Review + Setlist: Drive-By Truckers and the Henry Clay People at the Pageant

By Michael Dauphin Sun., Oct. 3 2010 at 1:57 PM

Categories: Last Night, Show Reviews, Snapshots

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Jon Gitchoff

Drive-By Truckers at the Pageant October 2: They killed it. Click here for a full slideshow.

There are very few certainties in life, but there's one thing you can always count on: If Athens, Georgia's Drive-By Truckers are in town, you have the opportunity to see one of the best rock & roll shows money can buy. That situation presented itself Saturday night, when the faithful crowd packed on the Pageant's main floor was rewarded with rock & roll salvation.

As the house lights dimmed, and the P.A. pumped out background party music curated by the always-animated "Stroker Ace," Mike Cooley (singer, guitar), DBT assumed the stage, checked the levels and primed its artillery of Fenders and Gibsons for a marathon session of Southern rock hellfire-and-brimstone. Wasting very little time, the six-piece band lunged into "The Fourth Night of My Drinking" from this year's The Big To-Do.

Just like that, church was in session.

If the band seemed somewhat reserved, it only took a few songs for them to settle into the cut and relax. As is always the case with DBT, by the time they reached the chorus of "Where the Devil Don't Stay, from 2004's The Dirty South, each member looked as if they were having more fun than anyone else in the room.

Bassist Shonna Tucker's head served as the perfect metronome, while singer/guitarist Patterson Hood stomped his lurching legs in perfect unison. The whole operation started to gel perfectly as the band popped into the breakneck guitar romp, "Drag the Lake Charlie." John Neff"s pedal steel whined and squealed, providing an ideal swirling ambiance on top of the signature unadulterated DBT swamp rock.

Jon Gitchoff

Drive-By Truckers performing at the Pageant. Click here for a full slideshow.

While no two Truckers shows are the same, you got the sense that the band was extra feisty Saturday night. Whether it was the bottle of Patron the band passed around, the Jack Daniels making the rounds, or maybe the eerie fall air that seems to envigorate us as the seasons change, it was clear DBT was dialed in with extra sense of flare. Cooley's Southern-fried solo on "Three Dimes Down" bit and hissed with more humor and vigilance than usual, while mop-topped organist/piano player, Jay Gonzales, hunched over the ivories and drenched the already-booming sound. Never committing to a set list, the band even snuck in a few curve balls ("Feb 14," "The Wig He Made Her Wear") that rarely find their way to the live stage.

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