Patterson Hood On New Solo Album Exploding Trees And Airplane Screams

Forbes

03-04-2025

BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - MARCH 28: Patterson Hood performs at Saturn Birmingham on March 28, 2025 in ... More Birmingham, Alabama. (Photo by David A. Smith/Getty Images)
Over the course of the last 25 years, few songwriters have examined the human condition in quite the way Patterson Hood has, drilling down on the American experience over the course of 14 Drive-By Truckers studio albums and four solo records.
Working with Decemberists multi-instrumentalist Chris Funk on his latest solo release Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams, now available on CD or vinyl and for online streaming via ATO Records, Hood takes an autobiographical approach, working backwards from 1996 as he examines ideas like youth, growth and lessons learned.
Incorporating instrumentation like strings, woodwinds and upright bass, alongside his own work on piano, Hood succeeds in crafting a compelling album which also functions as a departure from the Truckers' sonic palette.
While the songs were written during different periods, they're nevertheless connected by a narrative thread, with the body of work emerging as one of Hood's most focused studio efforts.
'Maybe a theme to me that may not need to be one for anybody else - everyone is going to hear it as their own thing - but is how it all ties together,' Hood explained during a recent conversation. 'To me, it's the connectivity between that kid and that grownup that you end up becoming, you know? And maybe the secret to a happier life is if you can have a positive connectivity with that. And not have aspects of your childhood that you're trapped by that you can't overcome,' he said. 'I think all of that somehow ties in there.'
In the midst of a solo run taking him through late May (ahead of a Drive-By Truckers spring and summer tour kicking off May 29 in San Antonio), I spoke with Patterson Hood about the creative process behind Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams, Pinocchio, Atticus Finch, optimism and the importance of working outside of one's comfort zone. A transcript of our phone conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity, follows below.
Jim Ryan: I know some of these songs have been around in various forms for a bit. At what point did you start thinking maybe there was an album there?
Patterson Hood: Probably during lockdown. When that all first happened, I thought, 'Oh, now I'm being forced to take a three month break I hadn't planned. Perhaps I'll write some songs? Maybe I'll do something creative. I'll work on that book I keep talking about but not writing. Maybe I'll start writing the next record!' Or whatever.
And then that's not at all what happened. It became apparent pretty early that it was gonna be at least a year. Maybe longer. And I was in an extremely vulnerable spot financially going into that - as was the band itself. Because we had basically taken most of the year before off - because we had a brand new record that came out right before lockdown - like a few weeks before. So, we had like 15 months of touring [planned]. And we had all our eggs in that basket.
So, I was extremely stressed out and I got extremely depressed - as depressed as I can remember ever being. I couldn't write. Everything I tried to write was so bitter. It was almost like kid songs: silly or so bitter it was just intolerable. And I would never want to listen to it ever.
But I wanted to do something creative. I needed an outlet. So, I'd sit in my room and I had this stack of songs that were mostly unfinished. A few of them were finished but, to me, just didn't sound like Truckers songs. That band can play anything. They'd kill it. It'd be great. And then it would never get played at a show. Because the rooms we play and the crowd that's there, they're there for a certain experience. And those songs would've just gotten lost. So, these were songs that were kind of in a pile to not have that happen to. So, that became what I worked on.
I set up a little home recording - a little four track thing - and I four-tracked that stack of songs (and a handful of songs that aren't on the record too). But that became, basically, the blueprint.
'Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams,' the fourth solo studio album from Patterson Hood, is now ... More available on CD or vinyl and for online streaming via ATO Records
Ryan: Well, I know Chris Funk made you play piano on this. What was it like working on the album with him?
Hood: That was the other thing! The other reason for that stack of songs is I pretty much decided that I wanted to make a record with Chris.
We've now been friends for about 10 years. But we met basically when I was looking into moving to Portland with my family. We moved cross-country about 10 years ago. So, I met him at the beginning of that process.
He's one of those people. When we played together, it was that kind of chemistry - and yet, very, very different than the way it manifests with the people that I play with in my band. It was its own thing. So, I wanted to explore it. I kind of had that stack of songs earmarked as maybe potential songs for this project that I would want to do with him. So, he was part of it from the very ground up.
And then the piano thing happened. Since I wasn't on the road, and I had access to a piano and stuff at my house, I kind of started working with the piano a bit - just to try to open my head up as a writer, you know? Sometimes, I feel limited by what I know how to do on guitar. It's so easy to fall into the same patterns guitar-wise. So, with piano, it was like, 'Well, I don't really know how to play it. So, whatever happens is gonna be pretty elemental to what I'm trying to get across.'
