all photos by Glenn Cook
Patterson Hood and John Moreland at the Birchmere
Patterson Hood and JohnMoreland are co-headlining together on their tour through the Northeast and Midwest, and the experience of seeing their show is like being wrapped in a dual atmosphere, one like a deeply poetic coin with two distinct sides. At the Birchmere in Virginia last week, Patterson opened up the night with storytelling and survival with moments of thrashing and outwardly pushing back through the raw experiences. John Moreland brought the night to a close after delivering the audience to an awareness of the shadowy inner fragility of the human experience.
Patterson played first, standing there all alone on the stage with his vintage Harmony guitar that shows all the signs of having been well loved and worn through the years. Without the sonic power of the Truckers band to back him, the stories shone through, while the “oomph” was still foundational: transformed and more subtle.
He started with a triple play “Forks of Cypress,” “Grand Canyon” and “Lookout Mountain.” “Forks of Cypress” from this new album covers some chilling details about an affair (No one had better ask me and I would never tell / Something so forbidden, I’ll carry it to hell and burn it down there with me with lips that speak profane of a love that burned as hot as my secret shame), while “Lookout Mountain” is a song of despair and suicide (“If I throw myself off Lookout Mountain, no more for my soul to keep, I wonder who will drive my car, I wonder if my Mom will weep”). Spine chilling.
At this point he paused to talk about how he had written the next song as a children’s song, before having kids – commenting that one of the joys of raising kids nowadays is the many diagnoses they get. “I grew up in Alabama in the ’70s and we were just either lazy, or stupid, or both,” and then played “Uncle Disney” and “Pinocchio.”
After “Heathens” and before heading into “Van Pelt Parties” from his new album Exploding Trees and Airplane Screams, Patterson invited us in to the context of his growing up, which, for anyone who hasn’t listened to the new album, is very much laid bare there. First, Patterson recounts living in a small town (in the Muscle Shoals area) where it just so happened The Rolling Stones flew in to record “Brown Sugar,” Wild Horses” and “You Gotta Move” (for their album Sticky Fingers) after which they flew directly out to play at Altamont. In the movie made about this time, “Gimme Shelter,” there is a scene when the band walks out of the Holiday Inn in Muscle Shoals and a young woman walks up to them, and as Patterson said: “that was Winnie Van Pelt, my babysitter.” And when Patterson was a kid, the Van Pelts would have a party every Christas Eve that inspired the song.
The audience also got treated to stories about Patterson’s grandma (Lily Ruth, aka Sissy) and great uncle (George A), his grandfather, and his parents who had him as teens. On the lead up to “Sands of Iwojima” he slipped in that his grandfather and George A would now be called antifa, “but back then we just called them veterans.”
Everyone in the room was thinking about human debauchery, the awkward and the embarrassing, the anger and occasional depravity and the struggle of this haphazard human journey. We also learned there is a new Drive-By Truckers album in the works.
John Moreland’s set involved less banter with the audience but was equally poetic in his characteristically more somber introspective manner. His warm Martin HD-28 lifted the songs as the lyrics touched, stayed and nested in the place where the inner desolation of the human condition lives.
From the opening 3 songs, “Hang Me in the Tulsa County Stars” (“My heart is growing heavy from the ever-endless hurt / So I don’t want to come back down to earth”), “”Latchkey Kid (there’s something wrong, something missing, something I’ve seen inside my friends / And lord, it’s hard to find the vision, standing at the darkest of dead ends.”) and “Gentle Violence” (There’s a gentle violence, miles of silence separating you and me / Crystal and covered in the arms of a mother, I’m a child who cannot flutter myself free,” and throughout the next dozen or so, we were all on a journey to poignancy together in the room.
At one point he confessed that he didn’t really know what his songs were “about,” and then later just before “Cherokee” Moreland offered a moment of comic relief as he said “This song I know even less about than the other ones.”
“Break My Heart Sweetly” found some in the audience singing along quietly (“drape me in blue). Just before “Hearts Too Heavy” he said “here’s one that’s still sad but it sounds happier – that’s the best I can do.”
Later in the show he said he had played Alley Cats in Richmond with his band when he was 17, and played “Blacklist,” which he had written then.
While Patterson invited the audience in to personal stories and songs of his youth, you’d soar along and follow tales that sometimes shed light on uncomfortable interactions and sometimes invited you to punch back or let the feeling out big and wide (“Putting People on the Moon” was updated with contemporary references). Moreland’s songs pull you in with a weight of profundity – in confidential songs about the violence and pain in relationships and philosophical observations about the challenge of living, itself.
It was just the coolest of the talented cool at the Birchmere last Thursday night.
Check out John Moreland here: https://www.johnmoreland.net/
Find the latest Patterson Hood updates here: https://pattersonhood.com/
Enjoy some of our previous coverage here: REVIEW: Patterson Hood “Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams” and here: Show Review: John Moreland Brings Sad Songs and Quiet Salvation to the Ram’s Head
Patterson’s setlist:
The Forks of Cypress
Grand Canyon (Drive‐By Truckers song)
Lookout Mountain (Drive‐By Truckers song)
Uncle Disney
Pinocchio
Heathens (Drive‐By Truckers song)
The Van Pelt Parties
The Sands of Iwo Jima (Drive‐By Truckers song)
Puttin’ People on the Moon (Drive‐By Truckers song)
A Werewolf and a Girl
The Righteous Path (Drive‐By Truckers song)
The Feel Good Hit of the Summer (Drive‐By Truckers song)
Bulldozers and Dirt (Drive‐By Truckers song)
John Moreland’s set list:
Hang Me in the Tulsa County Stars
Latchkey Kid
Gentle Violence
In Betweens
I Need You to Tell Me Who I Am
Cherokee
Oh Julia
Old Wounds
Break My Heart Sweetly
Heart’s Too Heavy
God’s Medicine
Blacklist
Lies I Chose to Believe
No Glory In Regret
Visitor
You Don’t Care for Me Enough to Cry