Patterson Hood (of Drive-By Truckers)

Patterson Hood is a prolific writer and performer whose character-driven stories are packed with political subtext. He is best known as front man, singer, songwriter, and guitar player for the critically acclaimed rock and roll band Drive-By Truckers, but is also a writer of essays, columns, and short stories as well as a solo performer and producer.

In the past few years, he has written an op-ed on the on-going controversies surrounding the confederate flag for The New York Times Magazine, a piece on Vic Chesnutt for The Oxford American's annual music issue, and retrospectives on David Bowie for American Songwriter and Merle Haggard for NPR. Most recently in October of 2016, Patterson published his first short story featured in "The Highway Kind," a car-themed crime fiction anthology.

Drive-By Truckers have released 14 studio albums and played well over 2,500 shows in the past twenty-eight years. They also released a 35-song, career-spanning box set in 2015 that was recorded live at The Fillmore in San Francisco. They released a trilogy of studio albums, American Band (ATO Records, 2016), The Unraveling (ATO Records, 2020) and The New OK(ATO Records, 2020) have seen the band move into a more direct political and topical sphere of writing garnering praise from critics and fans around the globe. In 2022 they released Welcome 2 Club XIII (ATO) which reflected on their formative years, juxtaposing the wild follies of youth with the joys and hardships of raising kids who are now the ages he and partner Mike Cooley were when they began playing together in 1985.

In addition to the rave reviews from NPR, Rolling Stone, The Independent, UNCUT, MOJO, Pitchfork, Chicago Tribune and The Guardian, Hood and Cooley appeared on CNN's Reliable Sources where they were interviewed by John Avion. The Unraveling entered the charts as the #1 Americana Album in the UK. In the US it was the #1 album on the Independent Chart, #1 Americana / Folk, #2 Rock, #2 Vinyl and #10 on Billboard's Top Albums chart and #65 on the Billboard 200. They are about to release a deluxe reissue of their breakthrough album Southern Rock Opera and embark on a massive US tour playing it in its entirety for the first time in 22 years.

In addition to his work with Drive-By Truckers, Patterson has amassed three solo albums. He is currently completing a fourth solo album with plans to release it in early 2025. He has co-produced or played on additional albums by Jerry Joseph, Bettye LaVette, Booker T. Jones and The Dexateens. As a speaker and lecturer, he has spoken and conducted classes at Princeton, Indiana University, The University of Georgia, and The University of Alabama. In 2015, he spoke at the Frank and Kula Lumpuris Distinguished Lecture Series at the William J. Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, and delivered the commencement address to the graduating class of 2015 at the University of Northern Alabama.