As I moved to Nashville in 1996, Country Music was changing from the end of the good 90’s Country to the pop crap and the bro crap to an off brand form of what they called “Alt-Country”. In the decade that followed, I discovered and was influenced by so many bands and so many albums. Not only that but I found an endless list of of other communities like Red Dirt and Jamgrass , which were both just forming.
In 2004 to 2006 I had an awful marriage and divorce and of course I used music to get through all of the turmoil and drama. I was actually late to the party on The Dirty South, and I really got into this band on their next album “A Blessing And A Curse” right around 2006. I mean, who doesn’t like “gravity’s Gone” and “Space City”?
So, basically right now I just wanted to go over a few things about this album, and how the two albums differ. Two decades ago, the Drive By Truckers were rampantly gaining momentum as a hard partying, well oiled machine that was reveling in pissing off New West Records by releasing TOO LENGTHY albums. In doing so, the label demanded that they cut The Dirty South down to only one disc. In order to achieve that and comply with the label, they were forced to remove four songs.
The three songs that were omitted, eventually ended up on their B Sides album “The Fine Print” from 2009 are by far different from their original version on this new project. This was an expensive buy for my collection here, but let me tell you this….it’s worth every penny.
Today, the Drive-By Truckers shared the remixed “Goode’s Field Road” featuring new vocals from Patterson Hood.
He says, “I wrote the song as part of the album as we originally envisioned it as a kind of connective tissue between the state line gang narrative and the more personal songs on the album. We recorded it in Athens during the fall of 2003. When it ended up being dropped from the sequence, it was later released on The Fine Print collection of outtakes and oddities. This version features a new vocal and mix (and is quite a different version from the one on Brighter Than Creation’s Dark). It has always been one of my favorite songs that I have ever written.”
The Complete Dirty South is a band-led rework of the original album originally released in 2004. Principal member, Patterson Hood, took the reins and reimagined this record as it was originally intended. The complete version features resequenced audio, three additional tracks, four remixes along with updated vocals. The packaging comes with a perfect bound book featuring liner notes from Patterson Hood, track by track descriptions from Mike Cooley and Jason Isbell as well as never before seen photos along with updated artwork from the late Wes Freed. Preorder now.
