While he stood off to the right side of the stage alongside bassist Shonna Tucker, as always, Mike Cooley should have been front and center for last night's ear-damaging, shower-inducing Drive-by Truckers marathon at First Avenue. More than any local DBT gig of memory (and probably the ones not remembered, too), the grimy, 2-1/2-hour set turned into the Cooley Show.

Every time the lanky, Peter Coyote-looking guitar ace stepped to the mic, he came up with gold. It happened with such usual favorites as "Marry Me" and "Ghost to Most" early on, and with his essential cuts "Self Destructive Zones" and "Zip City" toward the end. It also happened with the lesser-played "Paluski" and especially the way-old nugget "Love Like This," a straight-up country tune greatly remade with John Neff's pedal-steel work and the overall improved state of the current DBT lineup. Very little of the sold-out crowd probably knew "Love Like This" (I had to look it up myself), but it earned one of the most resounding responses of the night.

The guy usually manning the Truckers wheel, Patterson Hood, did not exactly steer off course Tuesday, but he did take a more precipitous route, delivering some of his darker and/or less accessible tunes. "Go Go Boots" came off eerily with its church-revival tone and the stage's cathedral-looking backdrop, and "Used to Be a Cop" was downright chilling (despite my realization last night that the song is actually set to a disco beat). "The Sands of Iwo Jima" was also pretty bleak but had an emotional under-current, as Hood explained that his great uncle George (at the heart of the song) died on Monday. That set up an especially uplifting version of Eddie Hinton's "Everybody Needs Love" two songs later.

Uncle George's memory came up again at the end as the band burst into and burned out with Jim Carroll's "People Who Died," a favorite cover of theirs that proved especially pertinent on this particular night, with so many other songs filled with fatalities. Hood also paid homage to the Replacements and Hüsker Dü to kick off "Let There Be Rock," saying that while he was seeing the arena-rock giants mentioned in the song as a kid (AC/DC, Ozzy Osbourne), he was "dreaming about the bands from your town."

We've heard those local shout-outs and that song many times before, but they're part of the experience of seeing DBT at First Ave -- a draining, repetitious and now even vaguely nostalgic experience that simply never grows old.

I Do Believe / Marry Me / Sinkhole / Where the Devil Don't Stay / Go Go Boots / Birthday Boy / Dancin' Ricky / Righteous Path / Ghost to Most / Sands of Iwo Jima / Paluski / Everybody Needs Love / Love Like This / The Living Bubba / Women Without Whiskey / Used To Be a Cop / Three Dimes Down / Buttholeville ENCORE: Self-Destructive Zones / Mercy Buckets / Zip City / Let There Be Rock / Get Downtown / Hell No I Ain't Happy / Shut Up & Get on the Plane / People Who Died