Heathens Homecoming: Drive-By Truckers Light Up the 40 Watt Club in Athens
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
Southern history and electric guitars converged with regional identity at the famed venue in North Georgia.
Story and Photos by Casey Nicholson.
It was Valentine’s Day 2026 when Drive-By Truckers returned to familiar ground for the fourth night of their annual Heathens Homecoming at the legendary 40 Watt Club in Athens. The venue's proximity to the North Georgia highlands makes it an ideal getaway for music lovers — and for many in the Blue Ridge foothills, it functions as a cultural crossroads where Appalachian storytelling and Southern rock tradition continues to evolve.
Heathens Homecoming, so named for the band's 2003 deep cut, "Heathens", began earlier in the week with support from MJ Lenderman & The Wind, T. Hardy Morris, and The Lanes. By Saturday night, the festival atmosphere was fully formed. The Athens Asian Lunar Festival had filled Washington Street just outside the venue throughout the day. Though the Lunar Festival's free musical lineup was winding down by the time we arrived for the show at the 40 Watt, the sense of community through diversity lingered — a fitting backdrop as we prepared to take in a band of middle aged white men whose songwriting has long chronicled Southern life in all its contradictions, and championed the inclusion of folks from all walks of life in a new way of Southern living.
A Marathon Set at the 40 Watt
The 40 Watt Club is one of the South’s most storied music rooms — intimate, loud, and unpretentious. Acts as varied as R.E.M., Widespread Panic, Cracker, and The B-52’s all passed through in their early days, and VH1 once named it among the most legendary venues in the United States. For this four-night stand, it once again served as home base for Heathens Homecoming, Drive-By Truckers’ annual return that blends deep cuts, fan favorites, and a spotlight on emerging talent.
Canopy lights have long hung from overhead at the venue, and this year there seemed to be more strands of multicolored Christmas lights than in the past. The lighting foreshadowed the electricity that would soon flow forth from amplifiers and loudspeakers.
Drive-By Truckers’ lineup has remained steady for over a decade now: Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley share songwriting and frontman duties, trading vocals and guitar throughout the group's live shows. Longtime drummer Brad Morgan anchors the rhythm section alongside multi-instrumentalist Jay Gonzalez, while bassist Matt Patton has held down the low end since joining in 2012.
The group’s endurance was on full display this Valentine's weekend. The Saturday evening 32-song set felt less like a routine tour stop and more like an all night family reunion.
The protest song “Ramon Casiano” opened the evening, a reminder that the band has never shied away from political commentary. Mike Cooley's first words into the microphone for the set offered up the pointed line, “It all started with the border…,” before telling the story of immigration as a decades long political football. Hood followed with “Lookout Mountain,” the classic rocker imagining the consequences of a leap from the Chattanooga landmark.
As the night unfolded, Hood and Cooley traded alternating songs which took on a loose thematic rhythm. Hood offered the Valentine’s Day nod with “Feb. 14,” and Cooley answered with the fan favorite “Marry Me.” Cooley’s existential “When the Pin Hits the Shell” found balance in Hood’s “Do It Yourself.” Hood’s “Used to Be a Cop” paired naturally with Cooley’s outlaw ballad “Cottonseed,” reinforcing the band’s longstanding fascination with morality, consequence, and Southern identity.
One of the evening’s surprises was a cover of Van Halen’s “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love.” Rather than playing it for novelty, the Truckers leaned into the riff with conviction, translating arena rock flash into gritty, Southern crunch. It fit seamlessly into the marathon set.
Throughout the night, the three-guitar interplay between Hood, Cooley, and Gonzalez powered the room. Leads shifted effortlessly from one player to another, electric harmonies rising above Morgan’s steady backbeat, and Patton's ever present bassline coupled with a continuous smile. Songs like “Putting People on the Moon,” set in Huntsville, Alabama, and “Uncle Frank,” which references the TVA and rural transformation, grounded the show in specific Southern landscapes. For listeners attuned to that geography, the resonance ran deep.
Southern Storytelling Beyond Borders
Though Athens itself lies outside Appalachia, the Truckers’ music frequently crosses those boundaries. The band’s ties to Muscle Shoals — part of the Appalachian Regional Commission’s footprint — and their recurring references to locales in East Tennessee and the mountain South place them firmly within a broader regional narrative.
Patterson Hood’s father, David Hood, was a member of the famed Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section — “The Swampers” immortalized via reference in “Sweet Home Alabama.” That lineage carries forward in songs like “The Southern Thing” and the 2016 reflection “Ever South,” which captures themes of migration, memory, and regional persistence, noting that Scots-Irish immigrants had themselves crossed an ocean to start life in a new place before they then, “Spread through Appalachia Ever South.”
Hearing those themes reverberate inside the 40 Watt underscored how porous geographic boundaries can be. Appalachian culture does not end at a ridgeline; it travels with the people who carry it.
Opening Set: Florry Channels a Progressive Folk Spirit
Philadelphia-based Florry opened the night with a sound steeped in the influence of acts like Neil Young & Crazy Horse, The Byrds, and other seminal Americana acts. Featuring fiddle and steel guitar alongside a feedback-tinged, exploratory approach, the band blended classic Americana textures with a restless, modern edge. Lead vocalist Francie Medosch carried the set with confidence, at times blaring into the microphone in a way that was reminiscent of Janis Joplin.
Throughout the set the arrangements felt expansive without losing focus. From their opener “Pretty Eyes Lorraine” to a closing cover of NRBQ’s “It Comes to Me Naturally,” Florry delivered a set that made sense in this context. Drive-By Truckers have long embraced artists who blur genre lines while remaining rooted in storytelling, and Florry fit comfortably within that tradition.
A Community Gathering
Heathens Homecoming has grown into more than a concert series; it’s a gathering of longtime fans, collaborators, and regional music devotees. By the fourth night, the room felt communal. Conversations between sets, familiar faces in the crowd, and the sheer length of the DBT set reinforced that this was less about spectacle and more about shared experience.
By the time the final chords rang out, it was clear that Heathens Homecoming remains one of the South’s most distinctive recurring music events. Few bands can command a 32-song set with that kind of stamina, and fewer still can make it feel intimate.
As we stepped back into the cool February air, the glow of downtown streetlights reflected off Washington Street, and the sense of tradition — both musical and regional — lingered. Whether in the college-town streets of Athens, or the southern Appalachian foothills stretching from the Tallulah Gorge due north to the hills of Huntsville in DBT's original stomping grounds of northern Alabama, the stories at the heart of Drive-By Truckers’ music continue to find receptive audiences across the United States. In turn, the focus of the country is drawn Ever South whenever the group takes the stage.
We're already looking forward to packing up our road cases and heading south to the rolling hills of Athens next year for the next installment of this historic Homecoming event at one of the country's most notable venues.
