WELCOME TO THE BIG TO-DO, from Patterson Hood

We started it off by recording twenty-five new songs in twenty-five days. No big dramas or big whoops going on so everyone was able to put full attention to building the beast. No concept or intentional story line here, yet as we sit down to sequence, it somehow seems to imply otherwise.

We were touring in Norway and one night at dinner the TV was on and the top story on the news was about a woman in Selmer, TN, about 35 miles from my hometown, who had shot and killed her husband, a prominent preacher in town. Selmer was the same town we visited a few years earlier on our album The Dirty South, as it was the home of Sherriff Buford Pusser and all of the exploits he was involved in, many deeply involving some folks from my hometown that inspired a few of the songs on that album. I got a really nasty letter from his daughter. I felt bad about that.

Here I was, halfway around the world from my home and the top story is only 35 miles away from there. As a touring band, we have frequently found ourselves in the exact place and time as the national front-page story of the moment. We’ve laughed, uncomfortably about it for years, but it keeps on happening and sometimes it gets a little creepy. When our bus was almost hit by a meteor a couple of years ago, we felt it was getting a little ridiculous, but at the same time if our number had been up, we’d be gone and what a way to go that would have been. My wife hates it when I talk about that.

Then, I’m halfway around the world and the top story is back home. Some songs beg to be written.

A year later, I was staying in a fleabag motel in Hernando, MS, getting ready to go visit my friends The Dickinsons there. The TV was on and damned if it wasn’t Court TV covering the very trial for the woman from Selmer (just an hour or so away from where I was staying). I was watching when the defense attorney pulled out the wig and high-heeled go-go boots and I could hear the audible gasp from the courtroom. It isn’t my job to judge the morality of that tale or decide who was right or wrong. That was the job of the judge and jury. They went quite easy on her by most standards. I had predicted such upon hearing the audible gasp. I decided right then and there that I was going to write a song about it called “The Audible Gasp”. I wrote “The Wig He Made Her Wear” instead, a couple of days before it was recorded.

The story we tell in “The Flying Wallendas” is a true one. The part about my Grandparents house is true also. I don’t know what made me write that one. A few days after writing it, we were in the studio to work on this album and we recorded it in one take. A few days later, a friend gave me a copy of a book on The Ringling Brothers.

I never really was all that into the circus as a kid, but I sure was into the Rock Show, which was sort of The Circus for kids of my generation. I went and wanted to join. I’ve been living on the road for much of the last two decades. I get tired and burned out, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. The Big To-Do.

I don’t write a lot of songs on the road, but I did more than usual on this album and many more were inspired by or set there, either in a literal sense or by something I witnessed or heard about while out there. I wrote two songs one afternoon in Santa Fe.

We went to Europe for our tenth tour over there last summer. While on that tour we got exhausted, homesick, and froze our ass off. I grew up in Alabama and just couldn’t comprehend how fucking cold England can be in August. While we were there, our friend Jerry Wexler passed away. He lived a very long and often wonderful life. He was sort of an honorary Godfather to me. Certainly not in a religious sense, but he was a life-long friend to my family, was very good to me as a boy, and became a huge supporter of my band in later years. I walked though a festival in Wales, thinking about him with tears running down my cheeks. It was too cold to pretend it was sweat, but we played an extra great set that afternoon in his honor.

The highs and lows associated with the road and the lives we lead bring a bipolar whiplash of emotions and our songs often reflect that. I came home from Europe and flew to San Francisco two days later. I wrote “Daddy Learned To Fly” on the plane out there. It was inspired by an unspeakable loss that I still can’t quite comprehend or get over. A couple of days later, we were playing at The Democratic Convention in Denver and got the call to make an album with Booker T. Jones. We accepted and two weeks later had finished it. Potato Hole. A week later AIG went bankrupt and our national economy collapsed. I had just written “This Fucking Job”. People are losing jobs and it scares the shit out of me. Folks come to see us to forget their troubles. Our songs are dark but our shows are a lot of fun. We try really hard to make it worth their hard earned money. The Big To-Do.

We’ve often set our songs and albums in different periods of time, but this one finds us directly in our present. Riding all through the highways of America (and Europe) trying to make sense of a very different world than the one we grew up in. Sometimes I feel disconnected but that’s not always such a bad thing. I’m not nearly old enough to bury my head in the dirt and dwell on the good ole days, as I am quite positive and cautiously optimistic. There’s a world of bad shit going down but I’ve also seen some great strides and some amazing improvements happen during my lifetime. I love my damned iPod but I also love going to record stores that sell nothing but vinyl. I have lost some close friends lately but I see our amazing children and can’t help but believe in a kind of hope I never got from a church or a politician. Our album begins with a little boy missing his dad and ends with a father missing his children. The other day my four year-old daughter asked me to play her a Clash record.

As we were finishing our album, we lost another friend. Jim Dickinson has been a hero of mine for over twenty years. As a musician, a writer, an artist, a producer and above all as a roll model on how to be all those things and still be a fantastic father, Jim was a true treasure to everyone who knew him. His influence on me has been profound and I am proud to be friends with his amazing family. He wrote his own epitaph: “I’m just dead; I’m not gone.” His life accomplishments will live on for generations to come.

I grew up worshiping Rock and Roll like a religion. I know its shortcomings and strengths but have loved it unconditionally all the same since I was eight-years old. I ran away and joined the circus and honestly, I’m still as obsessed as I was as a boy. I’m not a kid anymore but I still remember how it felt and it doesn’t really feel all that different to me now. I pay the price, but I get to get up there with my best friends and tell dirty and violent stories about desperate people in troubled circumstances. I get to turn it up loud, and sometimes I even get to dance.

The Big To-Do. Patterson Hood – January 2010

From Vinyl version only:

The next two days were spent in freezing rain at a music fest. We were parked on the mud trail winding between stages and spent the afternoons watching soaked Brits walk through the puddles back and forth with a running commentary from our beloved Cooley. I chained several of his comments together and wrote “Girls Who Smoke” on the spot. I played it for Cooley that afternoon and he actually liked it. Hope you do too.

The Big To-Do is Lovingly Dedicated to
Jerry Wexler (January 10, 1917 – August 15, 2008) and
Jim Dickinson (November 15, 1941 – August 15, 2009).