Andy Gray

I suffered concertgoing whiplash this week.

I drove 80 miles in the rain to see a favorite performer, only to learn he had to cancel due to illness. Then a little more than 12 hours later, one of my absolute favorite bands announced a concert only five minutes away from the office where I’m writing this column.

The first show was Frank Turner, who was co-headlining a concert with The Interrupters on Monday at the Roxian Theatre in McKees Rocks, Pa. My wife and I bought the tickets as part of my daughter Ali’s Christmas present, but this was just as much a present for me.

Ali and I have seen Turner twice before — 2019 at the Agora Theatre in Cleveland and 2021 at Mr. Smalls in Milvale, Pa. — and both shows were wonderful.

We’d been looking forward to the concert for months, and Ali stood in line with me on Record Store Day at Record Connection last month so she could get the 10th anniversary edition of Turner’s “Tape Deck Heart,” the album that made us fans.

The drive was wet and miserable (and 10 minutes longer than it could have been, but it was worth 10 minutes to miss at least $13 in Pennsylvania Turnpike tolls). And let’s just say it wasn’t a scenic drive. Have you ever been to McKees Rocks, Pa.? it makes the rougher neighborhoods of Youngstown look gentrified and bougie.

The one good thing is I found a free parking space on the street near the venue, which turn out to be a real plus since I only occupied the space for about 20 minutes.

We got there at least a half hour before the doors were scheduled to open in order to get a good spot on the floor. After standing outside for about 15 minutes in a steady drizzle with temps in the mid-40s, someone walked down the line repeating that Turner was sick unable to perform. The Interrupters and opening act Chuck Ragan still would play, but if you didn’t have your ticket scanned for entry, you could request a refund.

We opted for the refund and headed home, which was a shorter drive (Pennsylvania doesn’t charge you on the turnpike to leave the state, which makes no sense, but I’m not going to complain) with less rain. My adult daughter and I sat at the bar at Magic Tree, enjoyed a good meal and a couple of craft brews, and watched a comeback win by the Cleveland Guardians over the evil New York Yankees.

It was a happy ending to a long day. Turner posted his apologies on social media for the late cancellation and said he hoped to reschedule a return engagement. And if that return is a headlining show instead of a co-headlining date, we’ll probably get a longer set. I’ll gladly drive back to McKees Rocks and any other Pittsburgh-area concert venue tucked away in some quirky neighborhood to see it.

On Tuesday morning I arrived at work to find an email that the DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS ARE PLAYING PACKARD MUSIC HALL ON SEPT. 21!!!

Apologies for the all-caps and excessive exclamation points, but DBT in Warren is not a booking I ever expected, and an announcement that makes me happier than a young woman given a free Taylor Swift ticket.

I’ve been a fan since 2001’s “A Southern Rock Opera,” a concept album about music, Lynyrd Skynyrd and the duality of the Southern thing.

I grew up in southwest Ohio, a part of the state that sometimes forgets on which side of the Mason-Dixon Line it resides ( a current U.S. senator wrote a book about my hometown called “Hillbilly Elegy”). Southern rock was an unavoidable part of the soundtrack of my growing up, but DBT makes Southern rock that doesn’t wrap itself in a battle flag that should be a forgotten relic by now.

Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley are two of my favorite songwriters. They embrace, but don’t sugarcoat, their Southern roots. They write about people like Sun Records founder Sam Phillips, Tennessee lawman Buford Pusser and Alabama Gov. George Wallace and provide insight about their subjects and also serve as great songs.

Hood can write a song that like “A World of Hurt” that’s filled with as much pain as that title implies and turn it into an anthem of survival with the lines, “Remember, it ain’t too late to take a deep breath and throw yourself into it with everything you got / It’s great to be alive.”

Cooley’s “Marry Me,” the flipside of the Eagles’ love-em-and-leave-’em hit “Already Gone,” is one of the greatest response songs ever written.

Listen to “World of Hurt,” “Marry Me,” “Lookout Mountain,” “Carl Perkin’s Cadillac,” “Let There Be Rock” or just about anything in the band’s catalog and rest assured they will sound even better live when they play Packard in September.

Go see the Drive-By Truckers. I don’t want to be singing “World of Hurt” because of poor ticket sales.

Andy Gray is the entertainment editor of Ticket. Write to him at agray@tribtoday.com.