His first for 12 years – packed with friends and Truckers.
Patterson Hood the co-founder of of The Drive By Truckers and fierce political commentator has revealed his latest work as a solo album called “Exploding Trees and Airplane Screams” which will come out in the New Year on February 21st on ATO Records.The album’s produced by Chris Funk (The Decemberists, Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks) at various studios in Hood’s current hometown of Portland, OR, and seems to mark the singer-songwriter-guitarist’s most expansive and ambitious extracurricular effort to date, supported by a stellar cast of friends and fellow musicians including Waxahatchee, Brad and Phil Cook (Megafaun), Kevin Morby, Wednesday, Brad Morgan and Jay Gonzalez (Drive-By Truckers), Steve Berlin (Los Lobos, The Blasters), David Barbe (Sugar, Mercyland), Nate Query (The Decemberists), Steve Drizos (Jerry Joseph and The Jackmormons), Daniel Hunt (Neko Case, M Ward), and Stuart Bogie (The Hold Steady, Goose). The 10-track collection is preceded by the first single, “A Werewolf and a Girl,” featuring additional vocals from Lydia Loveless.
‘A Werewolf and A Girl’ was written in August of 2021, around 40 years after I fell for my high school sweetheart,” says Patterson Hood. “The song juxtaposed our falling in love and our breakup a year later. Once I cut the demo, I knew I wanted a woman to sing the choruses from the girl’s point of view. And in my head, it was always going to be Lydia. I mean, I didn’t really even have a second choice. The subject matter’s kind of provocative, so I wouldn’t have wanted to ask somebody that I didn’t feel was a friend. I wouldn’t want someone to be uncomfortable and then just not want to talk to me anymore. What I didn’t count on was that when I asked Lydia if she would be interested in doing it, she actually happened to be in the studio and did it the next day. And that’s what’s on the record.”
The album is inspired in part by his own short story, “The Exploding Trees,” in which Hood tells the tale of a natural disaster that occurred in his North Alabama hometown just as he turned 30 and relocated to Athens, GA where Drive-By Truckers were co-founded in 1996. The album gathers songs that have amassed over the songwriter’s career, many of which provided him with distraction and creative sustenance during lockdown, others which have resided among his notebooks for years, including the string-driven “Airplane Screams,” written over four decades ago but never properly recorded until now. The cover art is by Frances Thrasher, an artist from Athens, GA. “She recently put up a show called Heaven4TheYoung that really blew me away,” says Hood. “I was especially moved by one painting in the series, and she was kind enough to let me use it for the cover. I honestly didn’t have a second choice.”
You can pre-order the album here and listen to the first track to be taken from it below.
“Exploding Trees and Airplane Screams” tracklist:
Exploding Trees
A Werewolf and a Girl (w/Lydia Loveless)
The Forks of Cypress (w/Waxahatchee)
Miss Coldiron’s Oldsmobile
The Pool House
The Van Pelt Parties (w/Wednesday)
Last Hope
At Safe Distance
Airplane Screams
Pinocchio
