Hood was born in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, the son of Jan Patterson Adams and David Hood, the longtime bassist of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. He has a younger sister, Lilla Hood. His parents married young, and divorced when he was in college. His mother later remarried. Hood wrote the song "18 Wheels of Love" about their relationship. Hood began writing songs at the age of eight, and by the time he was 14 he was playing guitar in a local rock band. While attending college in 1985, he formed the band Adam's House Cat with his friend Mike Cooley, and the group won Musician Magazine's Best Unsigned Band competition three years later. However, the band's regional acclaim didn't translate into significant commercial success, and its sole full-length album wasn't released until September 21, 2018.
Career
After Adam's House Cat split up, Hood and Cooley continued to work together. They eventually formed the Drive-By Truckers in 1996, following a mutual relocation to Athens, GA. Drawing equal influence from country and rock & roll, the Drive-By Truckers released their first album, Gangstabilly, in 1998. Hood has released three solo albums in his career, beginning with 2004's Killers and Stars on New West Records, followed by the self-released Murdering Oscar in 2009 and 2012's Heat Lightning Rumbles in the Distance for ATO Records. In 2012, Hood formed Patterson Hood and the Downtown 13 with Mike Mills of R.E.M., John Bell and Todd Nance of Widespread Panic, fellow Truckers Jay Gonzalez, Brad Morgan, John Neff and David Barbe, and Athens musicians Claire Campbell, Lera Lynn, Henry Barbe, Brannen Miles, Carter King and Payton Bradford. The collective was formed to record a track After It's Gone to protest the building of a new Wal-Mart in downtown Athens, GA. After It's Gone was released on 7" vinyl by ATO Records for Record Store Day 2012.
Personal life
Hood has been married two times. He has two children, Ava Ruth Hood and Emmett Hood, and moved to Athens, Georgia in April 1994. Hood now lives with his family in Portland, Oregon, as he said in a July 2018 show in Omaha, Nebraska. In July 2015, Hood was featured in a New York Times editorial titled "The South’s Heritage Is So Much More Than a Flag" which discusses the misrepresentation of the history of the Confederate flag in the Southern United States.
