South Bound

"I actually expected there to be a backlash, like, "Why are you singing about the same things again?" he admits. "But it never came. I always prepare for the worst, you know? People thought our first two records were kind of novelty records, and they were right. But the stuff we're doing now isn't. It's been a gradual thing, but you can see an evolution from one album to the next.

"But I really am dying to write about some new stuff," Cooley adds. "I think after a while, you just want to go in a different direction. I don't really feel hemmed in, but I've been doing this for so damn long that I really don't know where to go from here. I think we're all ready to move in a new direction. I'm not sure where yet -- we'll just have to see. One thing's for sure: I'm not going to write about love. It's just not within me. My God, I hate love songs."

True to his word, Cooley writes songs that deal with just about every topic imaginable except romance: moonshine, race cars, pride, prejudice, Carl Perkins. "Really bitter love songs can be kind of cool," he concedes grudgingly, "but at the same time, get over it, dude. Hire a hooker."

No matter what direction the Truckers steer in with their next album, it's hard to imagine them ever forsaking the fertile conceptual backdrop of the South. Still, Cooley and company dispel some of the myths of their homeland while perpetuating others. Dixie, of course, will be remembered for slavery, Jim Crow and the killing of Martin Luther King Jr. as much as it will be celebrated for its abundant musical legacy.

"Back before Martin Luther King was assassinated, things were divided more on economics," Cooley notes. "It didn't become a color thing until after that. I don't know why it went that way, but it did. I think that was exactly what someone wanted to happen. Now everything's separated into black music and white music, but black people and white people always used to play on the same records."

Cooley should know; his music is a product of Muscle Shoals's long history of integration on stage and in the studio. But as Cooley notes, his own neighbors sometimes have a hard time being aware, let alone proud, of their formidable musical heritage.

"It seems like people outside of the South are more educated than people in the South when it comes to all that stuff," he says. "The British are very knowledgeable about all of that. The Rhythm Section are almost like celebrities there. Europe in general, they tend to research and really know the background of what they're listening to. America is just, like, swallow it and shit it back out."

His critique of the nation, however, doesn't end there. After the debate winds down, the guitarist has a few choice words for our country's commander in chief as he delivers his own blow-by-blow commentary of the presidential faceoff. "Bush looked like a little kid that had been told to sit in the corner," Cooley observes, compressing whole generations of Southern rebelliousness into his deep, twangy drawl. "Kerry was laughing, or at least smiling, most of the time, but Bush just looked pissed. Beady-eyed little bastard."