At the dawn of the social media era, Belle Gibson became a pioneering wellness influencer - telling the world how she beat cancer with an alternative diet. Her bestselling cookbook and online app provided her success, respect, and a connection to the cancer-battling influencer she admired the most. But a curious journalist with a sick wife began asking questions that even those closest to Belle began to wonder. Was the online star faking her cancer and fooling the world? Kaitlyn Dever stars in the Netflix hit series Apple Cider Vinegar . Inspired by true events, the dramatized story follows Belle’s journey from self-styled wellness thought leader to disgraced con artist. It also explores themes of hope and acceptance - and how far we’ll go to maintain it. In this episode of You Can't Make This Up, host Rebecca Lavoie interviews executive producer Samantha Strauss. SPOILER ALERT! If you haven't watched Apple Cider Vinegar yet, make sure to add it to your watch-list before listening on. Listen to more from Netflix Podcasts .…
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After 25 years of hosting the popular television show "Absolutely Alabama," native son Fred Hunter is bringing his love of the state and its people to a new format. The podcast "Fred Hunter's Alabama" continues Fred's exploration of the people, places, events — and, of course, the food — that makes Alabama such a special place to call home.
コンテンツは Fred Hunter によって提供されます。エピソード、グラフィック、ポッドキャストの説明を含むすべてのポッドキャスト コンテンツは、Fred Hunter またはそのポッドキャスト プラットフォーム パートナーによって直接アップロードされ、提供されます。誰かがあなたの著作物をあなたの許可なく使用していると思われる場合は、ここで概説されているプロセスに従うことができますhttps://ja.player.fm/legal。
After 25 years of hosting the popular television show "Absolutely Alabama," native son Fred Hunter is bringing his love of the state and its people to a new format. The podcast "Fred Hunter's Alabama" continues Fred's exploration of the people, places, events — and, of course, the food — that makes Alabama such a special place to call home.
Emily Blejwas is the executive director of the Alabama Folklife Association. She shares with Fred Hunter how she grew up in Minnesota, moved to her family's native South, and became a student of Alabama. Learn about her fascination with the state's folkways, the book she authored on cooking traditions, and her work with the Folklife Association.…
Rickey West of Fyffe, Alabama, is known nationally for the quality American Bucking Bulls he and his family breed. He also spent a year traveling the country as director of operations for the Professional Bull Riders (PBR), the largest bull riding league in the world. In this conversation with Fred Hunter, you'll also learn that West has a passion for his community — especially for working with special needs children through a local rodeo event he and his family host.…
When we set out to capture the essence of Alabama’s rich culture and traditions on our first podcast road trip for Fred Hunter’s Alabama , we knew there was no better stop than Kathleen Phillips’ kitchen in Gardendale. While some might not recognize her name right away, say “the Grits and Gouda lady,” and you’ll see a spark of recognition. Kathleen has built a culinary legacy with her blog, Grits and Gouda , where Southern comfort meets a pinch of gourmet. Kathleen’s journey is as flavorful as her recipes—beginning in Arkansas, where her roots were firmly planted, to her move to Alabama in 1989 for a dream job with Southern Living’s Oxmoor House. Kathleen’s passion for food and storytelling blossomed during her decade in the test kitchen at Oxmoor, where she became known for her knack for crafting recipes that felt both elevated and accessible. As we talked, Kathleen shared how her life took a new turn when she became a freelance food stylist and caterer to accommodate the needs of her growing family. It wasn’t long before her culinary creativity led her to author her first cookbook, Magic Cakes , and eventually launch her now-famous blog. The name Grits and Gouda is a perfect metaphor for Kathleen’s style—grounded in the comforting simplicity of Southern traditions but always with a touch of something unexpected. Her recipes all feature shortcuts, designed for busy families who despite busy schedules still want to gather around the dinner table—even on the most hectic days. We talked about those family dinners, a tradition Kathleen is passionate about preserving. She described the importance of sitting down together as a family, a practice she sees as an anchor of fellowship and connection. Kathleen’s recipes, as she puts it, are a way to make those moments easier to create, even when life is pulling you in all directions. Her commitment to community shines beyond her blog. Kathleen works closely with local farmers through Sweet Grown Alabama and visits pecan groves, peanut farms, and vegetable gardens to connect her recipes to the people and places that make Alabama’s food culture so special. Before we wrapped up, Kathleen promised to join us for a future episode, where she’ll cook one of her signature shortcut recipes in her kitchen—complete with rotisserie chicken as the star ingredient. It’s moments like these that remind me why I love this journey. Kathleen Phillips, the heart behind Grits and Gouda, isn’t just sharing recipes. She’s sharing a way of life, one that celebrates the warmth of Southern hospitality, the importance of family traditions, and the richness of Alabama’s culinary landscape. Read all about Kathleen’s culinary adventures on Facebook and at her website .…
In this episode of Fred Hunter's Alabama, Fred swaps stories with Sean Dietrich, a columnist, humorist, multi-instrumentalist, and stand-up storyteller known for his commentary on life in the American South. Best known as "Sean of the South," Dietrich shares personal and heartfelt stories of his youth, family, Southern traditions, and life as a writer and performer. His work has appeared in Newsweek, Southern Living, Reader's Digest, and Garden and Gun, and his column appears weekly in newspapers throughout the U.S. He has authored eighteen books and over four thousand columns. Sean makes appearances on the Grand Ole Opry, and his work has been featured on the Today Show.…
When I sat down to chat with Colleen Duffley of Andiamo Lodge, I knew we were in for a special conversation. Colleen, with her vibrant energy and captivating stories, is the kind of person who thrives on adventure. And now the town of Mentone is a new chapter in her fascinating story. Colleen discovered Mentone in an unconventional way — on a bicycle. Back in the early ’90s, she was training for the Olympic trials and would ride from Birmingham to Mentone. “We’d get a cold drink at the market and then ride back to Birmingham. The landscape here was so similar to the terrain in Barcelona, where I was preparing for the Olympics,” she recalls. That’s how Mentone first landed on her radar. As life circled back, it felt only natural to return to this magical place. Fast forward a few years, and Colleen and her husband, Steve — better known to some as “Crabby Steve” from his restaurant on the Florida coast — were on another bike ride when they stumbled upon what would become Andiamo Lodge. “We were on our bikes, riding through town, and saw this dilapidated old lodge with a ‘for sale’ sign. I was still working as a commercial photographer, but during the pandemic, everything slowed down, and we just thought, ‘Why not?’” she shares with a grin. That spontaneous decision turned into a beautiful project — an experiential retreat where guests