Drive-By Truckers @ The State Theatre, State College, PA

November 5th, 2007 - by Che Steadman

Alt-Country, East Coast, Rock, Shows

The crowd at the State Theatre was transformed from reserved to rowdy over the course of the Drive-By Truckers show on October 25. Despite the venue, an old-fashioned movie theater, the atmosphere more resembled a Southern roadhouse before the show was over, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Drive-By Truckers - Puttin People on the Moon

Drive-By Truckers - World of Hurt

This was the final leg of Drive-By Truckers’ “The Dirt Underneath” tour, a string of shows in more intimate venues that aimed to showcase the band’s acoustic material. The Truckers are known for their Southern-fried rocking and this was a surprising change of pace. Frontman Patterson Hood assured me that the show would still kick ass, but I still wasn’t prepared for the amount of ass-kicking the band doled out over the course of two and a half hours.

Ryan Bingham and Dead Horses opened for DBT, playing to a sparse and sedate crowd. Bingham’s a west Texan, evident in the twang of both his accent and his acoustic guitar. As people filtered in he strummed and sang in a smoky voice of Dylanesque Americana, with the Horses keeping time. His urgings to the audience to get up and dance went mostly unheeded until his electric guitarist tore into “Bread & Water,” a screaming slide-guitar Texas blues meltdown. The house was full of whooping and hollering that wouldn’t stop until the Truckers took their final bow.

By this point the crowd had filled in. The guys in front of me took Bingham’s advice and danced between swigs from a flask. As Bingham left the stage, he thanked the Truckers for letting him accompany them on tour and lamented the damage it had done to his liver. Roadies lugged a cooler onto the stage and placed a bottle of whiskey by each chair to prove his point. When I went downstairs to get gum from the backpack I had checked at the front desk, the woman standing guard gave me a stern look. “Go ahead, but leave the beer in there.” The State Theatre doesn’t serve alcohol. I assured her that I would.

Drive-By Truckers took the stage to hearty applause. Their stories of Southern life may at times have seemed foreign to the central Pennsylvanians in the crowd but the meaning was lost on no one. Guitarist Mike Cooley sang with the voice Mick Jagger wishes he had and Hood spoke of tornadoes and unemployment over the hypnotizing ring of John Neff’s pedal steel. Everyone shouted requests at the stage and reacted to Hood’s between-song banter.

“He had never even been to Georgia before he met me,” Hood said about Neff. “He was conceived in Ohio.”

The crowd erupted into boos and jeers. The big Penn State-Ohio State game was two days away.

“Is that some kind of football thing? I don’t know shit about football,” Hood said. “All I know is don’t bet against Joe Paterno. I bet on an Alabama-Penn State game one time and Paterno crushed us.”

The entire theater had cheered at the legendary Paterno’s name, myself included. With the audience back in the fold, the band launched into another song. Bottles of Jack Daniel’s were passed from band member to band member. Bottles of beer from the cooler littered the floor. At one point, Hood circled the stage, pouring whiskey the other Truckers’ mouths as they played. The guys in front of me were dancing wildly, having finished their flask.

The show culminated in a rocking rendition of one of DBT’s oldest songs, delicately titled “Buttholeville.” “I’m tired of living in Buttholeville,” Hood sang. “Tired of my job and my wife Lucille.” The guitars, now overdriven, were roaring and the place was jumping. Hood himself was clutching the mic stand, swinging it around and rolling on the floor. As the band thundered to a close, Hood collapsed onstage. He picked himself up and promised the crowd that the Truckers would be playing in a bar and really rocking the next time they came to town.

If this was Drive-By Truckers’ idea of a laid-back acoustic show, I can only imagine what they have in store next.