Because I'm not good enough to do anything beyond the elemental on piano. I'm a pretty elemental guitar player too. I tend to gravitate towards that. I've got all of these wonderful people around me that do all of the other stuff. That's not really what I hear in my head. I do the thing I do. And they all make it magic.
So, that was the plan was that I'd bring in someone who actually knows how to play the damn thing when it came time to make the record. Then, fortunately, about six months out, Funk informed me that, no, actually, I was going to play it on the record. I'm like, 'Um, you know I don't know how to play piano…' And he was like, 'I know! So, maybe you need to practice. My job is to keep you out of your comfort zone.'
I was like, 'OK! Well, you're doing a bang up job, buddy!'
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - MARCH 28: Patterson Hood performs at Saturn Birmingham on March 28, 2025 in ... More Birmingham, Alabama. (Photo by David A. Smith/Getty Images)
Ryan: It's kind of wild the way these songs do sort of maintain a narrative thread - even though they were written at different periods. How did the storytelling kind of come together in this body of work?
Hood: I had no idea that it told a story until we were in the mixing stages. I was working on sequencing like, 'Holy s–t. This is probably the tightest narrative that I've written.' I had no idea it was that. It didn't even occur to me. I knew that a lot of the songs dealt with my childhood stuff. But I didn't really make the connection until I was putting it all together.
And it's weird because it tells the story in backwards form. It's chronologically backwards - not completely, it jumps around a little bit. But 'Exploding Trees' is literally the last thing on the calendar that happened in the story arc of the things that happened on this record. And 'Pinocchio' would definitely be first. Because I was 6 years old and possibly, somewhere, maybe a little bit on the spectrum? We didn't know about those things then. ADHD wasn't talked about either. I learn about that stuff now that I have kids, you know?
'Pinocchio' kind of deals with that. Because that was my first obsession as a kid. I can obsess on something like crazy. That might be the most personal song I've ever written. It really might be. And it had to be the last song on the record.
In those days, you didn't own a movie. You didn't get to watch it on a DVD or even VHS. You had to talk some grownup into taking you to the movies. I talked my grandmother and my great uncle into taking me like 10 times in the two weeks it was playing around town. I memorized it. And I would act it out in my grandmother's backyard for the other kids in the neighborhood - who did not think it was cool. (Laughs) They did not like it! It did not help my social status in the neighborhood one bit.
But that song is about who I am now. I'm 61. And so many aspects of my life are still so related to that weird kid and his weird obsessions. Now, I'm seeing it with my own kids who are growing up before my very eyes really quickly.
Ryan: Who composed the strings and more orchestral flourishes?
Hood: I think it was a lot of both of us. We talked. We would always go play, usually up in Seattle and other places in the northwest. Right around Christmas every year, I'd do a few solo shows up there and he would always go with me. So, we talked a lot on the last couple of those trips about this record and what we wanted it to do and how we wanted it to sound. He knew I wanted it to be more differentiated from what the Truckers do than the previous solo records had been. I wanted it to definitely be its own thing - while still being me. I'm part of the Truckers - and they're part of me. It's all a kinship for sure.
But the strings is Kyleen King. Funk called in Kyleen. And she came over and just absolutely blew my mind. I couldn't believe how great it was, what she did. She opened the songs up and took them so many places that I didn't realize were there.
Drive-By Truckers singer/guitarist Patterson Hood celebrates the release of his latest solo album ... More 'Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams,' now available on CD or vinyl and for online streaming via ATO Records
Ryan: In closing the record with 'Pinocchio,' it felt to me like you did so in an optimistic fashion. A few lyrics jumped out: 'Getting closer to hitting those goals.' 'Wishes coming true.' Those seem, at least on the surface, to be fairly positive. Especially during times like these, how important was it to do that?
Hood: Yep. That kid lived to tell the tale, you know? And a lot of my dreams have come true. Maybe not exactly the way I dreamed them.
We could dig real deep and get super Freudian. I could tell you how much the blue fairy in the [Pinocchio] movie looked like my grandmother who raised me and who was very much my mother figure. Because I kind of had teen parents. So, my grandmother was very much that figure. And the blue fairy in the movie? That didn't even dawn on me until I was doing press for this record. It was like, 'Wow!'
