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33⅓ Main Series #133
Southern Rock Opera
The Drive-By Truckers' Southern Rock Opera takes listeners on a road trip through the American South, with stops along mean old highways and soul-sucking swamps, iconic recording studios and doomed chartered jets, and even Heaven and Hell. Along the way, the Truckers attempt to untangle the mess that is southern history by exploring the contradictory, dualistic nature of the region.
Like twin paths intersecting and diverging before meeting again, the opera's libretto focuses on the lives of two the fictional Betamax Guillotine, a stand-in for the Truckers themselves, and Southern rock gods Lynyrd Skynyrd. Rien Fertel takes us for a ride along the Truckers' winding road through the opera's Southlands, a region filled with youthful rockstar aspirations, fatal crashes, the wreckage of one band gone too soon, and the ambitions of another wrestling with the great hope and tragedy that is America.
Like twin paths intersecting and diverging before meeting again, the opera's libretto focuses on the lives of two the fictional Betamax Guillotine, a stand-in for the Truckers themselves, and Southern rock gods Lynyrd Skynyrd. Rien Fertel takes us for a ride along the Truckers' winding road through the opera's Southlands, a region filled with youthful rockstar aspirations, fatal crashes, the wreckage of one band gone too soon, and the ambitions of another wrestling with the great hope and tragedy that is America.
- GenresMusicNonfiction
152 pages, Paperback
First published October 18, 2018
8 people are currently reading
87 people want to read
About the author
Rien Fertel
5 books26 followersI am a Louisiana-born and based freelance writer and professional historian. I've written on food and travel and books for Oxford American, Garden & Gun, Southern Living, Spirit, Saveur, The Local Palate, and other publications.
Currently, I am writing a personal narrative about my journey into the heart of barbecue, specifically whole-hog barbecue — a culinary art form that is disappearing and experiencing a renaissance at the exact same moment — and the professional pitmasters who make a living firing, smoking, flipping, and chopping 200+ pound pigs. That book is out in the Spring of 2016 by Simon & Schuster/Touchstone.
In addition to the freelance life, I wear a second, scholarly, hat, carving out a small niche in the academic world. I hold an MA from the New School for Social Research and a PhD in History from Tulane University. My first book, Imagining the Creole City (Louisiana State University Press, Fall 2014), is an intellectual and literary study of a circle of writers in nineteenth-century New Orleans. I am presently a Visiting Professor of Urban Studies at Bard Early College New Orleans and a part-time professor at Tulane University. I have also contributed essays to collections published by the University of Georgia Press and Vanderbilt University Press.
I call New Orleans home, and live part-time in a hundred-plus-year-old church in St. Martinville, Louisiana.
I can be reached at: rienfertel@gmail.com
Currently, I am writing a personal narrative about my journey into the heart of barbecue, specifically whole-hog barbecue — a culinary art form that is disappearing and experiencing a renaissance at the exact same moment — and the professional pitmasters who make a living firing, smoking, flipping, and chopping 200+ pound pigs. That book is out in the Spring of 2016 by Simon & Schuster/Touchstone.
In addition to the freelance life, I wear a second, scholarly, hat, carving out a small niche in the academic world. I hold an MA from the New School for Social Research and a PhD in History from Tulane University. My first book, Imagining the Creole City (Louisiana State University Press, Fall 2014), is an intellectual and literary study of a circle of writers in nineteenth-century New Orleans. I am presently a Visiting Professor of Urban Studies at Bard Early College New Orleans and a part-time professor at Tulane University. I have also contributed essays to collections published by the University of Georgia Press and Vanderbilt University Press.
I call New Orleans home, and live part-time in a hundred-plus-year-old church in St. Martinville, Louisiana.
I can be reached at: rienfertel@gmail.com
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
October 1, 2018
“Drive-by Truckers Southern Rock Opera” is written in a breezy, travelogue-type style. Author Rien Fertel provides a competent background of the southern rock genre, ending up with a back-and-forth sharing of tales between Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Drive-by Truckers. Readers are provided with an entertaining selection of on-the-road stories and explanations of various song lyrics.
