Let’s get back to that wife thing I brought up in the beginning. I must point out that for each of us, Wife No. 3 proved to be the charm — and, in Patterson’s case, his final marriage also gave the world two amazing kids. But I do remember, in the early days of our friendship, joking to him, “Man, you’ve already got a wife, and his name is Cooley.” The relationship between Mike Cooley and Patterson Hood is the one constant in DBT’s 20-year history. And the band’s lineup today — Cooley, Hood, drummer Brad Morgan, bassist Matt Patton and multi-instrumentalist Jay Gonzalez — has had DBT’s longest ever run without a personnel change. Seems like age is making us all better at relationships.

Chuck: Talk to me about your relationship with Cooley.

Patterson: Fighting the fight — that was a bigger part of us staying together and continuing to do whatever the hell it is we've done all these years than even the musical connection or the personal connection. That’s not in any way to belittle either of those things, because obviously both are there and great. We always had chemistry. Before either one of us was worth a shit, we had chemistry. People would remark on us like, "Damn, when y’all learn to play, y’all are going to be great, because y’all have great chemistry." I think it used to really piss both of us off when people would say that. Like, "Goddamn it, I'm stuck with that motherfucker." Likewise, on the personal thing, you know we've always been ridiculously close friends. It just took us 10 years to be able to get along. We were like brothers that just came out of the womb fighting, and then at some point we just learned how to get along. Then a better friendship was able to begin developing, and now we're like 20 years into that process. I would say we're close as shit now.

Beyond those two things, there's still the aspect of where we're from, where you feel like the world's against you, so you've got your fight on. I think Southerners have that in general, but I think North Alabama Southerners have their own special type of that, and we grew up around that. The first thing we did, our band Adam's House Cat, was so locally hated. They hated us at home. We never, really, were able to overcome that, but we stayed together six years through that. That band became just badass tight, and we never lost that us-against-the-world mentality. Applying that to our political beliefs, we are definitely underdogs in our home region. I like Southern liberals anyways, because it's a little harder to be one in the South, so therefore you have to be a little sharper at it, I think. You know what I'm saying?

Chuck: I completely agree.

Patterson: It's in style to be liberal, up where I'm living now.

Chuck: I reckon it is.

Patterson: I'm probably not quite liberal enough, you know.

Chuck: Probably not.

Patterson: Which is awesome. I love that. I think it's cool, at least for now. It may get old, but right now, I get a real kick out of that.

Chuck: But the conversations are harder to have in the South.

Patterson: I mean, as much as I find some of the vitriol distasteful, I do think some of the conversation is healthy, especially when people mind their manners a little better, which is a novel thought.

Chuck: Especially this year.

Patterson: As a lover of history, I'm getting off on the fact that we're living through some fucking crazy history right now.

Chuck: Remarkable history.

Patterson: I'm definitely trying to soak it in. That was a part of why I wanted to make this record. And just for the record, whenever I say “I” in reference to the band, I mean it plurally. I never, ever, ever want anyone to think that I'm taking credit for more than my share. The band is such a personal thing to me that I do often refer to the band in the first person, but I mean the band. I mean Cooley and me and Brad and Jay and Matt. This record was very, very collaborative between all of us. Cooley and I came in with probably the best bunch of songs we ever had. I mean it's certainly the most unified bunch of songs we've ever had.



I think our records have often been set in various, different periods and have always had us singing about something that happened then, even if it's something that we might consider relevant today. “The Dirty South” was set in the Reagan era and in the late Carter era, and “Southern Rock Opera” was set in the Wallace era, the ’70s, just post-integration of the schools and the rise and fall of arena rock in the ’70s. “My Sweet Annette” is set in the ’30s. There's always been that, but on this record we wanted … well, we're living in such a fascinating contemporary time right now, that we wanted to make a record that's a document of this moment. I think that occurred to Cooley and me separately without either talking about it to the other. We first started playing each other new songs, it was already happening. It was like, "Wow!" And then we talked about it.