Drive-By Truckers have had a long and storied career so far, and creative force Patterson Hood has always been a prolific songwriter. From their early beginnings right here in Auburn, the band has been a powerful force in the southeast. Son of legendary bassist David Hood, who has been a stalwart of the Muscle Shoals music scene playing on albums ranging from Aretha Franklin to the Rolling Stones, Patterson comes from good musical stock and has done his papa proud.

Facing a new era of the Drive-By Truckers career, the band has released “The Fine Print, a Collection of Oddities and Rarities,” an album of new, old songs. That’s right, these are songs that for some reason were left off earlier albums, and listening to the album one wonders why they were left off in the first place. The album opens with “George Jones Talkin’ Cell Phone Blues,” a fun song written in response to the country star’s accident while talking on a cell phone. This is followed by a Tom Petty rave-up called “Rebels” that pays homage to Petty’s tune without losing the feel of the Truckers. “TVA” is a great Jason Isbell tune left off “The Dirty South,” and even Hood wonders why it didn’t make the cut in the liner notes, calling it his “favorite Jason song.” “Goode’s Field Road” is an early version also left off TDS, later re-recorded for “Brighter than Creation’s Dark.”

There are two covers on the album, an interesting version of Warren Zevon’s “Play It All Night Long,” and a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone.” The latter tune was the result of a UK magazine asking the band to contribute a song to a Dylan tribute, to which DBT said “anything but ‘Like A Rolling Stone.’ ”They responded that, coincidentally, that was the song they were hoping for, and, despite their apprehension of covering a song that Hood characterizes as one of those songs “just not meant to be covered,” they produced a smokin’ version of which, in the end, they were proud.

Many outtakes albums are strictly for hard-core fans-you listen and understand why they were left off the prospective albums. “The Fine Print” is certainly for DBT fans, but is eminently listenable and not just for fans only.

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