Drive-By Truckers

The Athens, Georgia band of Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley, whose Southern Rock Opera includes "Zip City".

Athens, Birmingham and Southern Rock Opera

Drive-By Truckers formed in Athens, Georgia in 1996, built around Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley, longtime friends and former roommates who grew up in the Muscle Shoals region of northern Alabama and met at the University of North Alabama in 1985. After a duo, Virgil Kane, split, Hood moved to Athens and Cooley settled in Birmingham, commuting to Athens for practices and shows; earlier bands included Adam's House Cat and Horsepussy. In a 2020 NPR essay Hood apologised for the name, calling it a drunken joke never intended to stay in rotation. The Encyclopedia of Alabama notes that since 2000 they have typically played more than 150 shows a year.

Gangstabilly (March 24, 1998) and Pizza Deliverance (May 11, 1999) came out on their own Soul Dump label, followed by the live Alabama Ass Whuppin' (2000). Southern Rock Opera (2001) was a double album, a semi-autobiographical story of growing up in the South with the Lynyrd Skynyrd plane crash at its center. It was recorded upstairs in a Birmingham uniform shop with no air conditioning and no named studio, sessions running 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., because the band had no record deal. Lost Highway reissued it on July 16, 2002 and No Depression named them band of the year. Jason Isbell joined in 2001 and left in April 2007. Decoration Day (June 17, 2003) began a New West run through Brighter Than Creation's Dark (2008), and ATO released The Big To-Do (2010), Go-Go Boots (2011) and English Oceans (March 4, 2014), their highest Billboard 200 peak at 16. American Band followed on September 30, 2016, The Unraveling and The New OK in 2020, and Welcome 2 Club XIII on June 3, 2022.

They backed Bettye LaVette on The Scene of the Crime (2007) and Booker T. Jones on Potato Hole (2009), a Grammy winner for best pop instrumental album, and Hood and Cooley play acoustically as the Dimmer Twins. In 2024 a Southern Rock Opera Revisited tour was announced, the band calling it very likely the last time they would tour it; a 20th anniversary edition added a new Dave Barbe mix and bonus tracks. The longtime cover artist Wes Freed died in 2022. A documentary, The Secret to a Happy Ending, came out in 2011.