The Dirty South is the fifth album by Alabamian rock group Drive-By Truckers, released in 2004. The Dirty South is Drive-By Truckers' second concept album. Like its predecessor, Southern Rock Opera, the album examines the state of the South, and unveils the hypocrisy, irony, and tragedy that continues to exist. Background "Where The Devil Don't Stay" was inspired by a poem by Mike Cooley's uncle Ed Cooley, and was recorded in one take. Patterson Hood's "Tornadoes" was originally written in 1988 in reaction to the closing concert for the Adam's House Cat Nightmare Tour. The Nightmare Tour set list was composed almost exclusively of songs containing metaphors or imagery of trains, but the lack of the tour’s success forced Hood and his band to abandon the concept and start afresh. Hood read an eyewitness account of the tornado in the local paper the next day and wrote "Tornadoes" after reading her statement that "it sounded like a train." Isbell's "The Day John Henry Died," retells the story of John Henry. "Puttin’ People on the Moon", written by Hood, tells the story of a town downriver from Huntsville and their "rocket envy" or economic depression due to the negative environmental and economic effects of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. Mike Cooley’s "Carl Perkins' Cadillac" recounts the celebrated Sun Records, Sam Phillips, and the music industry in general. "The Sands of Iwo Jima" recounts Hood's experiences with his great uncle while growing up in North Alabama. Questioning the veracity of the movie, his uncle answers he never saw John Wayne on the sands of Iwo Jima. Isbell's second track on the album, "Danko/Manuel," is a departure from the usual southern gothic lyrical style written by Cooley and Hood. Originally Isbell tried to tell the story of Rick Danko, Richard Manuel, and The Band's demise, but found the scope of the concept too difficult to actually do justice to their story, and instead shifted the concept to a telling of the life of a musician through the eyes and actions of Danko and Manuel. Isbell stated that the horn parts for the song came to him in a dream. "The Dirty South" contains a three song suite ("The Boys From Alabama," "Cottonseed" and "The Buford Stick") about Sheriff Buford Pusser. "The Boys From Alabama" was inspired by the misconceptions and “really bad movies” of the Redneck Mafia and recounts the movie Walking Tall