THEY MIGHT BE FROM THE DEEP SOUTH, BUT DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS TAKE THE GREATEST PLEASURE IN SUBVERTING THE IMAGE OF THE GOOD OL' BOY, PATTERSON HOOD TELLS KEVIN COURTNEY

SOMEWHERE deep inside of us all, there's a preconceived notion about the US south, holding out Alamo-like against all reason and evidence. There's still a tiny part of us that thinks the southern states are populated by truck-drivin', line-dancin', rodeo-ridin', Bush-votin' folks who say "y'all", don't hold with those fancy northern fads and fashions, and reckon all English bands are "faggots".

Patterson Hood doesn't mind that some people may have a slightly skewed view of his home state of Alabama. In fact, he and his musical cohorts Mike Cooley and Jason Isbell positively relish the idea, because it gives them a chance to take some of those preconceptions and totally f*** with them.

With album titles such as Southern Rock Opera, Gangstabilly, Pizza Deliverance, Alabama Ass-Whuppin' and The Dirty South, you can gather that Drive-By Truckers are taking the gothic iconography of the south and twisting it to their own melodic ends. Put on their latest album, A Blessing and A Curse, and you'll hear a recognisably southern rock sound reminiscent of Lynyrd Skynyrd, John Hiatt, Waylon Jennings, John Mellencamp and some of them good ol' boys of country-rock. But listen again and you realise that it's closer in spirit to such alt.country rockers as The Replacements, Pernice Brothers, Buffalo Tom and Soul Asylum, with an extra dollop of soul and an added hypersensitivity in such heartbreaking tunes as Little Bonnie and Goodbye. Dirty rock'n'roll for southern metrosexuals? Yer darn tootin'.

Even Hood's own musical pedigree confounds expectations. He grew up in Alabama not with a banjo on his knee but with sweet soul music blowing in the breeze, courtesy of his dad, a player with the legendary Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section.

Most bands are content with one prodigiously talented singer-songwriter in the line-up. Drive-By Truckers have three. Hood, Cooley and Isbell each contribute songs, and handle lead vocals on their own compositions. With three hard-headed southern gentlemen sharing equal billing in the band, is it hard to keep musical differences from boiling to the surface?

"It usually flows pretty easily. All of us are pretty strong willed, and it has its moments from time to time, but overall it flows pretty well," he says.

Although four out of the five Drive-By Truckers hail from 'Bammy, the band's base of operations is Athens, Georgia, home of a certain well-known band who long ago upended all preconceptions about the dirty ol' south. Hood, however, doesn't have any problem living under the shadow of those REM-boys.

"I think there was a time in Athens when there was a backlash against them," says Hood. "I'm sure the same occurred with them boys over there that y'all got. Because they have a pretty high profile too. But to be honest, the Athens scene has benefited from having a band achieve what they have achieved. And they've been good citizens of our town. They put a lot of money back into the town."

Drive-By Truckers are a relatively new name round these parts, but don't call them a new band. A Blessing and a Curse is their seventh full-length album, and it was produced by another southern alt.rock legend, Mitch Easter. Hood recalls working in a record shop when Easter's band Let's Active was active, and REM albums such as Murmur and Reckoning were rewriting the cultural history of the south. "That was all before I moved here, before I'd ever though of Athens as a cool place to go. I didn't think I'd actually end up living here. But it certainly all tied together," says Hood.

The seeds of Drive-By Truckers were sown in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where Hood was writing songs and playing in various bands. He and long-time musical partner Cooley moved to Athens and borrowed musicians from the vast pool of local bands in this Georgian musical hotbed. Drummer Brad Morgan is the only non-Alabama native, hailing from South Carolina. In 2003, singer-songwriter Jason Isbell joined the convoy, and bassist Shonna Tucker came on board soon after. From the start, DBTs were determined not to play to the "sweet home Alabama" sentiment, but adopted more politically aware view from the Appalachians and hammered home a few bitter home truths about real life south of the Mason-Dixon line.

"It's definitely gone a little wrong down here from time to time, but right now the entire country has gone a little wrong. And the south is kinda the stronghold of support in a lot of ways for the kind of people who have done the most damage to this region. I think that's one of those strange American ironies. This is a region of the country that for better or for worse lives in the past. And some of the good things about this part of the country probably derive from that, but some of the bad things do too. There's a danger with living too much in the past, in that you tend to romanticise things that in reality weren't all that romantic."

Now 42, and with a 13-month-old daughter, Hood is not relishing the thought of heading off on tour and leaving her behind. He is, however, looking forward to playing for the first time in Ireland, when the band are in Whelan's on April 3rd. And he's eager to reap the rewards of a long, slow burn that's seen Drive-By Truckers go from playing half-empty hundred-seater venues to playing full-to-the-brim 2,000-seater auditoriums.

"There's been times I've complained about things moving so slow and taking so long, but the fact that it has kept growing over this long period of time has been a good thing for us. Certainly it's been healthier for us in a creative way than it would have been if on our third album we hit it huge. . . But it's been so gradual I feel we've been literally building up our fanbase one person at a time. It's like selling it door to door."

He's also looking forward to "bringing it all back home" to Ireland, a country he believes has strong historical and cultural ties with his own region. "I can't speak from knowledge, but I've been told there's a lot of parallels between Ireland and the American south. Appalachian music definitely derived a lot of its ideas from Ireland. A lot of the practitioners of Appalachian music were descendants of people who had travelled over from Ireland, my family included." And, like a true tourist, Hood can't help holding onto one particular myth about Ireland. "Aw, come on, Guinness don't give you a hangover, does it?"

Drive-By Truckers play Whelans, Dublin on April 3rd. A Blessing and A Curse is out today on New West Records