Date: 2002
Label: Lost Highway [originally self-Released in 2001]
Format: 12" vinyl (also available as 2-CD set)
Category: Country / Americana
TRACK LISTING (AUDIO HELP)
Act I
1. Days of Graduation
2. Ronnie and Neil
REAL AUDIO
3. 72 (this highway’s mean)
4. Dead, Drunk, and Naked
5. Guitar Man Upstairs
6. Birmingham
7. The Southern Thing
REAL AUDIO
8. The Three Great Alabama Icons
9. Wallace
10. Zip City
REAL AUDIO
11. Moved
Act II
1. Let There Be Rock
REAL AUDIO
2. Road Cases
3. Women without Whiskey
4. Plastic Flowers on the Highway
5. Cassie’s Brother
6. Life in the Factory
7. Shut Up and Get on the Plane
REAL AUDIO
8. Greenville to Baton Rouge
9. Angels and Fuselage
REAL AUDIO
Produced by the Drive-By Truckers with Dick Cooper and David Barbe. Recorded in beautiful downtown Birmingham, AL by Earl Hicks and Dick Cooper. Mixed by David Barbe at Chase Park Transduction, Athens, GA. Mastered by Rodney Mills at Rodney Mills Masterhouse, Duluth, GA.
Kelly Hogan as Cassie Gaines (Cassie’s Brother and Angels and Fuselage). Special guests Jyl Freed, Anne Richmond Boston and Amy Pike as the Mule-ettes. All songs copyright 2001 Soul Dump Music (BMI).
This two CD set features a special packaging with lyrics and an explanation of both Acts and the project as a whole. Patterson Hood sums the whole thing up well: “One day, around 1995, Earl Hicks and I were driving back to Alabama and we began brainstorming about a way to tell the story [of the mythology surrounding Lynyrd Skynyrd]. We talked about inventing a fictional band and telling the story through them. He suggested calling the band Betamax Guillotine. As the Drive-By Truckers came together, we all began collecting songs for the project. We would usually refer to it as ‘the Southern Rock Opera,’ another throwback to its time frame in the mid-70s. As the album progressed, it became less-literal in story and more about modern, Southern mythology. That suits us just fine.”