My great uncle, who also raised me as a kid - he kept me every weekend from the time I was an infant to the time I was a teenager busy drinking and chasing girls, not staying out at the farm anymore. But he was very Geppetto-esque. He never married. He didn't have kids of his own. He very much raised me and was very much a father figure to me.
To get even more Freudian, Pinocchio runs off and goes to pleasure island. And that's just now occurring to me. And that's the thing I love so much about songs and songwriting. Because I didn't think about any of that s–t when I wrote that song. None of that! None of that was in my conscious mind. And here it is, maybe seven or eight years after I wrote the song, that occurred to me right this minute talking to you. It's truly like that.
And that's one of the books I want to write. That exact thing is the essence of one of the books I keep saying I'm gonna write, that I never write, that, hopefully, I will yet: A book about songs called Heathen Songs. And it basically takes my life from the first song I ever wrote when I was 8 until some cut off point - which probably should be 'Pinocchio' honestly. That would actually tie it up.
See, I'm finishing my book right now while I talk to you. I'm multitasking! Which my wife says I can't do (and she's right)!
Ryan: My favorite track on the album is 'At Safe Distance.' And that's one where those sort of baroque pop elements really, really come together. The upright bass. That one, to me, in particular, really had a cinematic feel. With that story and those elements, I felt like I was watching it as much as hearing it. What were you sort of going for there in that story of return?
Hood: I wrote that song within the first few weeks after moving to Portland [in 2015]. Which was also exactly the timeframe when the church shooting happened in Charleston, South Carolina (ironically enough, since I'm sitting in Charleston at this moment talking to you).
But that happened on the drive to Portland when we were in the process of moving out there. And that led to me doing the New York Times op-ed that I did about the Confederate flag and all of that bulls–t. And I was writing the [Drive-By Truckers'] American Band album.
In the midst of all of that, Harper Lee put out the other book [Go Set a Watchman]. Which she wrote first - but it happens after To Kill a Mockingbird. Like a couple of decades later. The book hadn't quite come out. But the New York Times did an early review. And it broke the revelations that Atticus Finch wasn't all that heroic in that book. He was more the way we think of a southern man of his time than the way Atticus was in To Kill a Mockingbird.
Southerners all over the world had their hearts broken upon reading that, you know? Including me. And I was probably extra emotional anyway having just moved across the country with my family and gone through all of that. The political climate of that moment. And everything that was happening. It was a lot. And then I read that. And it really, really upset me - on way too deep of a level for something like that to rationally do. And I couldn't quit thinking about it for a couple of days. And then I woke up like day three or something with this very different perspective about it - and how maybe it was important for that book to come out now.
It's like, in the 1930s, Atticus Finch was able to take this moral stand that was on the right side of history and the right side of where things should be. Because he saw this horrific thing happening to an obviously innocent person. And he was able to take that stand. And that's the Atticus Finch we all knew and loved.
But, at a little closer inspection, that doesn't mean he wants those people to be in the same schools. He's not quite ready to break the covenant of the way he was brought up through generations to think about race. It's one thing to defend somebody from this heinous crime they obviously didn't do - but that don't mean you quite accept them as equals. That was upsetting to me also - but it made the whole thing make sense. Because I could see so much of that in people I've known and loved.
And that's why I wrote the song.
Ryan: Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams obviously doesn't sound like a Drive-By Truckers album. You worked outside your comfort zone tackling piano. How important, even this far along, is it to continually find ways like that to push the music forward, try new things and keep this stuff interesting?
Hood: Well, I mean, I'm a lifer. I will never retire. I don't see the Truckers ever… I guess there will come a day when we physically can't do this show. But, I think, as long as we have our health, we're going to be out here doing what we do. We might take a different pace. We may take more time off. It would be nice at some point to do that.
But I don't have any hobbies. I don't play golf. What the f–k would I do? I would go crazy! I mean, during lockdown, I wanted to jump off a bridge pretty much every day. Because I didn't have my life. I like to play in a rock and roll band. I like to make music and art. I like to go to restaurants. I like to go to movies and shows. That's pretty much it. I love my family and I like to do those things with them as much as possible. But I want to keep doing this thing. And, so, therefore, it is important.
I'm really proud of the songs on this record. But, this year, I want to start writing what will become part of the next Drive-By Truckers record. And I'm excited about that. And, having taken the time to do this, that makes me even more fired up about the next time I go in with the band. And I can't wait to see what the band does! They are not limited in what they can do. They can do all kinds of s–t.
So, we might all do some things to push each other out of our comfort zone for this next one too.