Brown as some sort of guidance. But Hood admitted he finds the song is more relevant now given the remarkable rise in incidents of police shooting and killing black people. The lines “I mean Barack Obama won / And you can choose where to eat / But you don’t see too many white kids lying / Bleeding on the street” was even more tragic in the light of a Trump victory and the presumption he will reduce or destabilize gun control efforts.
Check out photos from the Drive-By Truckers show below as well as their upcoming tour dates, including the Saturday of Newport Folk Festival. You can find recordings of their recent Athens shows over on Archive.Org to relive (or just experience) their powerful homecoming shows.
SETLIST
Surrender Under Protest
Darkened Flags on the Cusp of Dawn
Women Without Whiskey
Filthy and Fried
The Living Bubba
Where the Devil Don’t Stay
Lookout Mountain
Ever South
Gravity’s Gone
Sinkhole
Uncle Frank
Kinky Hypocrite
Guns of Umpqua
Once They Banned Imagine
The Company I Keep
What It Means
Ramon Casiano
Let There Be Rock
Zip City
Shut Up and Get on the Plane
Hell No, I Ain’t Happy
Rockin’ in the Free World (Neil Young)
TOUR DATES
Feb 28, 2017 Dublin, Ireland Vicar Street
Mar 1, 2017 Manchester, UK O2 Ritz
Mar 2, 2017 Bristol, UK Anson Rooms
Mar 3, 2017 London, UK Roundhouse
Mar 4, 2017 Brighton, UK Concorde 2 w/ Eyelids, Or
Mar 6, 2017 Antwerp, Belgium Trix Club
Mar 7, 2017 Netherlands Paradiso
Mar 9, 2017 Copenhagen, Denmark Amager Bio
Mar 10, 2017 Gothenburg, Sweden Pustervik
Mar 11, 2017 Oslo, Norway Rockerfeller
Mar 12, 2017 Stockholm, Sweden Kägelbanan
Apr 7, 2017 Dallas, TX Granada Theater
Apr 8, 2017 Austin, TX Stubb’s Waller Creek Amphitheater
Apr 10, 2017 San Antonio, TX Paper Tiger
Apr 11, 2017 Houston, TX White Oak Music Hall
Apr 13, 2017 Mobile, AL Soul Kitchen
Apr 14, 2017 New Orleans, LA Tipitinas
Apr 15, 2017 New Orleans, LA Tipitinas
Apr 16, 2017 Jacksonville, FL Ponte Vedra Concert Hall
Apr 18, 2017 Columbia, SC Music Farm
Apr 19, 2017 Wilmington, NC Greenfield Amphitheater
Apr 20, 2017 Wilmington, DE World Café Live
Apr 21, 2017 Washington, DC 9:30 Club
Apr 22, 2017 Washington, DC 9:30 Club
May 4, 2017 Charanooga, TN Track 29
May 5, 2017 Birmingham, AL Avondale Brewing Company
June 10, 2017 Eau Claire, WI Blue Ox Music Festival
July 29, 2017 Newport, RI Newport Folk Festival
Aug 3-6, 2017 Happy Valley, OR Pickathon 2017