The members of Drive-By Truckers are digging into the archives. On November 14, the Athens-born influential country-rockers will release “The Definitive Decoration Day,” an expanded reissue of the album that boosted the band’s profile significantly.
“Decoration Day” originally came out in 2003, and it was the first album to feature new band member Jason Isbell, at the time a burgeoning musician who joined Truckers founders Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley to expand the group’s loud guitar attack and catalog of vivid songs that detailed gritty rural realities with literary vision.
The new version of the record will be released on streaming platforms and packaged in a 4-LP box set, with the album’s 15 tracks being remixed by original producer David Barbe.
The set also includes the previously unreleased double album “Heathens Live at Flicker Bar, Athens, GA – June 20, 2002,” which features live debuts of many of the tunes on “Decoration Day.” A stripped-down acoustic version of the longtime DBT staple “Sink Hole” can be heard below.
Isbell left the Truckers in 2007 to start a solo career, and he’s since become a key figure in the Americana music movement. His setlists at big venues like Radio City Music Hall, where he’ll perform next winter, still often feature two standout songs from “Decoration Day,” the poignant title track and “Outfit,” a personal, slightly humorous reflection on fatherly advice.
Last year DBT looked back on another album, the revered concept record “Southern Rock Opera” with a reissue and accompanying tour. The band’s influence is currently being heard in a crop of up and coming artists, like Fust and MJ Lenderman.
“The legacy of the band has definitely grown,” Isbell said in a statement, “and there’s a new appreciation for the Truckers and especially for that era of Decoration Day. Without them you wouldn’t have the kind of work being done by MJ Lenderman and Wednesday and Waxahatchee and a bunch of other acts. I can hear the Truckers in all that music.”