I didn’t appreciate the injections of the author’s political stance. Illuminating the political stance contained within the lyrics is one thing. Lacing the book with your own political opinions is another. I chose this book because I wanted to read about music and musicians. There are many other books – both liberal and conservative – that I would choose if that was my preferred reading preference of the moment.
A quick, easy read, one best enjoyed with music in the background or, at the very least, a computer ready to search through YouTube. Four stars.
My thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Academic for an advance complimentary ebook.
I didn’t appreciate the injections of the author’s political stance. Illuminating the political stance contained within the lyrics is one thing. Lacing the book with your own political opinions is another. I chose this book because I wanted to read about music and musicians. There are many other books – both liberal and conservative – that I would choose if that was my preferred reading preference of the moment.
A quick, easy read, one best enjoyed with music in the background or, at the very least, a computer ready to search through YouTube. Four stars.
My thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Academic for an advance complimentary ebook.
February 25, 2024
I first heard of Drive-by-Truckers though their album go-go Boots and I became a fan, yet their discography is sprawling and their albums are long so it takes a while for me to absorb them. Southern Rock Opera is a double album.
When I read the 33 1/3 series I play the album in the background while I'm reading and, I know it's one listen but I feel I need to do it.
Rien Fertel's take on the album is different: Since SRO is a road album about the south, he focuses on the development of southern rock from it's roots to DBT actually becoming a band and their roots to the genre (the lead singer's dad was part of Muscle Shoals).
having listened to the album, this approach makes sense. There's a ton of references and Fertel gives them context, It's an unconventional approach but I do like that,
May 10, 2023
Fun read if you love this band and album like I do. And for those who don’t, it’s an interesting look at that place we call the South.
Read
July 23, 2018Drive-By Truckers are one of those bands I like, but not nearly as much as most people who like them do. So if you're one of the proper fans who's really invested in the whole mythos, I can't comment on how much here is new, or to what degree it does justice to their magnum opus. But as a casual enthusiast? This is a damn good read. It's a road trip along the mean old highways of the Southland, through the tangled pride and shame of Southern identity, the Confederate flags and the crossroads. It's alive to the many disenfranchisements that made this land, the double identities it breeds, the difficulties of loving Lynyrd Skynyrd songs while hating what they've come to represent (and arguably always did). Hell, apart from anything else it'd make a good point of analogy for all of us who grew up on Morrissey's music and mythology but have now realised that whatever he may once have been, the guy's now a cast-iron arsehole.
It helps, too, that there's a doozy of a story to be told. A lot of 33 1/3 books, good as they are, you're still working with a bunch of professional musicians writing and then recording some songs about some stuff like they've done plenty of times before. There can be stories in that, sure, but they need some digging. Whereas here, you've got a band who already broke up at least once before they were even the Drive-By Truckers, who then promptly lose a member to a car-crash about as soon as they get going under that name, self-financing a rock opera their label tell them is impossible and unfashionable, recording it thrice with different bassists...and then releasing it on September 12th, 2001. Which wouldn't be ideal even were it not heavily themed around plane crashes. By rights, nobody should ever have heard Southern Rock Opera. And yet, here it is all the same, refusing to go away. Which itself seems like a perfect illustration of that 'Southern thing' with which it's so fascinated. And one of the things which really comes through here is just how utterly Southern the South is, spotted with place names which seem like they're taking the piss - as when the story of the foundation of Muscle Shoals takes in Tick Hill, Bloody Springs and and Ricketts Hill, not to mention a kid boiled to death in a washpot, mom running away with a bootlegger, and a man with backwards feet. Muscle Shoals, of course, being relevant because DBT bandleader Patterson Hood was the son of one of their house band - and again, this is presumably common knowledge to the real fans, but I just like the songs so it was news to me. Still, the point is that this is the world he came from, and it's barely a whisker away from And the Ass saw the Angel. See also Ronnie van Zant - growing up in a shack with his brothers Donny and Johnny, plus sisters Marlene and Darlene. Because if I don't know the Truckers as well as some, I barely know their fellow subjects of Southern Rock Opera at all. Basically, I know the two Skynrd songs everyone knows, and I don't even know them that well, let alone like them (although Bubonique's East 17-style take on 'Freebird' is quite something). And more widely, my classic rock knowledge is also pretty minimal, so it was only reading this that I learned that the French horn and organ on 'You Can't Always Get What You Want' are the same guy who played the organ on 'Like A Rolling Stone', and even if you were only on two songs ever (which he very much wasn't), what a fucking pair!
