Brett Farrey

The Drive-By Truckers are one of my favorite bands, but I was a pretty disappointed with their show Saturday in Madison, WI. First of all, they kind of just strolled out on stage like one of the roadies. I don’t even think the crowd noticed them at first. I was just kind of waiting for the show, and then I was like, “oh, that’s Patterson and Cooley”. They just walked out and sat down and started tuning their acoustics while there was still music playing through the PA system. It was like they didn’t even want to be there.

The show wasn’t labeled as an acoustic show, so I figured they’d start out the show acoustic and then rock out a little later. I was wrong. They sat down and put a very enthusiastic DBT crowd to sleep. I mean, everyone still enjoyed it, but I think everyone expected to see DBT, not DBT unplugged.

I left after the first encore song, but at that point they hadn’t played a single song off of their new album, and I was starting to hear comments about that from fans. I was surprised to hear a lot of material from Pizza Deliverance.

Anyway, I hope this isn’t the new post-Isbell Truckers, because I wasn’t impressed. I can’t wait for Jason Isbell to come back through town.