Hometown boys

MUSCLE SHOALS - Entertainment Weekly crowned them "the ambitious Alabamians' mix of Skynyrd, Neil Young and the Clash."  Rolling Stone hailed their irreverent, whiskey-soaked sound as "the best new-school Southern rock you can buy."

Blender blessed them for playing "songs that are as much about atoning on Sunday morning as they are about partying on Saturday night."

The Onion defined their raw, rootsy, richly textured music as "a ruthlessly smart brand of drunken rock that paws at blues, rockabilly and everything else loud and slurry."

However the outside world may struggle to decipher, justify, pigeonhole or psychoanalyze them, the Drive-By Truckers are still known locally as those hell-raising hometown boys who revitalized the "Muscle Shoals sound" with an unlikely indie-rock detour through Athens, Ga.

Made up of five fearless honky-tonk heroes, the Truckers raked up critical kudos for 2001's greasy, guitar-driven epic "Southern Rock Opera" and last year's emotionally rugged encore, "Decoration Day." Both albums - filled with songs about underdogs, grotesques, ghostly guitars, incestuous siblings, wounded lovers and shattered Southern stereotypes -- made many of the yearly "best of" lists nationwide.

"Verses are packed with stories they need to

tell and choruses ring out with why," the musically discriminating Village Voice observed, giving "Decoration Day" a near-perfect A-minus rating. "They succeed in rendering Southern gothic as social realism."

Made up of four Alabamians and one adopted son from South Carolina - drummer Brad Morgan -- the band returns to the Shoals this weekend for the second annual "Muscle Shoals Rocks!" concert at Muscle Shoals High School.

"It feels great," says Truckers co-founder Patterson Hood, the band's impassioned, iconoclastic, gravel-voiced lead singer, songwriter and guitarist. "We're glad to finally get to actually play in Muscle Shoals."

At times, the Truckers have felt like strangers in their own hometown. Previous local performances have been few and far between, and crowd response has been spotty at best.

"We're determined to change that," vows H.L. Noah, principal of Muscle Shoals High School. "Muscle Shoals is known all over the world for its music, and we're trying to promote and celebrate that in our school system as much as we can. These guys are as good as it gets, and we want the local people to experience one of their shows."

Florence native Hood (the son of David Hood, bassist for the world-renowned Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section) and fellow singer, songwriter and guitarist Mike Cooley, who's from Tuscumbia, formed the punk-kindled Muscle Shoals rock band Adam's House Cat! in 1985. The duo later morphed into the five-piece Drive-By Truckers, hitting the road in 1998 with a more gutsy, aggressive, blues-based blend of hardcore country and soul-searching, socially explosive Southern rock.

"Rock 'n' roll means well," Cooley mused on the "Decoration Day" track "Marry Me," one of the band's defining moments of self- deprecating irony, "but it can't help tellin' young boys lies."

The band signed with Lost Highway Records in 2002, but their relationship with the label soured after the re-release of "Southern Rock Opera," a project they had produced and originally distributed on their own. The Truckers switched to New West last year, rebounding with a rock 'n' rock vengeance with "Decoration Day."

"No one expected the Drive-By Truckers to follow one masterpiece with another - that's just fantasy and folderol," music critic Randy Harward observed in Harp's Rants & Raves. "But after hitting a homer with a concept album, the Truckers serve up a set of barnstormers and stark, achy ballads and damn near park it in the bleachers again."

For their upcoming project, the Truckers left their home base in Athens, Ga. - breeding ground for the college-rock movement led by REM, Widespread Panic and the B-52s - and traveled back home to Muscle Shoals for a marathon series of sessions at FAME Recording Studios, where musical giants ranging from Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett to Otis Redding and Duane Allman cut some of the milestone music of the 20th century.

"It was an amazing experience - it's one of my favorite things we've done as a band," Hood recalled. "It was like a time warp to 1966, in the best of ways."

The next Truckers project, an album titled "The Dirty South," will feature more than a dozen new songs, with a seven-song EP soon to follow. Both releases will feature Hood, Cooley, Morgan, guitarist-singer-songwriter Jason Isbell and the band's latest addition - Isbell's wife, Muscle Shoals musician Shonna Tucker -- who recently joined the band as bassist, singer and songwriter.

"It's meaner, a little more angry and more rocking than the last album - a little more epic," Hood revealed. "It's definitely our favorite one so far, although some of our favorite songs will be on the EP. Which are on the album and which are on the EP was based more on what fit with what than a value judgment."

The "Muscle Shoals Rocks!" concert series began last year with a performance by the Southern Rock All-Stars, another Shoals-based, second-generation Southern-rock band with a devout national following.

"We had great response to that show, and we're expecting a big crowd at this show," Noah explained. "It's good for our students and good for our community to experience the musical heritage Muscle Shoals has to offer."

Terry Pace can be reached at 740-5741 or terry.pace@timesdaily.com.