come not just to rest but to create, learn, and connect with their surroundings. “We wanted Andiamo Lodge to be more than a place to sleep. We want people to leave with memories and new skills, whether it’s cooking with a James Beard chef or attending a writing workshop,” Colleen explains. The word “Andiamo” means “let’s go” in Italian, and it perfectly captures the spirit of her lodge: let’s go create, let’s go explore, let’s go experience. Speaking of experiences, Andiamo Lodge is gearing up for some exciting fall events. Heather Webber, the talented author, will return to Mentone in early October for a dinner inspired by her latest book, A Certain Kind of Starlight . As if that’s not enough, Colleen has also convinced her long-time friend India Hicks, goddaughter to King Charles, to make a stop at Mentone during her book tour for Lady Pamela , a deeply personal account of her mother’s life as Queen Elizabeth’s lady-in-waiting. “India’s schedule is tight, and she’s only making a few stops, so we feel incredibly lucky to host her,” Colleen says with excitement. Those attending these events can expect more than just a meet-and-greet. “It’s intimate,” Colleen emphasizes. “Our dinners are for 12 people, max. You get to sit down with these incredible individuals and ask them anything — how they got where they are, what inspires them. It’s like the best dinner party you’ve ever attended.” With Andiamo Lodge, Colleen is curating a blend of creativity, culinary mastery, and personal connection, all tucked away in the mountains of Mentone. Her ability to bring in world-class talent while keeping the experience personal and deeply connected to Alabama is nothing short of remarkable. As we wrapped up, Colleen invited everyone to come see for themselves. “You can go to a hotel anywhere, but here, you’ll leave with stories, memories, and new friends.” Andiamo — let’s go!…
They say the mark of a great song is when you can remember exactly where you were and what you were doing the first time you heard it. That was my experience with the music of a group I’d end up listening to my entire life. Three on a String is made up of the nicest, funniest, most humble guys you’ll meet. The 2023 Alabama Music Hall of Fame inductees have earned their way into rarified music circles. I visited with group member Bobby Horton at his home recently, where we talked about the bluegrass group and about his work in film. “ The group goes back to Chandler Mountain and Horse Pens 40,” Bobby says. “Jerry Ryan was a freshman basketball coach at Samford University. I was a junior at Samford, and Jerry had been a basketball coach where I went to high school. So, I’d known him. The PR director for Samford owned Horse Pens and approached Jerry about getting a banjo player,” Bobby remembers. “He said, ‘You reckon you two could come up and play for my folk festival?’ Jerry called me, and I said ‘sure, I’m free this weekend.’ We learned seven songs and went up there and played them twice. That was the very first gig for what was to become Three on a String. And we split the 15 bucks,” Bobby chuckles. “A guy named George Pruitt owned Alabama Music, where I was working as a college student. He heard us that day and said, ‘You get a bass player and a guy who can sing high, and I think you might have something.’ We found John Vess at Samford, and then we started playing. That was 1971,” Bobby says. The group was hired to play Vestavia Country Club near Bobby’s hometown of Birmingham on Friday nights, then worked their way into the Lowenbrau Haus, a college bar in Homewood. That’s where I heard them the first time. A nice crowd, packed shoulder to shoulder and enjoying the tunes. “It was just a wonderful place,” Bobby says. “It’s where we learned how to get up there and stay a step ahead of the crowd. It taught us about timing and that kind of thing.” As their popularity grew, Three on a String outgrew the Lowenbrau. And Bobby faced the dilemma of which path to take in life: stick with his secure job at an insurance company or keep traveling with the group and taking advantage of the opportunities coming their way. Doing both was starting to impact his family life. “ I realized I was never home and my first son had been born. I wanted him to know he had a daddy,” he recalls. “I went to see my grandpa and told him I needed help with a decision. Bobby’s started by telling his grandfather about the security he had with the insurance company. “What security?” his grandfather asked. “You don’t have security there. The only security there is, is how much you know how to do, how hard you’re willing to work, and how well you know the Lord. Now start over — which one do you like best?” “He asked if I could support my family in music and I told him I thought I could,” Bobby recalls. “We had a business plan, we had a market, and all the guys were in it for the right reasons. “And my grandpa said, ‘You’ve made your decision.’ I just had to hear him say that.” Bobby gave notice at his job and never looked back. His gratitude for the blessings of his music has never waned. Three on a String, in various iterations, has continued to entertain audiences for five decades. “We’re of course like family. When somebody asks how we’ve stayed together so long, I tell them we get separate rooms for starters,” Bobby laughs. “But seriously, I work with some of the greatest people. They’ve got a work ethic, and we all want to go the same direction.” Bobby and I segued into his solo career, a reflection of his ambition and a fascinating tie to his love of history. “I didn’t want to be dependent on somebody else for everything. You know, all the eggs in my basket,” he says. “I was able to combine the love of history that I’ve had my whole life with music. Every adult male in my life is a World War II guy, and they all had a story, and they’re my heroes. I realized that history is made by common folks playing the card that’s dealt them, and they’re usually in a whirlwind. It’s not of their making, but they made the best of it. I got into history when I was a kid, and then the Civil War centennial hit when I was 9, and I got sucked into that. I realized from World War II veterans that these were just guys doing what they had to do. So, I had that love. And then, of course, I love music. I've been playing my music my whole life, and I had some plans that went bust, but all this wonderful stuff fell in my lap. I know from whence all blessings flow, you know.” Bobby’s story reminds me of the saying, “Life is what happens while you’re making plans.” Although his path was somewhat intentional. “I started recording Civil War-era music,” Bobby says. “Mr. Edison’s recording machine changed everything musically in this country and really around the world for that matter, because prior to that, songwriters and people in music wrote for the common people to sing. If you wanted music, you had to make it yourself. Or you had to hang around with somebody that could. So the emphasis changed, and writers started writing for recording artists. Prior to that, they were writing for people to buy their sheet music. “Music is so honest,” Bobby says. “When you go back, you can learn so much about historical figures and their period and what people were truly thinking at the time because they sang about what mattered to them.” And that’s the connection that led to Bobby’s involvement in film. “Milton Bagby, who was a dear friend, was producing a period film called ‘Shadow Waltz,’ set in southern Indiana, 1863. The characters are anticipating John