Drive-By Truckers at the Phoenix Concert Theatre

Photographs by Ryan O’Shaughnessy.

Georgia’s Drive-By Truckers finally brought their poignant and powerful 11^th album American Band to Toronto last night.

American Band comments on the state of their home country and the story isn’t pretty but made for an album that was one of the highlights of 2016 for me. You almost want the band to get off the road and get back into the studio for updated commentary on American society given everything that’s transpired since American Band was released.

The show was sold out and the venue packed right to the back even for the opening act, Louisiana’s Kyle Craft. The Truckers are well known for their raucous shows so this visit to town on a Saturday night was eagerly awaited by a very rabid crowd getting their drink on and suspiciously smelling like Otto’s jacket.

Opening with “Surrender Under Protest” off of American Band, the band led by Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley got right down to business delivering up a blistering two-hour set with very little let-up over the course of the night.

The sound was perfect and the crowd roared every song right back with the band, frequently raising their beers in salute. Given the current political climate I expected stage banter to be fierce and pointed, but the banter was kept to a bare minimum, notable a salute to a friend in Chicago who had passed away hours earlier, and later they declared they would nix the encore concept and just maximize their time on stage.

And maximize their time the Truckers did! Touching on almost of their albums, the focus of the set was American Band with “Ramon Casiano”, “What It Means” and “Ever South” as particularly strong highlights along with older favourites including a blistering “Let There Be Rock”.

The band sent the deliriously happy and sauced crowd into heaven with “Hell No I Ain’t Happy” that worked a bit of Prince’s “Sign O’ The Times” before ending the night with a run through Neil Young’s “Rockin’ In The Free World”.