Description
Following the Drive-By Truckers’ pair of 2020 albums, The Unraveling and The New OK, this new album gets its title from a venue where founding members Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley performed at the start of their careers. “There were no cool bars in town and Club XIII was the best we had,” Hood said in a statement, “but it wasn’t all that good, and our band [Adam’s House Cat] wasn’t particularly liked there. From time to time the owner would throw us a Wednesday night or let us open for a hair-metal band we were a terrible fit for, and everyone would hang out outside until we were done playing. It wasn’t very funny at the time, but it’s funny to us now.”
Drive-By Truckers primarily recorded Welcome 2 Club XIII at producer David Barbe’s studio in Athens, Georgia. The album features background vocals from Margo Price, Schaefer Llana, and R.E.M.’s Mike Mills. Songs like epic, darkly thrilling “The Driver” and the spirited, horn-blasted “Every Single Storied Flameout” see the band looking back on their formative years with both deadpan pragmatism and profound tenderness, instilling each song with the kind of lived-in detail that invites bittersweet reminiscence of your own misspent youth.
