Live Music Thrives as CDs Fade

A little over a week ago, Patterson Hood, a guitarist and singer in the Drive-By Truckers, stood in front of a sleepy but amped noon crowd at Bonnaroo, the music festival in Manchester, Tenn., explaining profanely that it was time to, um, wake up. As he kicked into “The Righteous Path," a song from the group's new-ish record “Brighter Than Creation's Dark," it was if the space in front of him was filled with sunburned bobble- heads, each bouncing in unison to every word: “Trying to hold steady on the righteous path, 80 miles an hour with a worn-out map."

Like much of Bonnaroo, the set was a display of the fealty between band and audience so thunderous that you barely hear the sound of a dying business.

Yes, the traditional music industry is in the tank -- record sales are off another 10 percent this year and the Virgin Megastore in Times Square is closing, according to a Reuters report, joining a host of other record stores. That would seem to be bad news all around for music fans -- 70,000 of whom showed up in this remote place to watch 158 bands play -- and for Mr. Hood and his band.

Not so, he says.

“The collapse of the record business has been good for us, if anything. It's leveled the playing field in a way where we can keep slugging it out and finding our fans," he said while toweling himself off after the set.

With their epic Southern rock sounds whose influences range from William Faulkner to Lynyrd Skynyrd and the kind of musicians who don't live for a photo shoot, the Drive-By Truckers were never going to be record industry darlings. As it is, they have found a sustainable, blue-collar business model of rock stardom in which selling concert tickets and T-shirts have replaced selling CDs.