Continuation of my The Dirty South blog.
Song: "Sands of Iwo Jima"
Patterson Hood's ability to tell a story through characters as real as anyone you or I know is one of the foundations of the band. Whether or not these are people he knows, personally, is irrelevant. The person listening to the story accepts that it's someone he knows. That's all that really matters. In this case, it's his great uncle, referred to as George A. More or less, Hood is telling the story through his own point of view. He begins back in 1941, where George A. is driving back from Birmingham to his family farm, where he hopes to work. Unfortunately, he is drafted and goes to the South Pacific to fight on the island of Iwo Jima.
The most important thing to know about George A. is that, through Hood's eyes, he is a humble, unassuming man. He fought for his country, came home and did what he initially set out to do. All of these memories of his great uncle are tied into memories of watching the film The Sands of Iwo Jima when he was a kid. If there's one thing a kid will do, it will be to naively glorify moments that don't need glorifying. Hood, as a kid, wants to hear grandiose stories about the island where his great uncle fought, simply because he saw John Wayne do it in the film. George A. sweetly tells him that he "never saw John Wayne on the Sands of Iwo Jima." This line, to me, is so important. We're all to be sure that, as a veteran, George A. DID see the film. He saw John Wayne IN The Sands of Iwo Jima, but he tells his great nephew that he never saw him ON it. The dichotomy between the two is startling and it's just one word. This is about as simply told a story that you will find in the Drive-By Truckers canon and it's one of the best.
Director: Hal Ashby (1929-1988). His previous experience with post-war disillusionment in Coming Home would bring a lot to the table for this one.
Song: "Danko/Manuel"
Jason Isbell is back for round two and what a glorious round it is. If "The Day John Henry Died" had metaphorical ties, this one is rife with them. The title of this story is in reference to two of the primary singers of the highly-influential group The Band, Rick Danko and Richard Manuel. They are, also, the only two members, to date, who have passed away. As the story goes, Isbell, initially, wanted to tell a story about Band-drummer Levon Helm's feelings towards the deaths of Danko and Manuel, but the more he worked on it, the longer and more drawn out it became. Instead, he decided to focus on his own perception of what it was like to be a working and traveling musician. He puts it in context with two individuals who spent a better part of their lives on the road. Eventually, the lifestyle caught up to them. Manuel hanged himself in 1986 and Danko passed away in 1999.
The narrative is rather interesting, mainly because it's difficult to discover where Isbell, himself, is talking and where other characters may be involved. The opening line is very important, though, that's to be sure: "let the night air cool you off." I, initially, was under the impression that this was Isbell talking to someone, but I think it's someone talking to Isbell, mainly for the reason that in the next verse, Isbell comes to terms with the lifestyle of a working musician. "I ain't livin' like I should", he declares. He needs to go home, which brings us to the refrain of "Can you hear that singing?/Sounds like gold/maybe I can only hear it in my head/fifteen years ago we owned that road/now, it's rolling over us instead/Richard Manuel is dead." We feel that our narrator is becoming increasingly more aware of his mortality. Manuel seemed unstoppable while in The Band, but look what happened to him. When another person questions Isbell as to whether or not he wants to be the guy that sounds just like Rick Danko, there's trepidation. He doesn't go on to give an answer, but you know he's trying to convince himself to quit before he ends up like those two. This story is startling.
Director: I like Todd Haynes for this one. There's just enough obscure imagery to it that I'd put him on the job.
Songs: "Boys From Alabama"/"Cottonseed"/"The Buford Stick"
Tracks eight through ten are a three-song suite in the middle of this very turbulent album. The stories of each are among the most cinematic. Patterson Hood tells the first and last and Mike Cooley takes the middle. The songs are based upon the famous sheriff, Buford Pusser, from McNary County, Tennessee whose house was blown up and wife was killed by a bad group of individuals from across the border in Alabama. Hood actually narrates the story of Pusser before he goes into "Boys From Alabama". The story of Pusser and his revenge was made into a film in 1973 called Walking Tall starring Joe Don Baker. Hood insists that these songs are about the "other side of that story". He and Cooley want to talk about the bad group of individuals. They're going to give us their impression, possibly stories told to them by their fathers from their childhoods, of the "Alabama Mafia" and how they took care of a man who stopped a lot of the bootlegging they were trying to accomplish.
"Boys From Alabama" is really an introduction to the suite. It, obviously, gives the entire backstory during the opening narration, but Hood does a terrific job of forming a story around the men who forced the vengeful nature out of Pusser, which was portrayed in Walking Tall. You get a sense that Hood would like to see a movie made about these guys, not necessarily because he condones their behavior, but that it just might be a better story. It would be. This leads directly into Cooley's "Cottonseed". The last line from "Boys" is "I wouldn't piss off the Boys from Alabama if I was you" and the first line from "Cottonseed" is "I came to tell my story to all these young and eager minds". One of the "Boys" is talking to us. This story is told from a murderous fiend's point of view, barely remorseful of the things he's done. He sits in prison, probably for life, and discusses his time as a man possessed by the same sort of demon that Cooley's "father" character from "Where the Devil Don't Stay" was. If Hood and Cooley's dads were spinning yarns about some bad dudes from around their town, then the narrator of "Cottonseed" is confirming it. There really isn't a chorus, but the main line is "I put more lawmen in the ground, than Alabama's put cottonseed."
The final piece, "The Buford Stick" takes place after Walking Tall has been released to tremendous popularity. Sheriff Pusser is seen, now, as a folk hero, thanks to the Hollywood machine. This makes the Boys none too happy. The story is told from another member of the crew, one who's probably not as horrendous a human being as our narrator from "Cottonseed", but he's definitely more bitter. The film's huge and he has to watch as the town he used to run views Pusser as a sort of savior. They all pity the good Sheriff, but all he knows is that the good Sheriff shut down every one of the illegal operations he ran. He's saying, "How in the hell am I supposed to make money, now?" We might as well lump this guy in with the narrator from "Puttin' People on the Moon". He just can't catch a break. Even after Pusser finally dies, he still can't seem to let it go. The fellas of the Drive-By Truckers live amongst sad people.
Director: This takes ambition. This takes skill. This, also, takes a director who knows how to entertain an audience with something very simple, but present it with the integrity of a true auteur. Thus, I give thee to Quentin Tarantino.
The final entry to The Dirty South blog coming soon!
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