I digress quite considerably. But then, this is a rambling, storytelling kind of book, which is quite impressive given the brevity of a 33 1/3, and how much material there is to cover. Still, it's a hell of a book about a hell of an album, and an album I'll definitely be listening to more now I've got this sense of its hinterland.
(Although, funny story: after the spoken word track about the duality of the Southern thing, just as we've been told the next track is from the point of view of the Devil getting ready to welcome George Wallace to Hell...I instead got the voice of Aleksandr the meerkat. Spotify ads, man)
Rather than leave it there, though, let's close on what Hood has said is the most important line on the album, and despite how much of this is about some stupid behaviour, it's a very wise sentiment: "Living in fear's just another way of dying before your time."
(Netgalley ARC)
It helps, too, that there's a doozy of a story to be told. A lot of 33 1/3 books, good as they are, you're still working with a bunch of professional musicians writing and then recording some songs about some stuff like they've done plenty of times before. There can be stories in that, sure, but they need some digging. Whereas here, you've got a band who already broke up at least once before they were even the Drive-By Truckers, who then promptly lose a member to a car-crash about as soon as they get going under that name, self-financing a rock opera their label tell them is impossible and unfashionable, recording it thrice with different bassists...and then releasing it on September 12th, 2001. Which wouldn't be ideal even were it not heavily themed around plane crashes. By rights, nobody should ever have heard Southern Rock Opera. And yet, here it is all the same, refusing to go away. Which itself seems like a perfect illustration of that 'Southern thing' with which it's so fascinated. And one of the things which really comes through here is just how utterly Southern the South is, spotted with place names which seem like they're taking the piss - as when the story of the foundation of Muscle Shoals takes in Tick Hill, Bloody Springs and and Ricketts Hill, not to mention a kid boiled to death in a washpot, mom running away with a bootlegger, and a man with backwards feet. Muscle Shoals, of course, being relevant because DBT bandleader Patterson Hood was the son of one of their house band - and again, this is presumably common knowledge to the real fans, but I just like the songs so it was news to me. Still, the point is that this is the world he came from, and it's barely a whisker away from And the Ass saw the Angel. See also Ronnie van Zant - growing up in a shack with his brothers Donny and Johnny, plus sisters Marlene and Darlene. Because if I don't know the Truckers as well as some, I barely know their fellow subjects of Southern Rock Opera at all. Basically, I know the two Skynrd songs everyone knows, and I don't even know them that well, let alone like them (although Bubonique's East 17-style take on 'Freebird' is quite something). And more widely, my classic rock knowledge is also pretty minimal, so it was only reading this that I learned that the French horn and organ on 'You Can't Always Get What You Want' are the same guy who played the organ on 'Like A Rolling Stone', and even if you were only on two songs ever (which he very much wasn't), what a fucking pair!
I digress quite considerably. But then, this is a rambling, storytelling kind of book, which is quite impressive given the brevity of a 33 1/3, and how much material there is to cover. Still, it's a hell of a book about a hell of an album, and an album I'll definitely be listening to more now I've got this sense of its hinterland.
(Although, funny story: after the spoken word track about the duality of the Southern thing, just as we've been told the next track is from the point of view of the Devil getting ready to welcome George Wallace to Hell...I instead got the voice of Aleksandr the meerkat. Spotify ads, man)
Rather than leave it there, though, let's close on what Hood has said is the most important line on the album, and despite how much of this is about some stupid behaviour, it's a very wise sentiment: "Living in fear's just another way of dying before your time."
(Netgalley ARC)
January 13, 2019
So, there are two kinds of 33 1/3s. The ones that are about the record on the cover and the ones that aren't. This one is the latter. I generally dislike these as it feels like a bait and switch, but Fertel does a good job with his study of Southern Rock and shows how a progressive Southerner is still a Southerner and still a lover of Southern Rock.
Just don't get your hopes up that you will learn a TON about the Truckers.
Just don't get your hopes up that you will learn a TON about the Truckers.
