For his forthcoming solo album, Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams, due out in February, acclaimed singer-songwriter and co-founder of the Drive-By Truckers Patterson Hood found himself reaching back to childhood in Alabama for inspiration.
The record is his first effort outside the Truckers in a dozen years. It takes its evocative title from a short story Hood wrote, as he puts it, “some years back,” and in ways explicit and elliptical, considers the memories of his coming of age.
“It’s really weird, because this record plays like a concept record, like it was some kind of grand design,” the 58-year-old Hood said during a recent conversation from a New Orleans tour stop. “I wish I could say it was — or maybe it’s cooler that it wasn’t.”
Hood is in the midst of a brief run of solo dates, which will bring him to Texas for a series of shows, including a Dec. 12 stop in Fort Worth at Tulips. If anyone needs any additional incentive, Hood said he’ll be joined, only for his three Texas shows, by Denton’s Scott Danbom, whom Hood calls “one of my favorite musicians on Earth.”
I spoke with Hood about Screams, the pandemic’s lingering effects and the value of artistic fearlessness. The following conversation has been lightly edited and condensed.
What called you to go back into your past, and draw from your growing up years for inspiration?
It just kind of happened that way. Every time [the Drive-By Truckers] make a record, there’s always one or two songs that are among my favorites, and we record them, and they turn out really good, and then we never play them again. In lockdown, when I was up in my attic going crazy … I started demoing all those songs just to see if I had the makings of a record. I was kind of taken aback by how they all fit together really weirdly. During the recording process, that even occurred to me: ‘This is stuff from my childhood.’
I wondered if living where you do now [Hood moved to Portland, Ore. a decade ago], and being so removed from where you grew up, if that unconsciously seeped in and pushed you back there?
I’m sure that’s true. Also, I’ve got kids that age. My oldest is going to be 20 in February, right around the time the record comes out. My youngest is 15, and so I’m witnessing them going through the stage of life that a lot of this record reflects, although their childhood is pretty different than mine, in mostly good ways. I’ve written a lot about the past and about my past, [but] I’m not a particularly nostalgic person by nature — I’m not a glory days person, although post-2020 has given that a bit of a workout, because, I tell you, I look back even on terrible years before 2020 as still somehow better. But maybe some of that’s just something I need to overcome, and some of it is the fact that it kind of does suck right now.
Sometimes, writing is a means of being understood, sometimes it’s a way to process life, and sometimes it can be a way of just moving forward by looking back a little bit.
Yeah, for sure. I was locked down on the other side of the country [and] afraid I might never see my most loved people ever again, and that was part of my insanity. It really did a number on me. I haven’t come to terms with how bad lockdown affected me and the whole pandemic.
How do short stories help you articulate what songs can’t, and vice versa — or is there no difference between the forms for you?
It’s all related to me. It’s all just writing. And you know, all art. Hell, I wish I could paint, because I would love to. I wish I had a visual art outlet — I dabble in photography, but even that, I don’t feel like I do good enough. But I love writing in all forms. I still haven’t given up writing a novel, you know? I don’t want it to suck, so I keep dabbling at it, then I hit a brick wall, and I leave it. Three years later, I come back to it, dabble on and off for a year, and then I hit another wall. But I do keep coming back to it, which tells me it’s something there worth coming back [for]. If I get lucky, I’ll finish it before I die. If I get really lucky, it won’t suck. If it does suck, no one will probably ever see it.
You’ve talked about the relationship you have with your band, and how you rely on them and that chemistry. Are there virtues to how you approached this project, as a series of one-off collaborations?
I’m a natural born collaborator. I’ve surrounded myself with people who share enough of my core values about art and politics and love and life that wherever they’re going to go is going to be something I’m okay with, and probably something that’s going to dazzle me and make me feel lucky. [Drive-By Truckers] can have people guest on our records and stuff, but there’s not as much room for collaboration with other people as this gave me. [Chris] Funk [who produced the album] was very much a producer — I mean, he was kind of a taskmaster, maybe a little more than I was sometimes used to, but that was awesome.
Is there a spark that comes from pushing yourself like that, stepping outside your comfort zone?
Obviously, I get off on it. I feel like a lot of things in my life are pretty perilous and terrifying right now, but the terrifying part of art I revel in, and that’s how I deal with the other parts [of life]. Our band’s always been a work-without-a-net-type of organization to start with. There’s a certain element of that about playing in this band, and that’s definitely part of what attracts me to this band and makes me love playing in this band so much is because they’re all fearless. Everybody in the band is completely artistically fearless.
Patterson Hood at Tulips, Fort Worth. 8 p.m. Dec. 12. Tickets are $30.
Preston Jones is a North Texas freelance writer and regular contributor to KXT. Email him at [email protected] or find him on Twitter (@prestonjones). Our work is made possible by our generous, music-loving members. If you like how we lift up local music, consider becoming a KXT sustaining member right here.
