Drive-By Truckers

The Drive-By Truckers’ 2001 double-disc opus Southern Rock Opera arguably serves as the apex of alt.country. The band’s seminal third LP muscles Southern rock guitar and deeply literate narratives into the first true realization of Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley’s vision of what DBT could be: troubadours wrangling the Southern experience in all its contradictions as complex, celebratory, critical, and conflicted. Hood and Cooley remain the powerhouse quintet’s fulcrum as they reissue Southern Rock Opera and perform the entire album alongside other hits, continuing nearly 30 years in to reimagine what the South can be. – Doug Freeman