hood and cooley formed drive-by truckers in 1996. cooley contributed one song to their debut record "gangstabilly" and three songs to the follow-up, "pizza deliverance". cooley wrote five songs for the breakout double album "southern rock opera", which received a four star rating from rolling stone magazine. cooley added four songs to the truckers' next two records "decoration day" and "the dirty south", including his signature song "carl perkins' cadillac". he wrote two songs for the follow-up "a blessing and a curse" and seven for "brighter than creation's dark". he has written three songs for each of the truckers' records "go-go boots" and "the big to do" and six songs for their 2014 release "english oceans".