Featured Essay: The Company We Keep: Homemade Cassettes, Heathens, and Family Reunions

by Scott O'Kelley

I’ve tried to like the Grateful Dead, tried a few times, but they just never clicked. Bought a couple of records in high school because I thought I should like them (I didn’t), had a buddy in college play some Dead because he said I just hadn’t heard the right stuff yet (I had), and kept having friends tell me to go to a show and I’d get it (I couldn’t—felt a bit too evangelical). So while I didn’t become a fan, they did make my Artists-I-Respect-But-Don’t-Really-Like list. 

It’s a very long list.

I mention all that to acknowledge that musical taste is subjective and musical proselytizing is annoying. 

And to apologize in advance for the musical proselytizing that follows.

I was working for The Independent Weekly in Durham, NC. The Triangle—as the greater Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill area is known—was home to a dozen colleges, a major tech and research hub, and an island of liberalism in the deep-red waters of the Deep South. This was the late ’90s and the music scene was on fire: clubs, studios, record stores, and tons of bands. As a convenient stop between northern cities and points south, bands big and small passed through. And they all sent promo packets to The Indy: flyers, tapes, maybe a photo or a CD, all chasing reviews or writeups. Most got a calendar listing. Some got a nice blurb. A few went unnoticed.

But this package got noticed: a homemade cassette of a soon-to-be-released album, a nice personal note, and a cool 45—a rarity back when CDs ruled the earth–all lovingly put together by hand.

Back then the region was also a “No Depression” hotbed—home to Whiskeytown, Two Dollar Pistols, The Backsliders, 6 String Drag, dozens more. And our latest issue focused on all things alt-twang. My contribution, “An Acuff-Rose by Another Name,” was about the genre’s many labels and how no one could agree on what to call it. The accompanying note said something like, “Yeah, I don’t know what to call it either,” signed Patterson Hood. Cool—someone actually read my piece. So I took it all home and gave it a listen. 

I didn’t know the band—Drive-By Truckers. Kind of a dumb name, but they clicked musically. The cassette was Gangstabilly (originally on Soul Dump, later on New West Records) and it was a hoot: Songs about Steve McQueen, Mama runnin’ off with a trucker, living in Buttholeville. Drinking. A lot of drinking. I played that tape over and over, along with the 45: “Bulldozers and Dirt”/“Nine Bullets.” 

But I was moving back to KC at the time, so I missed the show and, even worse, neglected to give them a proper writeup. I packed it all away, moved, started grad school, and put music on the backburner for a while. 

This being the days of alt. message boards and AOL groups, the best search engines were online “friends” and the folks behind the record counter. Which also meant you pretty much discovered what your record store stocked. So I never saw Gangstabilly in the racks—or Pizza Deliverance, the follow-up. But I sure heard Southern Rock Opera (2001), their third record: the bartender at my local watering hole played it at least once a night. And it clicked again: Same rough ‘n’ rowdy humor and Southern-gothic storytelling set to blazing guitars, but with some fine-tuning. Maturity, even.

A few years had passed since that envelope with the cassette and the 45 and the note when I ran across the Decoration Day LP (2003) and remembered why I liked them so much. About the same time I stumbled onto “Nine Bullets,” a fan message board where I learned all manner of Drive-By Truckers lore from a bunch of like-minded virtual friends with names like Tequila Cowboy and Beantown Bubba and Littlemamma, folks who also loved Neil Young and The Replacements and Big Star, talking music and talking shit, and generally being loveable, online wiseasses. I’d never been that outgoing, but this felt like sitting at the cool kids’ table.

I also started hearing about this thing called “homecoming,” a magical annual gathering of DBT fans in Athens, GA, the band’s original homebase. That made my I’d-Love-To-But-Probably-Won’t list. 

Another very long list.

One of the first things I learned about DBT fans–”Heathens,” named for a DBT song, not the outlaw biker gang–is that they travel. A lot. “Always Go To the Show” is a semiofficial motto. When I finally saw the band live in St. Louis, there was Tequila Cowboy from Chicago. And Littlemamma. From Texas. Fresh out of grad school with student loans, I couldn’t be the road dogs my new friends were, but there was no holier-than-thou among Heathens. You like the band? You’re family.

