Decoration Day was the album that proved Drive-By Truckers weren’t going to be a flash in the pan. After two largely ignored albums in the late 1990s, the band began the new century with Southern Rock Opera. This double-disc concept album combined the personal histories of its leads, Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley, with the broader history of Southern rock. It took a little time and a re-release by Lost Highway, but that record eventually made them critical darlings. Coming right on its heels in 2003, Decoration Day hit just as hard, but differently, and the praise and their success continued to grow.
Drive-By Truckers‘ label from that time, New West, has now reissued the album as The Definitive Decoration Day. When New West released the reissue of the Truckers’ next record, The Dirty South, a couple of years ago, they included a wealth of bonus material. The problem for New West here is that essentially everything the band recorded made it onto the original Decoration Day release. There aren’t any B-sides or outtakes. What we get with this version, then, is a complete remix and remaster, plus a full acoustic live show where the band play nearly the entire album many months before its release.
In terms of quality, there’s not much to reevaluate with Decoration Day. It’s a triumph from start to finish. Hood and Cooley contribute great songs throughout, and Jason Isbell makes his debut as a member with two absolute classics. What the remix does, however, is highlight some of the other instruments that pop up here and there for color that were less apparent under Drive-By Truckers’ three-guitar attack. John Neff’s pedal steel guitar and Scott Danborn’s fiddle really stand out on Hood’s easygoing country track “Heathens”. Soon-to-be regular bassist Shonna Tucker shows up playing upright bass on Cooley’s gut-punch bluesy acoustic ballad “Sounds Better in the Song”. Legendary keyboardist Spooner Oldham’s contributions are also easier to hear in this new edition.
About that gut-punch, though. If there’s one thing that makes the record a somewhat difficult listen to this day, it’s the subject matter. There are a lot of bad decisions and people getting hurt in the lyrics to these songs. It’s not a breezy, fun album. This heaviness is immediately apparent as the record opens with the soulful, sad ballad “The Deeper In”. Hood tells the story of a couple who, at the time of recording, were the only people in the United States serving time in prison for a consensual brother-sister incestual relationship. That could be salacious, but Hood focuses on the difficulty of maintaining their secret and on the four children left behind when the couple were sent away. It’s a great song, but it starts emotionally rough.
Musically, things lighten up next with the hard-rocking “Sink Hole”. Hood shout-sings his way through a song that talks about how proud he is that the family farm has stood for generations, while complaining that the banker is taking that farm from him. It ends with Hood triumphantly murdering the banker and burying him in the titular sinkhole. There’s no postscript here, but it’s probably safe to say that killing one guy didn’t actually solve his problems.
Other Hood rockers here include the blistering “Hell No, I Ain’t Happy”, which actually has a little brightness to it as he “Gets a little closer [to happy] every day.” “(Something’s Got To) Give Pretty Soon” is about a relationship that he can feel about to crumble apart, but is holding on for as long as he can manage. “Careless”, at just over two minutes, is the shortest song here, with a simple guitar hook and a driving beat. It also includes a repetitive two-note chime figure, either on guitar or electric piano, which is brought out by the remix.
The last of the big Hood rockers is “Do It Yourself”, a song that opens with loose studio chatter and sounds like one of the most upbeat tracks on the record. Yet it turns out to be a story about a friend who was a sad sack who eventually committed suicide. Hood’s lyrics drip with disdain, “You’d rather die than take a stab at living / Nothin’ll kill you, so you do it yourself.”
This song is preceded by Cooley’s “When the Pin Hits the Shell”, also about an acquaintance who committed suicide. It’s a mid-tempo ballad with an aching vocal performance from Cooley. His country baritone sings so sweetly, yet the lyrics are barely concealed rage at this person who chose to die and leave everyone in his life to deal with the fallout. “The same God you were so afraid was gonna send you to Hell / Is the same one you’re gonna answer to when the pin hits the shell.” It’s a song that’s beautiful, sad, and angry in equal measure.
Cooley and Hood also share a topic elsewhere on the album. Cooley’s “Marry Me” is genuinely upbeat, as he sings a proposal while relating a story about all the go-nowhere friends stuck in his small town. Then Hood’s “My Sweet Annette” starts as a gentle, pleasant song about the main character’s courtship and engagement to the titular Annette. Hood, though, protests that he “never noticed best friend Marilee”. Sure enough, the chorus reveals, “My sweet Annette was left standing at the altar”, because he and Marilee end up eloping.
Isbell steps up late on the record with the title track, a story of feuding families told by a character who was literally beaten into joining the fight by his father. His father is long dead, but the bitterness remains, as Isbell sings, “It’s Decoration Day / And I’ve a mind to go spit on his grave” near the end of the song. That’s in keeping with the rest of the album, but it’s Isbell’s “Outfit” that provides Decoration Day’s biggest change of pace.
As great as most of the material on Decoration Day is, the genuine positive emotion from Isbell as he sings a song largely comprised of advice from his father may be the album’s most lasting impression. “Outfit” is a genuine classic that set an extremely high bar for Isbell. So high, in fact, that it took several solo albums and getting sober for him to start consistently writing songs that live up to the potential demonstrated here.
As for the live show, it was recorded on 20 June 2002, at Flicker Bar in Drive-By Truckers’ home base of Athens, Georgia. New West and the band made a great call using this show in particular for this definitive edition. Listeners can hear the band play these songs live while they’re still being recorded. The acoustic setting offers a different take on many of the tracks than a standard full-rock show would. As is their custom, though, there are multiple moments when the band just strums through passages where guitar solos usually sit. Isbell, for his part, at least attempts to recreate some of the solos on his own songs.
The Flicker set also includes some bonus songs near the end. “TVA” and “Uncle Frank” would later appear on both a B-sides compilation and The Complete Dirty South, but the acoustic takes are worthwhile. “Panties in Your Purse” and “The Living Bubba” are both pulled from Drive-By Truckers’ debut, Gangstabilly, with the latter in its traditional closing position, a slot it would maintain for years in the Truckers’ live show.
Any Drive-By Truckers completionist should be happy with this expanded and remixed version of the record. For those who have never heard this 21st-century Southern rock gem, it’s absolutely worth the time and emotional investment to give it a spin. For listeners in between who are already familiar with the album but don’t consider themselves completionists, this one is probably only worth buying if they don’t already own a physical copy. It’s an amazing album and a great presentation, but the acoustic live show, while cool, might not be enough to justify buying Decoration Day again.