Drive-By Truckers’ Co-Founders to Release ‘Lost’ Album From Their First Band

Mike Cooley and Patterson Hood didn't kick off their collaborative musical career with the Drive-By Truckers: Before they co-founded that band, the talented singer-songwriter duo, who were longtime friends and roommates, were in a band they called Adam's House Cat. Founded in 1990 and generating the gritty, Southern, alt-country sound that would eventually define the Drive-By Truckers, Adam's House Cat never released an album -- until now.

On Sept. 21, Adam's House Cat will release their "lost" album Town Burned Down via ATO Records. Readers can press play above to hear "Runaway Train," the first track to be released off of the long-time-coming project that began almost 30 years ago.

Town Burned Down was originally pieced together late in 1990 with the help of with producer / engineer Steve Melton (Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band) in the Muscle Shoals Sound Recording Studio, explains a press release. Adam's House Cat continued trying to complete the album in early 1991 with no success, and when the recording studio liquidated later that year, the original recordings were lost.

Adam's House Cat disbanded after winning a "Top 10 Unsigned Bands" contest, and Cooley and Hood moved on to form the Drive-By Truckers and make musical history. But in 2015, three boxes with “ADAM’S HOUSE CAT” emblazoned upon them appeared in the vault of longtime friend and DBT producer David Barbe’s studio in Athens, Ga. In those boxes were the original master tapes of Town Burned Down. 

“Finally releasing Town Burned Down brings a sort of closure to one of the saddest and most important chapters of mine and Cooley’s lives ... The years we spent pounding out these songs made us the people and artists that we have later become, but we carried with us a darkness from never having been able to get the album out," Hood writes in the liner notes of the LP.  "The sound of these songs blasting out of the control room after all of these years while Cooley, [drummer] Chuck [Tremblay] and I grinned from ear to ear has truly been one of the most joyous events of my entire life. Songs from literally half of my life ago that somehow still seem vital to me all of these years later.

Town Burned Down is available for pre-order now. Adam's House Cat will be opening for the Drive-By Truckers at several of their upcoming tour stops. For a complete tour schedule, go to their website.

Adam's House Cat, Town Burned Down Track List:

1."Lookout Mountain"
2. "Town Burned Down"
3. "Runaway Train"
4. "Down On Me"
5. "6 O’ Clock Train"
6. "Buttholeville"
7. "Child Abuse"
8. "Love Really Sucks"
9. "Kiss My Baby"
10. "Shot Rang Out"
11. "Long Time Ago"
12. "Cemeteries"

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