October 10, 2025
With Southern Rock Opera being my introduction to the Drive-by Truckers (or maybe just DBT) and one of my all time favorite albums, I was really interested in learning more about it. This book did not really satisfy my curiosity. It reads very much like a Master’s thesis on the origins of Southern Rock providing a thorough history of its origins including Muscle Shoals, The Allman Brothers Band, and Lynyrd Skynard. All very important pieces that informed the creation of SRO, but if you are looking for personal insights from Hood or Cooley there is little to be found here. In fact, it isn’t until you get to Act II, which is more than halfway through the book, that the author really gets to the origins of DBT and even then it is tightly wrapped with the origin and untimely crash of Skynard. My next course of action will be the book “Where The Devil Don’t Stay” by Stephen Deusner which will probably provide more of the insiders view of DBT that I was hoping for.
May 21, 2020
I am not even what you would call a casual fan of the Drive-By Truckers (one song on my iPod), but an album about Lynyrd Skynyrd is certainly worth a listen and read. The author gave me a sense of what drove this album and that is why I like the 33 1/3 series. He interjects just enough of his own experiences with the South and the band and the album to round out the story. I would agree with a few others who have commented on the needless injection of the author's politics. To do so within the context of the band or the songs is no issue but otherwise it takes me away from what was a good read. Now to dig deeper into the Drive-By Truckers (and perhaps revisit some Skynyrd).
June 22, 2021
I'm tempted to rate this book higher because I actually enjoyed reading it in its entirety. It was an approachable telling, with a trustworthy narrator that sort of carried you along with the book, twisting and turning appropriately. That said, in looking at how it all ties into the series of 33 and 1/3, I think it does struggle to really tie itself into the album as a whole. In a roundabout way, it tells the story of the album, though it didn't perhaps add any insight into the creation or longevity of the listen. Still, I'd recommend just on the basis of the joy of reading.
December 14, 2020
This was another really solid entry in the series, serving as a really nice capsule history of Southern Rock, with all of it's faults and issues, in addition to exploring the album that originally got me into the Drive-By Truckers. It helps that Fertel was from the South and clearly well embedded into the culture and the "duality of that Southern thing". A must read for DBT fans and anyone curious about how they slot into the overall history of Southern Rock.
November 3, 2018
This is a book not just about The Drive-By Trucker's "Southern Rock Opera." This is a story about the complexities and contradictions of Southern culture, identity, and history. To be Southern is to live in contradiction and Rien Fertel captures that idea in sharp incisive prose. Even if you are not a fan of Southern Rock, the writing will make you yell "Freebird!"
January 19, 2019
Engaging little book. Obviously built about the DBT album although ultimately it focuses more on the subjects of the album - the USA's southern parts and its identity and the music that has come out of that environment and out of that identity.
Great read. It could have been longer though.
Great read. It could have been longer though.
September 26, 2020
A great companion to one of the greatest rock accomplishments of our time.
November 11, 2021
Enjoyable and all as this is, in the end it's more about Lynyrd Skynyrd than the DBT's. And much as I love ol' Skynyrd, I love the Truckers more, so it was a tad disappointing.
June 25, 2023
From FAME Studios to Lynyrd Skynyrd via Duane Allman and Patterson Hood, this is a fine stab at defining Southern Rock, using the album as a reference point.
January 4, 2024
A book about a concept album about Lynyrd Skynyrd that embraces both a loving and scathing critique of the South? Works for me… i love it when these are about more than the making of the album.
January 12, 2024
Interesting approach to one masterpiece -amongst several others- by the southern rock ensemble the Drive-By Truckers, their third album Southern Rock Opera.
The pamphlet takes a ride along the mean old highway 72 to deepen on the Truckers' intentions in composing and executing said rock opera, about their own journey through a heartfelt authentic homage to their heroes, the ultimate southern rock band, Lynyrd Skynyrd; the story is sung in two acts.
Although the author does not notice -but of course mentions the duality of the yank south- the first Act is an empirical discovery of dialectic materialism. The duality of the southern thing is the unsolved contradiction of the oppressed white working class fighting to be free as a bird, and get out of the swampy southern slums either as successful rock'N'roll heroes, or casualties of car crashes, overdoses and shootings. Or both. At the core of this duality is that our singing southern working class heroes could end up being instruments of their class enemies, alienated from their origins serving the ideology of their actual oppressors, even proudly boasting about their rancid patriotism, just like like Ronnie Van Zant's greedy idiot baby brother does. Or they could grow as class conscious dudes like our favourite band, the Drive-By Truckers, without betraying nor breaking with their southern roots and legacy, paying homage and expanding it.
