Alabama's Drive-By Truckers have an unfortunate honour: the last band to play New Orleans before Katrina hit. As singer Patterson Hood explains, the band were playing Tipitina's the night before the hurricane. Now the famous venue is "under 20 foot of water." Hood asks the audience to send "whatever you have - dollars, prayers and if you're not religious, just your best wishes. Because Lord knows our fuckin' government sure takes their time." The band then launch into Randy Newman's Louisiana, a song about a 1927 flood which goes: "They're trying to wash us away."

Hood is no stranger to stories of disaster, death and drama, but perhaps didn't expect to be singing this one with such currency. DBT's own songs similarly document life in the "Dirty South" - tales of poor boys crushed by industrial machinery, "rotgut moonshine" and men who die fighting for some dirty rich man's causes. Others document the destruction of small businesses and ordinary lives by the rampaging corporate tornado, but are delivered with defiant bonhomie, hollerin' and whisky drinkin', which sums up the Southern spirit.

Hood is a giant haystack of a man, backed up by boys with dangling cigarettes and a down-home country girl. Their songs - with the epic feel of Neil Young or Bruce Springsteen - are like Southern servings of apple pie. Just when the plate seems clear, a song starts up again and presents another helping.

A hefty two-hour set has some fat occasionally, but their devoted fans sing along with almost every word. When every lung in the house fills up for "Hell no, it ain't happy" - a chorus as anthemic as Young's Rockin' In The Free World - it's safe to assume another Truckers audience - at Tipitina's - are in everybody's thoughts.