Hunt Morgan coming up from the South, the Confederate cavalry, and they’re preparing to receive him in a negative way, if you know what I mean.” Bobby told the filmmaker he would research the songs that those soldiers really sang back then to lend authenticity to the work. In one afternoon in the Southern History Room of the Birmingham Public Library, he discovered over 100 pieces of sheet music from the 1860s. Thus began a genre of recording Bobby would apply to other periods in history — where music was the common denominator and a true reflection of the joys, fears, and thoughts of those who wrote it and listened to it. “At that time, I realized that music was all the common man had. That’s it for most people — music is that important. It’s been estimated that roughly 3,000 new songs were written, copyrighted, published, and offered for sale in sheet music in the North in that four-year period,” Bobby says of the Civil War. “That’s an incredible output of music. And there were about 1,000 Southern tunes the same way. Soldiers were making up their own songs based on melodies they knew. Copyright laws were loosey-goosey, and guys would borrow melodies that everybody knew and write new words for them. This is what they were singing. “You realize with that kind of output, this is important because it’s honest,” he adds. “If you study a letter from a fellow who’s writing home, he’s not going to say, ‘this is awful and I don’t think I'm going to live through this.’ He didn’t want to upset the people at home, but he’d sing about that very thing. To me, you can get to the heart of the people you’re talking about and really understand their mindset and how they’re dealing with what’s coming at them. It’s a fascinating study. And that applies to the Revolution. I’ve done a deep dive into Revolutionary War music, and you can go back to songs from the French and Indian War in the 1750s.” The songs created during the war were honest and heartfelt. “The letters and the reminiscences and stuff that soldi...…
I was honored to have Alabama Speaker of the House Nathaniel Ledbetter on the podcast recently. He has a big title and tremendous responsibility across the entire state, but just a few minutes into our conversation, one thing became clear — this is a man who remembers where he came from and who has a deep love and respect for people from all walks of life. In this episode, you'll hear him talk about his humble upbringing on Sand Mountain in Northeast Alabama. How a love of sports led to his being elected to the Rainsville City Council at the age of 23. How his career path pivoted from education to engineering with a job opportunity at Sand Mountain Electric Cooperative. And how he was elected to the state House of Representatives only to become the first freshman chosen by his peers as Majority Leader. While Ledbetter still represents House District 24, which encompasses much of DeKalb County, his role as Speaker of the House carries him all over Alabama. Our conversation will open your eyes to the many great things happening in our state. Number one in America in commercial airline construction? Number one in America in exporting automobiles? In the top five in shipbuilding? Take a listen, share it with your friends, and you'll come away as proud as I did of this wonderful place we call home.…
Writer Charles McNair Lives High in the Andes, but His Roots are in South Alabama My conversation with Charles McNair felt a little like a family reunion as we connected many dots in our common roots. It was fascinating to learn how a boy from South Alabama wrote his way to being a Pulitzer-prize nominee, continues to write, and now resides a bit south of the Wiregrass in Bogota, Colombia. Of course he found a very imaginative way to explain that his home state is always with him. Ask him if he’s from Alabama, and the proof is on his knee. “At this very moment, if I weren’t modest, I’d pull up my left pant leg and show you my knee,” McNair said. “I might be the only person in the world with a banjo on my knee — because I come from Alabama. The day I turned 40, I walked down to the tattoo parlor near my home and got a little banjo tattoo.” We had a great time talking about all the things we have in common, but when you’re interviewing a talented storyteller with an interesting past, it’s best to let them do the talking. “Frasier-Ellis Hospital was a two-story house they called a hospital, and my mama delivered me in a room being observed by a team of medical students,” McNair said. “I’m told that when I was presented to the world, they all stood up and applauded. That may have been the defining moment that shaped my personality, I don’t know.” That was 1954 in Dothan, and McNair would spend the next several years absorbing everything the natural world had to offer in the Wiregrass region of Alabama. “I was a large red woodland animal for my first, I’d say 16, 17 years,” he said. “I lived in those woods. We built forts. We had wars. We waded the creeks and watched out for snakes, ran from yellow jackets, and hid by the railroad track when the hobos came down the line. These were mythically terrifying figures. They were like Stephen King characters to us. “And every night when I went to sleep all those years, I heard a train passing by on those tracks behind the house — that mournful whistle, the midnight train whining low,” he continued. “All that infused me with memories and things to write about. All my novels have been nature focused. The presence of the woods and nature played a tremendous role in all the books I've written.” McNair has published three acclaimed novels: “Land O’ Goshen” (St. Martin’s Press, 1994), “Pickett’s Charge” (Livingston Press, 2013), and “The Epicureans” (Tune & Fairweather, 2024). He is also the author of “Play It Again, Sam: The Notable Life of Sam Massell, Atlanta’s First Minority Mayor” (Mercer University Press, 2017). Growing up during the struggles and tensions of the Civil Rights era left a particular wound that McNair carried until a couple of years ago at a reunion of the Dothan High School class of 1972, the first integrated class at the school to graduate together. “A dear friend, a Black man named Shaq Thompson, and I resolved to solve a problem that had existed since we’d graduated,” McNair explained. “In the 10th grade, they closed Carver, the Black school, and all of those students came over to Dothan. There had been a lingering resentment — the hurt feelings of having your culture and your history sort of ignored. Shaq and I brought back together the Black classmates and the white classmates for a 50th reunion. And I felt a healing. “I also made peace with Dothan,” McNair added. “When I left at age 18, I could not wait to shake the dust off. It was too conservative. It was too constraining. And I went off to college and came back many years later and started to make my peace with Dothan and who I’d been and how it had been. My mother went into a decline around 2016, and I flew from Colombia every six weeks to stay a week with her. During that two-year period, I really started making peace with 50 years of anxiety and of disappointment in Dothan. I now am looking at a piece of property to buy there. I have come back. I’ve made new friends. The city’s different … I’m different.” I’ve heard it said that no matter how far you go, you have to write about where you came from. McNair attests to that. The growing-up years are inescapable. “I couldn’t agree more. It’s always about Alabama and family and those friends and that life for