Which takes us to the other point. What is Southern Rock after all? Some decided its defined exclusively by geography, but that it appears to be not entirely accurate. Some others insist, more precisely, that it is a music style -long virtuoso guitar solos, bar brawls and distracted moral ladies lyrics, you get the drift- Yours truly was initially drawn to this rock sub-genre almost half a century ago because of those celestial guitars. The author quotes Charlie Daniels (in spite of his dumbwittery) stating that Southern Rock is a genre of people. Perhaps Patterson Hood's definition is close to that non geographical definition of the Southern Rock, which has its own duality after all, and it's in somewhere and everywhere.
The book gets one star fewer because of the criminal overlooking of Zip City, reducing it to a breaking up love letter song, And ,worst of all, for considering progressive the vote for Madame War Criminal Clinton in 2016. Rien Fertel still blinded to the fact that his country's ain't a democracy but a one party rule by the same oligarchy. Ain't no free bird at all.
Fine book.
The pamphlet takes a ride along the mean old highway 72 to deepen on the Truckers' intentions in composing and executing said rock opera, about their own journey through a heartfelt authentic homage to their heroes, the ultimate southern rock band, Lynyrd Skynyrd; the story is sung in two acts.
Although the author does not notice -but of course mentions the duality of the yank south- the first Act is an empirical discovery of dialectic materialism. The duality of the southern thing is the unsolved contradiction of the oppressed white working class fighting to be free as a bird, and get out of the swampy southern slums either as successful rock'N'roll heroes, or casualties of car crashes, overdoses and shootings. Or both. At the core of this duality is that our singing southern working class heroes could end up being instruments of their class enemies, alienated from their origins serving the ideology of their actual oppressors, even proudly boasting about their rancid patriotism, just like like Ronnie Van Zant's greedy idiot baby brother does. Or they could grow as class conscious dudes like our favourite band, the Drive-By Truckers, without betraying nor breaking with their southern roots and legacy, paying homage and expanding it.
Which takes us to the other point. What is Southern Rock after all? Some decided its defined exclusively by geography, but that it appears to be not entirely accurate. Some others insist, more precisely, that it is a music style -long virtuoso guitar solos, bar brawls and distracted moral ladies lyrics, you get the drift- Yours truly was initially drawn to this rock sub-genre almost half a century ago because of those celestial guitars. The author quotes Charlie Daniels (in spite of his dumbwittery) stating that Southern Rock is a genre of people. Perhaps Patterson Hood's definition is close to that non geographical definition of the Southern Rock, which has its own duality after all, and it's in somewhere and everywhere.
The book gets one star fewer because of the criminal overlooking of Zip City, reducing it to a breaking up love letter song, And ,worst of all, for considering progressive the vote for Madame War Criminal Clinton in 2016. Rien Fertel still blinded to the fact that his country's ain't a democracy but a one party rule by the same oligarchy. Ain't no free bird at all.
Fine book.
August 17, 2018
This is a fun short little history of southern rock. Starting with the birth of the Muscle Shoals sound and transitioning to the brief history of the Allman Brothers told primarily around Duane Allman. Then it moves on to those Allman Brother wannabes - Lynard Skynard. We get a long history and analysis of their whisky drinking, bar fighting, rock and rolling, airplane crashing mythology - and just how vapid it really was. Rien Fertel even goes so far as to take a trip to Jacksonville, FL (the birthplace of Skynard) and take a tour with their former bodyguard to all the various local places of Skynard legend. Fertel intersperses this some commentary on the power of southern heritage and pride, and particularly the complexity of the "southern thing". By the end of the book Fertel is at a Skynard show singing at the top of his lungs with tears streaming down his face to that albatross of a song, Freebird. There you have . . . wait . . . this was supposed to be about the Drive-by Truckers album? Well, you wouldn't know it when you read the book. Maybe Fertel deserves a do-over, because he is an engaging writer.
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