Patterson Hood

by Mark Deming Best known as the leader of the rock band the Drive-By Truckers, Patterson Hood was born into a musical family -- his father is David Hood, longtime bassist with studio legends the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. Patterson began writing songs at the tender age of eight, and by the time he was 14 he was playing guitar in a local rock band. In 1985, while attending college, Hood formed a group with his friend Mike Cooley called Adam's House Cat; three years later, they would win Musician Magazine's Best Unsigned Band competition. However, the band's regional acclaim didn't translate into significant commercial success, and their sole full-length album was never released. After Adam's House Cat split up, Hood and Cooley continued to work together, and after relocating to Athens, GA, they formed the Drive-By Truckers in 1996. The Drive-By Truckers released their first album, Gangstabilly, in 1998, but it was with their ambitious double-disc set Southern Rock Opera, released in 2001, that the group began winning nationwide critical acclaim. The album's success as an independent release led to a contract for the band with Lost Highway Records, which soon reissued it, but the label had a falling out with the DBTs over their somber follow-up, Decoration Day; after buying the album back from the label, the Drive-By Truckers signed with the independent label New West Records, which released Decoration Day to rave reviews in 2003. In 2001, as the Drive-By Truckers were completing Southern Rock Opera, Hood -- who by his own admission was going through a difficult period following a divorce and some personal difficulties with his bandmates -- recorded a set of acoustic demos for a dozen songs that were considerably darker than most of his compositions for the group. Hood pressed up a CD of the acoustic sessions, calling the collection Killers and Stars, and sold copies at his periodic solo shows, with the album described as "a work in progress." In 2004, Hood had the group's producer, David Barbe, give the recordings a proper mastering, and New West gave Killers and Stars a proper release with no additional changes.