me,” he said. “That’s the core. That’s where everything else comes from. McNair attended the University of Alabama for seven years and “when I left, I was still a sophomore,” he said. “I was in and out because of work and when I was in, I only took writing classes. I didn’t get credit for the writing classes that I repeated, but I still took them because that’s all I wanted to be, ever.” The arc of McNair’s career is rich with experiences. He’s taught English to Saudi Arabian students. He’s worked in the newspaper business. He’s worked in corporate America, writing for BellSouth Corp. But he continued his personal writing all the while, publishing his first novel, “Land O’ Goshen,” when he was 40. “If you drove by my house and saw the candle lit in the upstairs window, that was me working on a book,” he said. ‘I was a slow learner. It took me about 20 years to get my novel ready. The book is set around Dothan, and it exorcises lots of demons. There’s a lot of creative imagination in that.” After his novel was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he moved to Atlanta with BellSouth. A few years later he set out as an independent contractor, writing a little bit of anything and everything, including magazine articles, speeches and scripts. He recalled those early years of freelance and contract work. “The phone would ring, and they would say, ‘Can you?’ and I’d say, ‘Yep.’ And then I’d hang up and ask myself, ‘How can I do that?’ And I did it. My whole life is an act of improvisation. I don’t think I’ve ever planned any of this. It just happened.” After 25 years in Atlanta, he had a second novel almost ready for publication when he moved to Colombia. That book was “Pickett’s Charge,” about the last Confederate soldier who, at 114 years old, finds out there is one Union soldier left alive in Maine. “He gets off his cot in a Mobile nursing home and heads north to fight the last battle of the Civil War,” McNair said. “It’s really a discussion about when do you forgive? When does the vendetta end, and when do you move on from old wounds? How do you let it go?” While the pandemic temporarily sidetracked his third novel, “The Epicureans,” last year he was able to launch the book in Atlanta and Dothan, garnering what he laughingly calls, “a little pop of glamour and false celebrity” that make the lonely work of writing worthwhile. “And then you get humbled all over again,” he said. The new book is about a family who faces forces of evil. Talking about the memories of the Wiregrass and how his upbringing touches the subjects of his writing, the next question I had for McNair was obvious: How did you end up in Bogota? He provided a classic answer. “How many times have you heard a story that started like this: Well, I met this girl…” McNair said with grin. In an airport in 2013, he met Dr. Adela Castro, an eye surgeon. They recently celebrated an anniversary, and the admiration for his wife is obvious when he speaks of her. “There’s a beautiful story that happened during COVID,” he said. “One of her patients couldn’t come in because of the virus, so her cataract thickened and got really hard. This lady lived by herself and had some chickens. She would go out and, by touch, find the eggs. This was her life. <...…
Singer/songwriter Grace Pettis talks about her new album "Down To The Letter" with Fred Hunter. --- Grace's music is described as a little bit of folk, a little bit of country/Americana, and a whole lot of soul. Grace is the winner of many of the nation’s most prestigious songwriting contests, grants, and residencies, including NPR’s Mountain Stage NewSong Contest , the Buddy Holly Educational Foundation , and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico . Grace’s songs have been recorded by other esteemed artists, including Sara Hickman and Ruthie Foster, with 3 co-writes on Foster's latest, Grammy-nominated album, Healing Time (2024). Grace was an official showcasing artist at SXSW and Folk Alliance International this year (2024). She has independently released three acclaimed records and signed with MPress Records in 2020. Her debut album on MPress, Working Woman (2021), was produced by lauded singer-songwriter Mary Bragg, mixed by 2x Grammy® award winner Shani Gandhi (Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical), and featured an all-female/non-binary band and creative credits. Guest contributions came from Indigo Girls, Ruthie Foster, Dar Williams, and other luminaries. Grace Pettis' much-anticipated sophomore MPress Records release, Down To The Letter, captures the Nashville-based (formerly Austin-based) singer-songwriter at the peak of her songwriting powers. Chronicling the end of a marriage and the reclamation of self after betrayal, codependency, and loss with heartbreaking detail, the lyrics deftly toe the line between personal pain and universal catharsis. Produced by Mary Bragg (Natalie Price), mixed by Jon Estes (Robyn Hitchcock, Dolly Parton), and mastered by John McLaggan (Parachute Mastering), the album showcases Pettis' rich voice, perhaps one of the most dynamic and agile of her generation.…
Throughout his career as a performer, songwriter, and recording artist, Fort Payne native Pierce Pettis has been inside the hurricane they call the music business. But he is also an outsider, never achieving the often sought-after goal of world fame — and for that, he is grateful. Through his work with Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, PolyGram Publishing, High Street Records, and Compass Records, his songs have been recorded by music legends such as Garth Brooks, Joan Baez, and Art Garfunkel. Pierce has also released numerous albums, both as a solo artist and as part of groups. His work can’t be pigeonholed in one genre. He dreamed of making it big as a young musician, but after working in the industry and seeing firsthand the tribulations stars can face, he feels blessed to have worked as a craftsman behind the curtain, doing what he loves. “This is going to sound crazy,” Pierce says. “I count my blessings that I didn’t reach what I thought were my dreams when I was young: fame and fortune. Well, I wouldn’t mind fortune. But I have friends who are very famous, and it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. It takes a toll on you. And so I’ve had the great privilege of seeing it through friends’ eyes without having to go through what they went through.” Before Pierce was born, his father moved from Evergreen, Alabama, to Guntersville, where he finished high school. Eventually, the elder Pettis opened a store in Fort Payne, but as Pierce tells it, the family didn’t know anyone in town and, unfortunately, his father’s business didn’t thrive. But they liked the town and, even though they were “outsiders,” everyone was welcoming and kind. There is that “insider-outsider” theme that would echo throughout the songwriter’s professional life. Pierce comes from a musical family, and he was in childhood bands from an early age. He left the Fort Payne area, attending school in Florida and later traveling to and living in a multitude of places, including London and Paris, North Carolina, Ohio and New York, and Nashville. After his first marriage ended in divorce and his children were living with his ex-wife in Atlanta, he came home to Fort Payne and has been there ever since. No matter where he traveled, the songs that emanated from his soul tended to touch on his home and were rooted in small-town Southern culture. “I realized looking back at all the songs I wrote during all that time, there were so many songs about where I grew up,” Pierce says. “I have a theory that one of the reasons is the South in particular has a very powerful oral tradition. And we’re agrarian. When you live in the country, you tell stories. We’re like the Irish. Most of Ireland is still very rural. That creates a nation of storytellers, and we’ve created a lot of writers and a lot of singers and songwriters. It’s just in the air.” So how did Pierce get from his early days of college in Florida to a career in music? That path, too, winds through Fort Payne. “I was down at Florida State, about to be kicked out of music school, because I was an idiot,” Pierce laughs. “I was forging my advisor’s signature to get into classes I wasn’t supposed to be in. And I didn’t bother to pick up a principal instrument, which you’re really supposed to do. I could have been a voice major. I didn’t have the sense to think that through. Meanwhile, my friends from Fort Payne, Dennis and Russell Gulley, called me up one day and said, ‘Man, you need to come over to Muscle Shoals.’ So I dropped out of college and headed to the Shoals. I met [producer] Jimmy Johnson and I had reels of all these songs I’d written. Jimmy was kind enough to sit and listen and he saw some potential.” While he was working in Muscle Shoals, a big break came Pierce’s way when Joan Baez covered his song “Song at the End of the Movie” for her 1979 album “Honest Lullaby.” “Joan Baez’s album, before the one I was on, was called ‘Diamonds and Rust,’ and it was a huge album,” he recalls. “So everybody wanted to be on the next album. I got to be on this album, and that was really something because of the other writers — like Jackson Browne and Randy Newman. Everybody thought this album was going to be gigantic. And it wasn’t.” Meanwhile, Pierce signed with the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) in Nashville, partly because they believed the upcoming Baez album with his song was going to be a huge hit. “But signing wasn’t the greatest thing that ever could have happened to me,” he says, “because it forced me to go back into the trenches. My deal ran out in Muscle Shoals in 1980 and I ended up going back and finishing school at Florida State in mass communications and psychology. Pretty good background for a writer, right?” As a singer/songwriter, he played the college circuit, along with basically anywhere else he could take the stage. This included rough and rowdy venues where the crowd couldn’t care less about the music or the writing. “ I was blessed that I got to go through that,” he says. “I was blessed that I got to find out that I wasn’t the most important thing in the world. The song is not an advertisement for your ego.” In the early 80s, Pierce became part of the Fast Folk movement in New York. He released an independent album in 1984, and then after signing with High Street Records, a division of Windham Hill, in 1989, he released several more. He continued to meet various people in the music industry and was a big fan of T-Bone Burnett. Burnett had produced an album by Mark Heard, whose manager Pierce contacted for a listen to some of his work. That resulted in a trip to Los Angeles, where he spent time with Burnett and Elvis Costello, among others. Heard produced an album for Pierce called “Tinseltown.” But Heard passed away shortly thereafter. “ Mark died, and my marriage broke up, and I blamed music for it,” Pierce says. “I was going to quit music.” Pierce considered other creative jobs that would allow him to spend more time at home, but his marriage dissolved nonetheless. The couple had three preschoolers. Pierce was devastated. But producer David Milner persuaded him to stick with music, and in 1993 he made the album “Chase the Buffalo.” Fast-forward to the mid-90s and a song Pierce wrote with Gordon Kennedy. He laughs that the song has “almost paid for my house.” It has had several iterations and a tie to an artist who is most definitely in the category of world famous. “ I was going around Nashville trying to meet a good manager and get a record deal,” Pierce says. “I met Garth Brooks’ manager, whose name is Major Bob. Wonderful guy. So I got in the door to talk to him, and he heard my stuff and said, ‘You know, you really need to get signed out of L.A. You don’t need to get signed out of Nashville, because Nashville’s not going to really get what you do. But L.A. will get it.’ And so I did. I ended up signing with Windham Hill. But at any rate, there was a guy in the back making coffee, and that was Garth. He had just released his first single, and I think he was living in his truck then. He was on the phone, saying ‘Thank you for playing my record. Thank you for playing my record….’ He came out and said, ‘Hey, you guys want some coffee?’ And he made coffee for everybody.” Brooks would later have a huge hit with his recording of the Pierce/Kennedy song “You Move Me.” But to write that song, Pierce first had to experience a painfully sad Christmas morning at a low point in his personal and professional life. “I didn’t get a Ch...…
Let me tell you, I would not have imagined when I left Fyffe High School in 1971 that five decades later I’d be sitting on my sofa watching a guy from Geraldine playing guitar with Lynyrd Skynyrd on the network’s New Year’s Eve special. Damon Johnson finds it equally unbelievable that he is THAT guy. “I’ve had a lot of memorable gigs in my life, Damons says. “I’ve played giant festivals around the world — Europe, South America, Japan. I’ve played Red Rocks, Madison Square Garden. But let me tell you something: Ringing in the New Year on CBS at the stroke of midnight, playing ‘Free Bird’ live on television… that was not in the playbook ever, you know? What a thrill.” Damon’s down-to-earth gratitude for all his incredible experiences shines like a spotlight when you speak with him. Born in Macon and having grown up in Monroeville, Alabama, he moved to Geraldine in the 10th grade in 1979. Coming from a musical family, he gravitated toward the guitar as a teen, though he’d taken piano lessons and played trombone in the marching band. “About the time my high school friends and I all started discovering Led Zeppelin, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Aerosmith, the Rolling Stones, Black Sabbath, all that stuff, I got pretty serious about it. I fell in love with it.” He and his friends started a garage band, and his social life revolved around music. “Once people heard me play the electric guitar, you would have thought Eric Clapton had landed in DeKalb County,” he laughs. “And I can’t overstate what that did for my confidence. So many nice people saying nice things, encouraging things. I quickly put a band together. So that was kind of how things got started for me in Geraldine.” At the local convenience store, Damon read music magazines and was consumed with everything about the bands of the time, never dreaming he would make a living the same way. Today Damon lives in Nashville — a long, rich journey between now and his Geraldine days. He not only plays with the legendary Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd, but he also has resurrected a band he started in the early 90s called Brother Cane, whose albums led to three Number 1 singles, and who toured with names such as Aerosmith, Van Halen and Lynyrd Skynyrd. And he is a solo artist who writes, records and performs his original work. “Lynyrd Skynyrd tours about 50 or 60 shows a year, and that gives me plenty of time to scratch my artistic itch and write new songs,” Damon says. ‘I love writing, I love making recordings. I’ve made a lot of records over the past 30 years and been in a few other projects I could have never, ever imagined. I’m really grateful.” The impressive acts Damon has written for, recorded with, or performed with include Ted Nugent, Sammy Hagar, Stevie Nicks, Faith Hill and…Alice Cooper? “ It makes me smile when you even mention Alice Cooper,” says Damon. “It was 2004 when I started playing with Alice. And that next year, both my parents had a chance to come and see me play and meet Alice. They couldn’t have been more thrilled to meet him and talk about those early days when they were alarmed to see his album covers in my room. Alice loves it when anybody comes up and says, ‘We thought you were crazy.’ But Alice is a role model in terms of the footprint he is leaving as a true artist, committed to writing and recording and making records. That guy’s never put on a bad show. And he’s a great husband, great father. It’s family first.” Most folks don’t know that Alice Cooper is an extremely good golfer. In fact, Damon took his clubs on tour with Cooper’s band because the group hit the links most days when on the road. Though known as a rock artist, Damon made a foray into the world of country music as well. After all, living in Nashville and not dipping his toe into country music would be like living in The Bronx and not going to a Yankees game. “Country music was always a part of my listening experience as a kid,” Damon says. “Every bit as much as rock music was, because my parents were very much steeped in country. I’m so grateful that my dad always played records by the all-time greats. You know, the Mount Rushmore of great male country artists: Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson. So that was always kind of bubbling beneath my burgeoning love of rock and hard rock. I’ve always been able to add a little of that to whatever band I’m playing in. I’m not a great country player, because I have a different measuring stick of what that means. A lot of that has to do with the equipment you have, the amplifiers you use, the guitars you have. But I’m never afraid to grab a guitar and get in there and see what I can come up with.” That musical heritage was on full display in 2007 when Damon helped form the country music band Whiskey Falls. “We played a good bit around Alabama and the Southeast,” he says. “We gave it a fully committed effort for two years, 2007 and 2008. It’s another one of those bands that I was in that was just so close to punching through to that next level. And you know, promotion challenges, management challenges, record company challenges —something’s always going to interfere with your goals and your progress, unfortunately. But country music is for sure a part of what I do.” The variety of acts Damon has worked with makes his career a bit unusual. He can play with just about anyone, anywhere. In 2011 this versatility created an opportunity for Damon to play with legendary Irish rock group Thin Lizzy. “I saw Thin Lizzy when I was living in Geraldine in high school,” Damon recalls. “It literally changed my life. I was familiar with ‘The Boys Are Back in Town.’ That was such a big song on the radio. But they had such an incredible catalog of fantastic guitar riffs. And the rhythm section, how they played together … the songs had a different groove than any of the other rock music I was listening to. I didn’t know at the time that was some of the Celtic Irish influence.” Thin Lizzy’s repertoire of powerful songs, their musicianship, and the stage presence of the band led by singer Phil Lynott made an impression on the Geraldine boy. “I think the thing I’ve been most attracted to, you could say addicted to, my whole life is the energy of a great song with a great singer and a great guitar player,” he says. ‘I mean I’m as much a sucker for it right now as I ever was.” The opportunity to join Thin Lizzy came while Damon was touring with Alice Cooper. “So I’m playing with Alice, and we do a show in Dublin,” he says. “The lineup that night was Def Leppard and Alice Cooper, and Thin Lizzy was opening. I didn’t know this at the time, but they were getting ready to need a replacement for one of the guitar players. They saw me play a couple of shows, I got back home the following week, and the guitar player Scott Gorham calls my house. I used to have posters of Scott Gorham on my wall!” The call presented the opportunity of a lifetime. “He said, ‘I know you got a great gig with Alice, but we need somebody and your name is on a very short list. Is it something you would have any interest in?’” Damon recalls the conversation. “I’ve learned over the years … I mean, Paul McCartney could call me and offer me a gig and I’d say, ‘Paul, I appreciate the call, but I’m going to have to talk to my wife first.’ “ Of course, Lynda knew how much I loved Alice,” Damon continues. “My whole family loves Alice. But she said, ‘Damon, if you don’t take this opportunity to go have that experience and play those amazing...…
When I called Jerry Ellis a man of letters, he liked that so much he asked me to repeat it. But I really wasn’t kidding. The Fort Payne native and graduate of The University of Alabama has written nine books. His inaugural book, about walking the Trail of Tears, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. I will call this interview the tip of the iceberg because Jerry’s story is so rich that we couldn’t cover it all here. So, I asked for the “Reader’s Digest” version. “I was born in 1947 in Fort Payne,” he says. “My ancestors, who were mixed-blood Indians, settled in Sulphur Springs in 1837. I had a great childhood, but by age 17, wanderlust kicked in and I started feeling strangled by a small town.” Needing to stretch his wings, Jerry took off to New York to stay with his sister, actress Sandra Ellis Lafferty (you may know her from “Walk the Line,” “Hunger Games,” “A Walk in the Woods,” and other films). During the trip, he realized he loved everything about hitchhiking. “I had hitchhiking fever,” Ellis says. “By the age of 26, even going to The University of Alabama and later a year of graduate school in Oklahoma, I’d hitchhiked enough miles to circle the planet Earth five times.” You can imagine the tales that result from miles and miles of hitchhiking and how that fuels the mind of a writer. Ellis was picked up by a wide range of individuals and families, including the Hells Angels, Mr. Universe, and Mr. Teenage America. Fitting, as he’d been a weightlifter who’d set a regional bench press record. Weightlifting and travel had become his fire, as he put it. Over the course of his life, Ellis has traveled to six continents. He lives part-time in Rome. The road called him, steered his life in new directions, and taught him about humankind. “Listening to all the stories … people began to open up to me a lot, and I realized, circumstantially, I was a kind of confessor,” Ellis says. “In a way, I was a very secular priest in the sense of people telling me their deepest, darkest secrets. I’m cheap therapy. They can talk to me. I’m polite, I’m kind, I’m compassionate. I ask the right questions sometimes, and all these stories began to accumulate in me. I realized I was being introduced to the human condition. And I wanted to try and make sense of it. “I realized I had a talent for writing,” he adds. “I had not known that. I knew I had a great imagination; I knew I was very sensitive and all that good stuff that artists have.” His talent was quickly discovered, as