Patterson Hood crafts incisive, articulate yet straightforward narratives rooted in Southern American existence, earning primary recognition as frontman of the hard-rocking Drive-By Truckers while also maintaining an independent solo path and contributing songs and production to fellow performers. With the Truckers he handles both amplified and unplugged material, yet reserves his most autobiographical and introspective compositions for solo releases, setting aside full-band rock in favor of restrained pop and modern folk arrangements. The 2004 lo-fi collection Killers and Stars explored subjects that lay beyond the band’s typical scope, the 2012 album Heat Lightning Rumbles in the Distance drew from an unfinished Hood novel, and the 2020 release Live at the Shoals Theatre, June 15, 2014 captured a performance alongside Jason Isbell and Mike Cooley.
Born March 24, 1964, in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, Hood is the son of David Hood, the noted bassist of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. Immersed in a musical environment from childhood, he started composing at age eight and joined a local rock group on guitar at fourteen. While enrolled in college in 1985 he launched Adam’s House Cat with roommate Mike Cooley; the band built a regional following, won Musician Magazine’s Best Unsigned Band contest in 1988, yet failed to translate that success into broader recognition and disbanded before issuing its sole recorded album. Hood and Cooley persisted as the duo Virgil Kane and later in the brief-lived outfit Horsepussy.
By 1996 both musicians resided in Athens, Georgia, and decided to attempt another band project. The resulting Drive-By Truckers fused country and hard-rock influences. After intensive touring behind the debut albums Gangstabilly (1998) and Pizza Deliverance (1999), the live recording Alabama Ass Whuppin’ (2000) showcased their onstage development, though Southern Rock Opera (2001) established their wider reputation. This concept album chronicling the ascent and decline of a Lynyrd Skynyrd-like group and the complex inheritance of Southern life received critical acclaim and solid sales. Originally issued on the band’s Soul Dump Records, it was re-released in 2002 by Lost Highway Records following the Truckers’ signing; the association proved brief when the label declined Decoration Day (2003), prompting the group to repurchase the masters and move to New West, which released the album unchanged to further praise. Between 2004 and 2008 the Drive-By Truckers issued three additional New West sets—The Dirty South, A Blessing and a Curse, and Brighter Than Creation’s Dark—while maintaining a demanding tour schedule. New West also put out Hood’s first solo album during this span; Killers and Stars comprised stark, acoustic songs he had previously sold in limited quantities at solo appearances and addressed topics outside the Truckers’ usual territory. Hood additionally produced three 2007 releases: Bettye LaVette’s The Scene of the Crime (with the Drive-By Truckers backing her), Jason Isbell’s Sirens of the Ditch, and the Dexateens’ Hardwire Healing.
Hood’s second solo album, Murdering Oscar (And Other Love Songs), appeared in 2009 on Ruth St. Records as a more refined and assured effort than its predecessor. He toured in support and that year joined the Drive-By Truckers in backing Booker T. Jones on Potato Hole. The band returned in 2010 with The Big To-Do, its first release for ATO Records; New West had meanwhile issued the 2008 Austin City Limits performance as Live from Austin, TX. In 2011 Hood contributed co-writing and backing vocals to the track “I Gotta Get Outta Here” on Alice Cooper’s Welcome 2 My Nightmare. The Drive-By Truckers followed with Go-Go Boots that same year, and Hood issued his third solo album, Heat Lightning Rumbles in the Distance, in 2012. Drawn from an unfinished novel written during personal upheaval, Heat Lightning represented his most intimate work to date; he assembled the Downtown Rumblers for the accompanying tour. Also in 2012 he released the single “After It’s Gone” with the ad-hoc Downtown 13, featuring members of R.E.M. and Widespread Panic, as part of a campaign to prevent big-box retail development in downtown Athens, Georgia. In 2013 Hood recorded a cover of Slim Dunlap’s “Hate This Town” for the benefit compilation Songs for Slim: Rockin’ Here Tonight.
The Drive-By Truckers delivered English Oceans in 2014 and the expansive live set It’s Great to Be Alive! (spanning more than three hours and recorded over three nights at San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium) in 2015. That July the New York Times published Hood’s op-ed “The South’s Heritage Is So Much More Than a Flag,” addressing the intensifying debate over the Confederate battle flag. Political and cultural divisions continued to inform the band’s 2016 album American Band, its most explicitly topical collection. The previously unreleased Adam’s House Cat album Town Burned Down finally appeared in 2018. Two further topical Drive-By Truckers projects, The Unraveling and The New OK, emerged in 2020, shaped by the final period of the Donald Trump presidency and the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Southeastern Records, Jason Isbell’s label, issued Live at the Shoals Theatre, June 15, 2014 that year, documenting the trio performance with Isbell and Cooley.
