Dancers might distract at pulsating Drive-By Truckers show

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

Fan dancers rarely perform at rock concerts, especially at ones where the stage design resembles a church.

Playing the first show of a two-stand at the Vic Theatre on Friday, the Drive-By Truckers performed several songs from their superb new album, “Go-Go Boots.”

As the Georgia-based sextet launched into the title track, four burlesque dancers emerged from backstage. Each dancer wore a white bikini top, skimpy shorts, fishnet stockings and, naturally, go-go boots. The dancers accentuated their choreographed shake-and-shimmy routine with giant fans made of white feathers. It was a surprising visual element that may have diverted some listeners’ attention away from the intriguing structure of this carefully crafted song.

With lyrics penned by the band’s frontman, Patterson Hood, it’s a song that reads like a short story. The plot involves an adulterous preacher who pays some thugs to kill his wife.

The Truckers’ stage design included two banners and a giant drum, all adorned with imagery that looked like the stained glass windows of a church. There were other elements that one might find in a church as well, including a worshipful crowd, the organ played by Jay Gonzalez, and messages bellowed from the stage concerning the devil and demons.

Hood and guitarist Mike Cooley have been artistic collaborators for over 25 years, and the band’s songwriting has continued to improve. The band rotated lead vocal duties during the concert, with bassist Shonna Tucker singing “Dancin’ Ricky” and Cooley belting out some of the more country-flavored material, including “Cartoon Gold.” That tune features some unexpected twists in the lyrics, as in these lines: “Getting all excited, finding nothing that was never there before/ Is like bringing flowers to your mama and tracking dog s--- all over the floor/Jesus made the flowers, but it took a dog to make the story good.”

Indeed, such a story is one rarely told in places with stained glass windows.

The band employed crushingly loud volume for much of the night, in a show that went more than two hours, but when things weren’t ultra-loud, pedal steel guitar player John Neff added a dose of melodic twang that was an interesting complement to the band’s crunching arena rock sounds.

Bobby Reed is a local free-lance writer