he sold short stories in New York, and the first play he wrote was produced in an Oklahoma City theater. Lots of creative folks would have stopped there. But Ellis hadn’t yet found his destiny. “I ultimately wanted to do something more daring, more meaningful, with more substance than just writing short stories,” he says. “In the 80s, the idea of walking the Trail of Tears to honor the Cherokee came to me. It took some failures and confrontations with myself and the world to take the leap of faith and actually walk it, which was my breakthrough spiritually and personally and commercially into New York publishing. I did not walk the Trail of Tears for recognition; I did it to honor the Cherokee and to up awareness about what had happened. You know, Fort Payne was one of the forts or stockades or roundup areas for most of the Cherokee of this area. It always had a strong influence on me.” Ellis actually wrote a fictionalized story about a modern-day walk, only to discover the story was really about him. He gave me a little backstory that led to that linchpin moment in his life. He was waiting tables in New Orleans back in his 30s when he met a director/producer from New York. They made a connection, and the director agreed to option a screenplay Ellis had written. “So, I decided to go for broke and go out to L.A. to sell that screenplay,” Ellis says. “As soon as I got there, I called him because my option money was due. He said, ‘Jerry, I’m going to have to drop the option. I just discovered I have cancer and I’m not going to live much longer.’ I had another script about a man who walked the Trail of Tears in reverse after his Indian grandfather appeared to him at the foot of his bed one night and said, ‘To redeem your soul, you’ve got to go walk the Trail of Tears and offer the spirits of those who died on the trail, the 4,000, to come back home with you.’” Those in the publishing business told Ellis the writing wasn’t bad, and was, in fact, interesting history, “but people aren’t going to buy tickets to anything about Native Americans,” Ellis recalls. “I don’t usually get depressed, but I got very depressed.” Ellis was so broke that at one point he scoured the sidewalks for coins. Ironically, his apartment building overlooked Paramount Pictures, to which he could not gain access. One night, while on the roof of his building overlooking the studios, he had an epiphany. “I realized I was the man in the script I had written,” he says. I had written Jerry’s story, and I didn’t know it until I got so desperate. God, the gods, spirits — whatever you want to say, my own insight or luck or whatever — said, ‘Hey, man, that’s you. Now, do you have the guts to do it?’ Honestly, it took four years to get up the guts.” Meanwhile, for several months he worked odd jobs, including renovating a wealthy woman’s home on the East Coast. On his return trip home, Ellis made a decision. “I thought, ‘That’s it. I don’t want to do any more lawn work or carpentry for someone else,’” he told himself. “‘I’ve got to go to Oklahoma and walk the Trail of Tears. I’ve got to because I don’t feel like I’m doing anything that means anything to me or anyone else.’ That got me out to Oklahoma. It was life-altering from the day I arrived in Tahlequah [he walked the trail in reverse, from the Cherokee nation capital of Tahlequah to Fort Payne]. The universal puzzle seemed to start clicking together on its own.” The story that resulted from that journey remains his bestselling book, “Walking the Trail: One Man’s Journey Along the Cherokee Trail of Tears” (Delacorte Press, 1991). When the book came out, Jerry received many letters, and it wasn’t unusual for folks whom it had touched to stop by his parents’ house in Fort Payne, where he lived at the time, wanting to visit the author and have him sign their copies. All these words and gestures are blessed gifts for the writer, who considers them riches. Of all the kindness he received from his readers, the words of one particular visitor stand out in his memory. “A gentleman came, a grandfather wearing overalls, with his 9- or 10-year-old grandson,” Ellis recalls. “His grandson had a speech impediment, and he said, ‘Sir, I just wanted to meet you, sir.’ Such a sweet boy, and I said, ‘I have something for you.’ I had a box of arrowheads. I love archaeology. So, I brought him a beautiful arrowhead, and he was very touched. I’d signed his book, and his grandfather said, ‘Go on now, son. Wait on me in the car for a minute.’ Then the grandfather came over and said, ‘You have no idea what that meant to that boy.’ Walking the Trail of Tears was worth it just for that.” Encounters like these are what enrich Ellis’ life. “ That’s the beauty of writing at its best — arousing thoughts and feelings people might not ordinarily have,” he says. “And it was all new to me, because it was my first book to be published. I felt incredibly blessed to have that kind of connection with human beings.” Some letters s...…
After winding up Alabama 117 from Valley Head in DeKalb County, you arrive at a four-way intersection in the town of Mentone. On your right is the most charming calling card you can imagine: the Mentone Inn, nestled against a backdrop of trees and lush landscaping, with an almost irresistible wrap-around porch. Stepping inside is like getting a big hug: the warmth, the relaxed atmosphere, and a host whose mission is your comfort. Few people are more qualified to share with visitors what makes this part of Northeast Alabama, and the inn, so special than innkeeper Cynthia Stinson. “ The inn was built in 1927, by Hal Howe and his wife, Nelda,” Cynthia says. “They opened for business in 1928 and ran it until 1954, but they were only open May through September, so basically Memorial Day to Labor Day, as there was no insulation and no heating in the building. It’s always been an inn, built with 12 bedrooms and 9 bathrooms to begin with. Now all the rooms have private ensuite bathrooms.” Over the years, the inn has continued to be a cornerstone of the community high atop Lookout Mountain. “The inn has been the place for people to come and join together,” Cynthia says. “Families, weddings, church retreats. I say it’s a place for strangers to become friends. And that happens quite often.” Cynthia’s life intersected with the Mentone Inn quite by serendipity. “ Well, I call it a God wink,” says Cynthia. “I’m from Greenville, Alabama, originally. I had an antique store there and a lot of inventory I wanted to get rid of. So I did the research for the World's Longest Yard Sale. I already knew about Mentone, because my mom’s family is from Pigeon Mountain. I called the lady at the inn, and she said I could have the entire square to set up my goods. I showed up on a hot August Tuesday and put a tent in the backyard, because at the time I couldn’t afford to stay there. I helped her with breakfast at the inn. Gloria was her name.” Gloria offered Cynthia a job at the inn, an act that would change the trajectory of Cynthia’s life. “I knew I needed a change, because a lot of tragic things had happened in my life that I was trying to overcome, she says. “And I was trying to overcome myself, because I was in a bad place. I went home and prayed about it. Two weeks later, I rented a U-Haul, and with my little dog, Bear Bryant, and $2,000, I struck out for Mentone.” In 2007, Cynthia joined the inn as a housekeeper, though she continued to live in her tent in the backyard until winter weather became untenable and she moved inside the inn. During that time, she also worked