"They closed down the Ford plant in '82, kind of like it was shown to be in Flynt, Michigan in (the Michael Moore documentary), Roger & Me. It's never really recovered. Even the booming '90's missed the area. They had double digit unemployment all through the Clinton Administration. And, I'm sure, unintentionally, it (informs) my music."

Hood stayed in Muscle Shoals until he was 28 soaking up what eventually would become the stories he would spin into song. But, he eventually made his way to Athens, Ga., where he formed his band Drive By Truckers. Since then, much has faded into the Truckers' rearview mirror.

Their latest album, The Southern Rock Opera is a sprawling morass of swampy southern rock telling tales of, what Hood sees as, a misunderstood Southland. It's a rock opera, divided into two acts, that touches on the painful political history of the region, growing up in the south, stories of drug fueled debauchery, and bleary eyed drunken tales of love, loss, and touring. It ain't always pretty, but it's real.

The DBT's released four albums independently, Southern Rock Opera included, before signing to Lost Highway Records, an imprint of MCA/Universal, and re-releasing the Rock Opera on the label. But, after the band had finished it's forth coming album, Decoration Day, they began to sense something was afoot with the label's level of commitment to the group.

"What I felt was going on was that so many of the people that were there when we came to the label had moved on to other things," recalls Hood. "We weren't a priority to the new people that had come on. I don't think that they would have signed us if it were up to them a year earlier. So legally we had control of the record and they were legally going to fulfill that obligation and put the record out, but we all got the feeling that was the extent of it. They were going to throw it out there, and then drop us a month after it came out and the record would be lost. That's how situations like that so often play out."

Initially it was said the label had dropped the band, but Hood says that's not true.

"We asked to buy back our record, and about four days later they leaked to the press and to the Internet that they had dropped us," he says. "So, if they prefer to say that they dropped us that's fine with me. I don't really care. We're pretty O.K. with how all of it has come down in the long run. We brought the thing in under budget, and we bought it back for exactly what it cost to make it. I don't care about any of that stuff. I just want to make the record that I want to make, and have whoever puts it out to feel as strongly about it as we do, and (to) get behind it. But, I'm not harboring any sort of ill feelings."

One of the people Hood is referring to that had "moved on to other things" was Lost Highway president, Luke Lewis. After the DBT's arrival at the label, Lewis moved up the ranks within the Universal Music Group to become the president of the whole arm of the country music operations by ascending to president of MCA Nashville. With the increased responsibility he has lost the intimate hands-on relationship with some of the bands on Lost Highway says Hood. But, he also says his experience with Lewis is one of the few good things he can look back on regarding the split with the label.

"He's got other things to do than just Lost Highway," admits Hood. "He's got bigger things to mess with. He told me that he wouldn't let us get screwed. And, in the end, he hasn't. By letting us buy back this record and take it elsewhere he stood by his word.

"I was never comfortable with (major labels)," continues Hood. "We accomplished a lot of things on our own before signing to the label that many people said that couldn't be done. But, the one thing that we could never seem to overcome was our distribution problems."

It's hard enough to motivate the consumer to go to the record store to buy an album, but if they do have people looking for the CD, and the band can't keep their product on the shelves, it can be disastrous for them.

"It was very frustrating to have write-ups in Spin, Rolling Stone, The Village voice, and all this incredible press with no one able to go out and get the record," explains Hood. "At the time, the Lost Highway deal was far and away the best deal we had on the table to chose from. But I always had mixed feelings about getting tied into a deal with a label that was owned by a large conglomerate like Universal, which is owned by Vivendi. All that went against what we had been trying to do, so we did go into it with a good deal of apprehension. So, now that we have gotten out of it all unscathed, we got kinda lucky, and, to some extent, got done pretty right."

The light at the end of the tunnel for the Drive By Truckers is that they've have signed a new deal with another company and will release Decoration Day June 17, on New West Records. The Truckers new album is set to be the premiere release for the label this summer, and Hood is hopeful about what may be in store for this record.

"This one reminds me, stylistically, of Pizza Deliverance," he says comparing it with DBT's 1999 sophomore release on Soul Dump Records. "It's got more of the country stuff we did then, but, at the same time, some of the stuff rocks harder than the stuff on the Rock Opera. It's pretty diverse. It's far and away the best album that we've ever done. It's probably more song oriented than the last one."

A lot of personal hardship provided fodder for the material on Decoration Day, as is often the case.

"It's all pretty personal. All lot of the material centers around a lot of the stuff the band went through while we made the Rock Opera. While we were making that record, a couple of us got divorced, and there was a lot of really rough personal turmoil going on, so we turned it into songs. I know that's the oldest cliche in the book, but it turned out OK. So, when we went into cut (the record) we had all pretty much come out of all that and were in a good frame of mind. The band was really tight."

The release of Decoration Day may serve as a sort of Independence Day for DBT — a day that will signal a green light for them to continue to share a gritty glimpse of what life in the south can sometimes be.