Drive-By Truckers to Journey Through the Past, Playing ‘Southern Rock Opera’ on Tour

Kory Grow
·4 min read
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Drive-By Truckers will revisit their 2001 opus 'Southern Rock Opera' on a new tour. - Credit: Brantley Gutierrez*
Drive-By Truckers will revisit their 2001 opus 'Southern Rock Opera' on a new tour. - Credit: Brantley Gutierrez*

More than two decades since its release, Drive-By Truckers’ Southern Rock Opera album will get its full due when the band performs the 94-minute double-album in its entirety on an extensive U.S. tour. The Truckers also promise to play fan favorites and deep cuts from throughout their career.

Tickets for the tour, which kicks off in June, officially go on sale March 29 at 10 a.m. local time. Full ticketing information is on the band’s website. Fans can also request tickets early via Ticketmaster.

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“A lot has happened in the decades since it came out, both to the band and to the world we live in,” the band’s Patterson Hood said in a statement. “We feel that the record, while somewhat timeless, also has a current timeliness to it considering the social and political issues of today. Instead of performing it as if it’s still 2000AD, we want to make it our own, reflecting who we all are now in 2024. It’s going to be intense, but also a hell of a lot of fun.”

Hood added that it would change up the encore at every show, and the Truckers teased that this tour would be “very likely the last time we’ll ever do it.”

Although Southern Rock Opera was not the Truckers’ commercial breakthrough – that came a couple of years later with The Dirty South – it became a critical success despite coming out on Sept. 12, 2001. In addition to releasing in the wake of a national tragedy, the album suffered from poor distribution and the band had to re-release it in 2002.

Reviewers appreciated the way the band reframed Neil Young and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s feud over the American South, as well as the ambition the band had in making such a sprawling statement. Rolling Stone gave the album a positive review upon its release. “In two discs and twenty songs, Dixie’s Drive-By Truckers explode the yahoo baggage of 1970s Southern rock in a roaring memoir of growing up white, loud, and desperate in the former Confederacy,” the review said. “Southern Rock Opera deserves a fistful of stars just for the ‘Free Bird’-via-Crazy Horse squall of guitarists Mike Cooley, Rob Malone, and Patterson Hood.”

“It’s been overwhelming to me,” Hood told Rolling Stone in 2002 of the reception the album got. “The whole time we were working on it, which dates back six years, everybody told us we were crazy and it was a stupid idea. We were told a thousand reasons why it wouldn’t work, everybody from some friends all the way to anybody even slightly connected to the music industry. But we’ve always gone against what people thought was the smart thing to do.”

Drive-By Truckers Tour Dates
June 7 – Indianapolis, IN @ Egyptian Room at Old National Centre
June 8 – St. Louis, MO @ The Pageant
June 9 – Louisville, KY @ Mercury Ballroom
June 10 – Henrico, VA @ Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens
June 13 – Raleigh, NC @ The Ritz
June 14 – Charlotte, NC @ The Fillmore Charlotte
June 15 – Birmingham, AL @ Iron City
June 16 – New Orleans, LA @ The Civic Theatre
June 19 – Houston, TX @ House of Blues
June 20 – Austin, TX @ ACL Live at the Moody Theater
June 21 – Dallas, TX @ House of Blues
June 23 – Phoenix, AZ @ The Van Buren
June 26 – El Cajon, CA @ The Magnolia
June 27 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Belasco
June 28 – San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore
June 29 – San Francisco, CA @ The Fillmore
July 1 – Portland, OR @ Crystal Ballroom
July 2 – Seattle, WA @ Neptune Theatre
July 5 – Salt Lake City, UT @ The Complex
July 6 – Denver, CO @ Fillmore Auditorium
Oct. 16 – Washington, DC @ Warner Theatre
Oct. 17 – New York, NY @ Irving Plaza
Oct. 18 – Boston, MA @ House of Blues
Oct. 19 – Philadelphia, PA @ Theatre of Living Arts
Oct. 22 – Toronto, ON @ Danforth Music Hall
Oct. 23 – Cleveland, OH @ House of Blues
Oct. 25 – Minneapolis, MN @ Uptown Theater
Oct. 26 – Minneapolis, MN @ Uptown Theater
Oct. 27 – Madison, WI @ The Sylvee
Oct. 29 – Des Moines, IA @ Val Air Ballroom
Oct. 30 – Milwaukee, WI @ Pabst Theater
Nov. 1 – Chicago, IL @ House of Blues
Nov. 2 – Chicago, IL @ House of Blues
Nov. 3 – Cincinnati, OH @ Bogart’s
Nov. 5 – Detroit, MI @ St. Andrew’s Hall
Nov. 7 – Asheville, NC @ The Orange Peel
Nov. 8 – Asheville, NC @ The Orange Peel
Nov. 9 – Atlanta, GA @ Tabernacle
Nov. 24 – Nashville, TN @ Ryman Auditorium

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