Austin City Limits features the hard-rocking roots music storytellers Drive-By Truckers in support of their album “Brighter Than Creation’s Dark. Dusty Texas troubadour Ryan Bingham follows with tunes from his latest record, Mescalito.

The Drive By Truckers performance is from the ACL taping September 26, 2008. Rolling Stone called the Drive-By Truckers "the boldest, baddest Southern band in the land" and the band has been living up to that moniker for the last decade. The band fuses solid musicianship with lyrics that tell real stories. "They let the songwriting speak for itself, and it sings loud and clear" (Rolling Stone).

Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley formed the band in the mid-90s, folding their love of punk, country & western, Southern rock, pop and straight ahead rock 'n roll into a three-guitar, multi-songwriter powerhouse. On seven highly-acclaimed albums, including 2001's “Southern Rock Opera,” 2003's “Decoration Day,” and 2004's “The Dirty South,” the Truckers survey the modern South with a complex blend of realism-tempered pride and compassionate but uncompromising analysis.

Their latest release, 2008's “Brighter Than Creation's Dark,” comes on the heels of a lineup change that saw songwriter/guitarist Jason Isbell leaving the band and bassist Shonna Tucker taking a bigger role in writing and singing. Pitchfork wrote "the band expands its familiar rock sound with forays into soul, Southern boogie, and AM-gold country - all in service to tales of hard-drinking fathers, vengeful ghosts, weird Harolds and director John Ford." With three songwriters, “Brighter Than Creation's Dark” holds true to the band's eclectic storytelling. "(This CD has) some songs that are quieter than any we've ever recorded and some that rock harder than anything we've ever done," Hood said. "In the end it's still all Rock 'n Roll (which is why that will always be the description of choice to us when describing our music in stylistic terms)."