Send "DriveBy Truckers " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 In March 1999, George Jones slammed his SUV into a bridge abutment, and Drive-By Truckers got a song out of it. Jones wasn't reeling from alcohol, nor was he being chased by an angry ex, nor did any of the hard-living country tropes play into the crash. Instead, he was simply talking on his cell phone to his daughter. He was in critical condition but recovered eventually. Which is fortunate, because a legend like Jones shouldn't go out that way. Part joking and part shaming, the Truckers' "George Jones Talkin' Cell Phone Blues" acts as a biopic of sorts, framing a consideration of his life and legacy with details from the crash. "He almost stopped loving her today," Hood sings, before admonishing the legend: "Better leave that cell phone alone."That song kicks off The Fine Print, a collection of "oddities and rarities" that closes out a particularly productive decade for Drive-By Truckers. They were bound to get around to this kind of release sooner or later: At any given time they've had three and sometimes four songwriters in the band at once, so the backlog of unused songs was sure to back up the drains and overflow into a catchall like this one. As a retrospective, The Fine Print is incomplete, covering only 2003 onward (save a recent version of a Pizza Deliverance song). There's no Rob Malone, who left the band following Southern Rock Opera; Shonna Tucker sings only a verse of their redundant cover of "Like a Rolling Stone"; but there are two new Jason Isbell tracks, which reminds you how naturally he fit into the group and how dynamically the band performed his songs. "When the Well Runs Dry" is a tense assessment of romantic and creative desiccation, and you can almost hear the mosquitoes buzzing around the languid "TVA", a shaggy dog story told by a backwoods lifer and interrupted by a simple, graceful guitar solo....full text |
| Thehurstreview |
| Drive-By Truckers (DBT) have been making music together for 13 years resulting in 7 critically acclaimed studio albums which could not contain all of the songs written by the band. DBT recently dug into the New West Records vaults, with guidance from longtime producer Dave Barbe, and put finishing touches on a selection of songs that were never quite completed. “For me, it’s been a fun stroll through memory lane and a chance to tie up some loose ends” says Patterson Hood. The result of the collaboration is The Fine Print (A Collection Of Oddities and Rarities 2003-2008), a 12-track album of previously unreleased and rare songs, available September 1, 2009. This summer New West will also release Drive-By Trucker’s entire Austin City Limits performance as a CD / DVD combination pack as a part of the Live From Austin, TX line. The Fine Print (A Collection Of Oddities and Rarities 2003-2008) features songs written by band members past and present, including Patterson Hood, Mike Cooley and Jason Isbell. 7 of the twelve songs come from The Dirty South era… a highly creative time for DBT. Hood explains “That was an especially fertile period for the band, as we more or less wrote that album and the one before it, Decoration Day, as well as my first solo album all in a three year period as we were recording and touring behind Southern Rock Opera.” The record also contains four covers including “Rebels” by Tom Petty, which the band recorded originally for the TV show “King Of The Hill” and “Like A Rolling Stone” by Bob Dylan which provided Shonna Tucker with her first ever lead vocal performance on a DBT recording....full text |
| Thehurstreview |
| The Drive-by Truckers have always been a band particularly cinematic in their focus. They’ve referenced John Ford in their songs, and they shoot their own Southern rock epics in sweeping, colorful Panavision. They’re also very prolific. It makes sense, then, that eventually, to bide some time between one opus and the next, they’d release a batch of bonus material and deleted scenes. That’s what The Fine Print is. Think of it as the second disc in a DVD set, the one with all the supplemental material that explains or enhances the feature film. It’s not a story in its own right, but the Truckers have been weaving a story throughout their entire career, and it’s been good enough that they’ve earned our interest in this material, left – until now — on the cutting room floor....full text |
DriveBy Truckers lyrics
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