Heat Lightning Rumbles in the Distance

Patterson Hood, one of the principal songwriters of raucous rockers Drive-By Truckers, is slated to return with his third solo album, Heat Lightning Rumbles in the Distance, due out in September 2012. The songs on the album began in the form of a novel Hood was working on, a fictional but semi-autobiographical account of a dark time in the singer's late twenties. The book remained unfinished, but the characters and events he began chronicling in written form translated well into song. Hood is joined by all the other members of Drive-By Truckers on the album, as well as members of Centro-Matic; songwriter Kelly Hogan; and Hood's father, David Hood, onetime Muscle Shoals bass player.