And Heathens Homecoming was the family reunion. They loved talking about it. And telling tales and sharing jokes and reminiscing and sounding not unlike my Deadhead friends who insisted You just had to be there. They loved it so much the fandom put out a book documenting the band and the fans and the community and Homecoming: The Company We Keep, named for “The Company I Keep” from Pizza Deliverance, a live highlight with a raucous singalong chorus:

Sometimes I feel like shit

Sometimes that ain’t half of it

Sometimes I’m so high I’m scared to go to sleep

Sometimes I’m lower than the company I keep

The book was also a fundraiser for Nuçi’s Space, a suicide-prevention and mental health center for Athens’ creative community and the band’s adopted charity. And everyone was in there: Tequila Cowboy and Beantown Bubba. Along with Clams and Cortez the Killer and Jonicont and dozens of other folks who were just funny screennames and cool avatars to this point.

Being in the mental health field, the Nuçi’s Space connection really clicked. And this take-care-of-each-other ethos was everywhere, gathering donations for health costs or storm damages or car repairs. Starting gofundmes even when the recipient said they were fine. Organizing a virtual housewarming or baby shower. Or giving tickets to friends who couldn’t go otherwise, no questions asked. Because that’s just what Heathens do.

I went to my first Homecoming–and everyone since–solo. Because no one’s really solo at Homecoming. All it takes is wandering into a bar or a record store or just strolling down the sidewalk in a DBT (or any adjacent band’s) t-shirt and you’re greeted like an old lodge brother. I don’t know who said it first, but Clams–David–said it first to me: Homecoming’s like a family reunion if everyone liked their family. The other thing everyone says about Homecoming is to plan on coming back after your first, because you will.

And what is Heathens Homecoming? Technically it’s four nights of the Drive-By Truckers at the 40-Watt in Athens, GA, but it’s a lot more: it’s great openers each night, including a Friday-night slot for that year’s Camp Amped band, Nuçi’s “School of Rock” combo (and how cool is that for those kids?). It’s music showcases and meetups. It’s a cookout and auction, t-shirt sales, raffles, and other fundraisers for Nuçi’s Space (we raised over $90,000 this year–not bad for a bunch of Heathens). It’s running into band members around town. It’s the band shouting out World Wide Bill’s 400th DBT show from the stage or Tequila Cowboy’s (pretty much just Dean these days) successful heart transplant. And it’s Patterson dog-cussing an unruly patron until he’s walked out or leading “Fuck Fear” chants or changing the lyrics to reflect whatever shit’s going on in the world. Mostly it’s getting to town a few days early and leaving as late as possible so you can see old friends and meet new ones and hug everyone in sight, knowing you’ll never have enough time for breakfast or lunch or drinks with your million best friends. And feeling like you’re home. 

Oh yeah, and there’s music. The shows are scorchers. The sets are long. There are special guests and songs they haven’t played in 20 years. And there are ringing ears and sore backs and achy feet and no one wants it to ever end. 

So yeah, kind of Grateful Dead-like. But I’d never say you have to see a show to love the band: I was a fan for a decade before I saw them live. The music sold me first, the shows just proved me right. And the community sealed the deal.

The first question I’m asked–well, second, after Drive-By who?–is What do they sound like? Which is a tough one. Alt-country? Punky Southern rock? Protest music? Sure. But also no. What don’t they sound like would be easier. 

Ask a dozen Heathens their favorite song and you’ll get a dozen different answers in as many genres. Hard not to sound Southern when you’re from North Alabama. Hard not to sound punky when you love The Replacements. And hard not to be eclectic when you idolize Todd Rundgren. Just know whatever cut I recommend is probably the wrong one, but keep digging: One song’s a Southern gothic short story, the next is a juiced-up country murder ballad, and the one after that’s a song Joe Strummer might’ve penned if The Clash came from the South. And that’s just the first three cuts on Decoration Day. Which is maybe–maybe–my favorite DBT album. Or it could be Southern Rock Opera. Or probably it’s just the one I’m listening to now.

Because that’s also a very long list.

Scott O’Kelley is a former record store employee, writer, editor, and soon-to-be-retired mental health professional from the Midwest who plans on getting the hell out of the Midwest