Hood sets third solo disc for 9/11

Thursday, July 19, 2012 – Patterson Hood will release his third solo record, "Heat Lightning Rumbles In The Distance," on Sept. 11 on ATO Records. Hood co-produced the album with long time Drive-By Truckers' collaborator David Barbe, who also plays bass.

Hood and Downtown Rumblers will be previewing songs from the record with shows this weekend at XPoNential Music Festival in Philadelphia and the Bell House in Brooklyn. Their fall headline tour will be announced soon.

All of Hood's DBT band mates make appearances on the record (Mike Cooley, Jay Gonzalez, Brad Morgan and John Neff) as does Scott Danbom and Will Johnson from Centro-matic and Kelly Hogan. Hood's father, famed Muscle Shoals bassist, David Hood also plays.

Hood originally started out writing a book that was a half-assed fictionalization of a very turbulent period of his life when he was 27. The book eventually stopped coming but the songs continued to pour out. Most of this album comes from a short period of time between February and June of 2011.

Hood said, "The songs begin in the period that the book was set in, but don't end there, as they really just were the impetus for writing about the life I am living now and contrasting it with the troubled times of two decades ago. It is in some ways the most personal album I've ever made. There has always been a lot of me in all of the albums we've done, but usually semi-disguised as character sketches and stories, but the first person narrative in this one is pretty firmly rooted in autobiography, albeit in two dramatically differing time periods."

Hood said he wrote the song Come Back Little Star with his "dear friend Kelly Hogan, who also came in to sing it with me. She began the lyrics as a song for our late dear friend Vic Chesnutt, and I re-wrote it with the intention of her recording it for her album. She ended up letting me put it on my album, and it's a highlight to me."

Songs on the CD are:

1. 12:01

2. Leaving Time

3. Disappear

4. Better Off Without

5. (untold pretties)

6. After The Damage

7. Better Than The Truth

8. Betty Ford

9. Depression Era 10. Heat Lightning Rumbles In The Distance

11. Come Back Little Star

12. Fifteen Days (Leaving Again)

Tour dates are:

July 20 Winston-Salem, NC Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art*

July 21 Camden, NJ XPoNential Music Festival*

July 23 Brooklyn, NY Bell House*

Aug. 3 Charleston, SC Pour House**

Aug. 16 Lexington, KY Lexington Opera House** w/ Todd Snider

Sept. 14 Pinnacle, NC Jomeokee Music & Arts Festival*

Oct. 12 Austin, TX ACL FESTIVAL*

* denotes shows with Patterson Hood and the Downtown Rumbers

** denotes solo shows

More news for Patterson Hood

CD reviews for Patterson Hood

Heat Lightning Rumbles In The Distance

For his third solo album, "Heat Lightning Rumbles In The Distance," singer, songwriter and Drive By Trucker Patterson Hood continues to create his own brand of American mythology, writing four minute elegies to a generation that's lost its way, one that's slowly slicing away at itself with a hard-edged blade of insecurity, confusion and loneliness. Taken on the surface, it's not a pretty picture at all. 12:01 is a creeping, crawling dirge about a clandestine trip across »»»

Murdering Oscar (and other love songs)

When is a new album not a new album? 15 years ago, Patterson Hood moved to Athens, Ga. without knowing a soul and began writing songs and recording them in his roommate's more acoustically friendly bedroom. Hood collected the resulting tunes on cassettes then compiled a handful onto a single tape entitled "Murdering Oscar (and other love songs)" that he gave away by the hundreds at the time. After reconnecting with Mike Cooley and forming the first iteration of Drive-By Truckers, »»»

Patterson Hood

What strikes you initially about Patterson Hood's solo album is just how stripped down it is - especially compared to the high-powered Southern rock-isms of his band Drive-By Truckers. It's this subdued, because Hood wrote and recorded it at a particularly low point of his life. "I had just gotten divorced, was fighting with the band and a good number of friends," Hood explains in the liner notes. It sounds exactly like a home demo, which is actually what it is. And while it's not exactly pretty, »»»

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