Onstage at the 40 Watt club, Patterson Hood regales hundreds of Heathens with a story about moving to Athens, Georgia, on April Fool’s Day in 1994. As he tells it, he arrived in town and walked directly to this very club, which was already renowned as one of the best rock venues in the South. Cracker and Counting Crows were playing a double bill, and while he didn’t have money to buy a ticket, the doorman let him sneak past. It’s a fond memory of a formative experience, and the fact that he’s recounting it onstage at the 40 Watt is not lost on him.
It’s the second night of HeAthens Homecoming, the Drive-By Truckers’ annual four-night stand in what they still consider their hometown. It’s a tradition that stretches back to the band’s early days, just before they released Southern Rock Opera in 2001, when they were touring nonstop. “The 40 Watt,” says Patterson, “gave us a place to come home to.” Over the years, the event has grown into a grassroots music festival drawing fans from all over the world. Heathens, as they are called, invade Athens for a week, roosting at bars like Little Kings, digging through crates at Wuxtry Records, grabbing breakfast at Mama’s Boy, and convening for a memorabilia auction benefitting a local music nonprofit called Nuçi’s Space. They crowd into Flicker Bar for a poetry reading on Wednesday, a set by the New Orleans band Loose Cattle on Thursday, and a showcase for bassist Matt Patten’s label Dial Back Sound on Friday. Every night around 6:00, the most dedicated of the Heathens line up outside the 40 Watt to grab a coveted spot at the rail.
This year is special. It’s the 25th Homecoming in 26 years (they skipped a year during the pandemic), and the first night at the 40 Watt is the last official stop on the band’s Southern Rock Opera tour. They’ve been playing the album more or less in its entirety throughout 2024, and they sound confident, well-rehearsed, and focused — all rarities for a band that hardly ever uses a setlist and very seldom practices. That means the second night is the first real Truckers show they’ve played in nine months, and they seem to relish the opportunity to choose songs off the cuff, go wherever the spirit takes them, and raise some hell along the way. They deliver a version of “Self Destructive Zones” that sounds like it might self-destruct at any moment, and Mike Cooley debuts a new arrangement of his redneck crime monologue “Cottonseed” (which the band haven’t played live in a decade).
The third night is a fan’s set, full of deep cuts and one-off experiments. With local singer-songwriter Schaeffer Llana joining them onstage, they attempt to play “Wilder Days”, a cut from 2022’s Welcome To Club XIII, although Patterson flubs a few lines and cautions the crowd that the song might be beyond him. Yet, the Truckers are at their best when they’re at their rawest, when they’re barely keeping everything between the ditches. So what might have been a disaster instead becomes a bit of Homecoming lore: a moment fans will talk about next year.
Four songs into their set on the fourth and final night, The Truckers play “Grand Canyon”, a rousing showstopper they typically reserve for much later in the show. It felt like they were throwing down a gauntlet, daring themselves to make every subsequent song sound like part of the same three-hour encore. And for the most part, that’s exactly what they do. They run through old favorites at a fevered pitch, accruing more and more musicians with each song. By the time they close with a medley of Neil Young’s “Rockin’ In The Free World” and The Jim Carroll Band’s “People Who Died”, they are ten people onstage, including producer David Barbe and two of his sons. It’s a beloved Homecoming tradition: a lot of folks wailing on guitars and creating a beautiful racket.
These four nights showed off four different versions of The Drive-By Truckers: the professionals running through a beloved album, the perpetual teenagers still geeking out about playing in a band, the rock-and-roll lifers deciding what to do next, and the true believers preaching the gospel to their flock of faithful Heathens. Homecoming has its own traditions, its own customs, even its own culture, but the band always seem to find ways to make it seem new.
SETLISTS
Wednesday, February 12
Days Of Graduation
Ronnie And Neil
72 (This Highway’s Mean)
Dead, Drunk, And Naked
Guitar Man Upstairs
Birmingham
Ramon Casiano
The Three Great Alabama Icons
The Southern Thing
Surrender Under Protest
Wallace
Made Up English Oceans
Plastic Flowers On The Highway
Primer Coat
Buttholeville
Zip City
Let There Be Rock
Every Single Storied Flameout
Road Cases
Women Without Whiskey
Life In The Factory
Shut Up And Get On The Plane
Greenville To Baton Rouge
Angels And Fuselage
Keep On Smilin’
Rockin’ In The Free World
Thursday, February 13
Lookout Mountain
Uncle Frank
Goode’s Field Road
Where The Devil Don’t Stay
Tornadoes
Self Destructive Zones
The Driver
Slow Ride Argument
The Deeper In
Panties In Your Purse
Sink Hole
A Ghost To Most
Heroin Again
Cottonseed
My Sweet Annette
Marry Me
Hell No, I Ain’t Happy
Gravity’s Gone
Play It All Night Long
Maria’s Awful Disclosures
Too Much Sex (Too Little Jesus)
3 Dimes Down
Grand Canyon
Friday, February 14
Feb 14
Ramon Casiano
After The Scene Dies
Shit Shots Count
The Night G.G. Allin Came To Town
One Of These Days
Drag The Lake Charlie
3 Dimes Down
Why Henry Drinks
Birthday Boy
The Righteous Path
Love Like This
Wednesday
Guitar Man Upstairs
The Driver
Cottonseed
Wilder Days
Maria’s Awful Disclosures
Do It Yourself
When The Pin Hits The Shell
Everybody Needs Love
Marry Me
Buttholeville
Zip City
A World Of Hurt
Shut Up And Get On The Plane
Greenville To Baton Rouge
Angels And Fuselage
Saturday, February 15
Carl Perkins’ Cadillac
The Living Bubba
3 Dimes Down
Grand Canyon
Where The Devil Don’t Stay
Steve McQueen
Self Destructive Zones
Adam Raised a Cain
Slow Ride Argument
Troglodyte (Cave Man)
Cottonseed
The Buford Stick
Shit Shots Count
Hell No, I Ain’t Happy
A Ghost to Most
Let There Be Rock
Every Single Storied Flameout
I’m Eighteen
Zip City
Mercy Buckets
18 Wheels of Love
Gravity’s Gone
Lookout Mountain
Women Without Whiskey
The Company I Keep
Shut Up And Get On The Plane
Rockin’ In The Free World
People Who Died