Southern Rock Opera

“We began writing the Southern Rock Opera some years ago. We wanted to examine people’s misconceptions of the South, and study some modern-day southern mythology. The band Lynyrd Skynyrd’s story seemed like the ultimate vehicle for tying all of these loose ends together into what would hopefully flow like one big story. It also gave us a great excuse for going with a 3 guitar lineup and exploring that musically. It should also be noted that the record was intentionally paced like a movie and was originally planned as a screenplay before it became an album.”

In a 2015 editorial for the New York Times, DBT’s Patterson Hood described the album as “an examination of life in the South after the Civil Rights era, in the form of a coming-of-age tale of a Southern boy about my age who grows up to become a famous musician before dying in a plane crash while on tour. The album wrestled with how to be proud of where we came from while acknowledging and condemning the worst parts of our region’s history.”

While DBT’s website essentially presents the band and the boy the album focuses on as being an alternate version of DBT and Patterson Hood, strong parallels are drawn between the scenarios in the songs and the life and death of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Ronnie Van Zant.

ACT I: Set in the late 1970s. Our hero is growing up in a small southern town and dreaming of being a big Rock Star. In the meantime he has to deal with the mundane shit that most teenagers deal with. As he grows up and leaves the south, he is shocked at how different people’s perceptions of his home were from what he remembered.

ACT II: Our hero has now become the big Rock Star that he always fantasized about being, but it’s somehow nothing like he thought it would be… Is anything ever?