as the Sunday chef at the Wildflower Café. Mentone had become home. Then one day, after she’d been in Mentone almost three years, the inn’s owner, Mike Campbell from Birmingham, asked if she would like to take over operations. She did just that in 2009. “I basically put my head down and just started from scratch to build up some repeat business and get a good reputation and good reviews going,” Cynthia says. “And now we are a lodging destination and a hub for people to come and meet.” When guests walk in, ‘cozy’ and ‘homey’ are two of the most common words Cynthia hears. “People hang out and talk,” she says. “I have a little box on the table called a conversation starter. I pick a card out of that box and ask them a question, then walk away. Next thing you know, they’re laughing and talking and having a good time. And I have people who actually met here and plan to come back just to see each other. Sometimes two to three times a year, and a few of them four times a year.” The inn is a center of activity for tourists, but as Cynthia can attest, there’s a real sense of community in and around Mentone that is plain to see if you spend any time here at all. “ We have a wonderful community that’s based on people who live there, and new folks are coming in and want to get involved,” she says. “That’s what it takes to have a good community — involvement. Our library [Moon Lake Library] is top-notch; we have a program that serves the elderly and school children, called the Mentone Educational Resource Foundation; we have the Rhododendron Garden Club; and other organizations. Behind the inn is a large pavilion, named the Linger Longer Pavilion, that serves the town in a variety of ways, and that service is important to Cynthia. “I knew I wanted to give back, because I felt like Mentone had given me so much” she says. “I allow nonprofits to use my pavilion for musical events. Little River Arts Council has a monthly series out there during the summer. St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church next door uses it for their outdoor activities. Scouts gather there. And I host a farmer’s market on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on the property. It’s a pretty busy little corner.” Cynthia is in the process of getting the inn on the National Historical Register. “Aesthetically, she looks the same as when she was built,” she says, “but we’ve of course updated the rooms quite a bit. I call the inn ‘she’ because, from one old lady to another, we understand each other. I’m trying to preserve our corner because, you know, we’ve had some tragic losses in Mentone. Ten years ago, we lost the Mentone Springs Hotel, and a year ago, we lost the historic Hitching Post. When I’m gone, I hope whoever comes in behind me will feel the same way.” The inn and the square outside are a family affair. Daughter Hannah is the inn’s head housekeeper. Eldest daughter Fontana owns Fontastic Foods, which serves up popular fare from the food truck outside the inn. Often on weekends, you’ll see lots of hungry folks waiting for their innovative burgers and other culinary creations. Check their Facebook page for hours and phone number. “Everybody says when you get older, your kids grow up, then they move out and you have an empty nest,” Cynthia says. “Well, mine came back, and I’m so glad they did because I have family here now.” That family feeling extends to many of the guests who visit the inn. “I’m not a fancy person,” she says. “I’m a down-to-earth person who can cook really well. I tell people that they’re coming to Grandma’s house. Imagine, when you were a child going to your grandmother’s house, you went to bed and she’d have this big, comfortable bed with quilts on it and the smell of fresh linens. Then you rolled over in the morning and got a whiff of coffee and some sausage or bacon frying and biscuits in the oven. Well, that’s my house. We’re going to fill you up with a really good breakfast and some hot coffee or hot tea in the mornings.” Mentone in the fall is a little-known delight. Some folks think of Gatlinburg and Cherokee, North Carolina, but in October, you don’t need to look beyond the Lookout Mountain Parkway and Northeast Alabama in general to see the splendor of autumn and feel the fresh, crisp air of the season. “There is excitement in the air here when the weather starts to turn cool and the colors are magical,” Cynthia says. “College football is a big thing in the fall, so I have a 65-inch flat screen in the living room, which is the only TV in the house. It gets used mostly during football season.” I caught Cynthia slipping in a “Roll Tide” at the mention of football season. “And it’s not jus...…
Sometimes you don’t realize how much your senses absorb when you’re growing up, but you find out later how those experiences shaped you. Russell Gulley grew up on Southern gospel and shape note music. His mother was very conscious of how much music and art can enrich lives. Russell sought a career in rock and roll, but later paid his mother’s gift forward by bringing the arts to communities and schools. Russell is the 2024 recipient of the Alabama Arts Impact Award, given at the Celebration of Alabama Arts , May 16 at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery. He spoke with me recently about the unlikely arc of his career, starting with his time growing up in Fort Payne. “Back when I was growing up,” Russell says, “musicians were kind of looked down on as being not very responsible people with bad habits. So that was the last thing that my mother wanted for me, to become a musician. “The only way I was able to get a guitar was if my brother and I promised to play in church,” Russell continues. “Ironically, the pastor banned me from playing, because he said I wasn’t playing to worship God. I was playing to have a good time, which is probably true. But right after that, I was hired by a gospel group and I worked with them for several years, recording two albums. That was my introduction to the recording business.” It was the opinion of Leon Rhodes, music producer and guitar player for Ernest Tubb, that motivated Russell further. “He told my boss and me that he thought I was a pretty good bass player, that I could make it in Nashville if I wanted to move up there,” Russell recalls. “That was the inspiration I needed. If Leon Rhodes says I’m good enough, I must be good enough.” Then, like many other young men of the time, Russell was drafted to fight in Vietnam. When he returned, he’d been divorced from his first wife. With nothing tying him to any certain place, he moved to Nashville and signed with an agent. There, he played bass for various artists of the era, such as Ronnie Dove and Ray Peterson (“Tell Laura I Love Her”). Meanwhile, his brother Dennis’ band, Cross, was playing and making demos in Muscle Shoals. Producer Jimmy Johnson asked the band, ‘Which one of you guys wrote these songs?’ They told him, “We didn’t. Russell Gulley wrote them.” “So the next thing I knew, I got a phone call and was invited to Muscle Shoals,” says Russell. “Apparently, I passed the audition and they signed me to the publishing company as a writer. “The kind of music that I was writing was not soul music,” he continues. “I didn’t write stuff like ‘When a Man Loves a Woman.’ I was writing stuff more like Frank Zappa and maybe some of the British acts. Lynyrd Skynyrd was just taking off, and Jimmy had worked with Skynyrd just before they changed companies. I think he was looking for another band to kind of follow in Skynyrd’s footsteps. In fact, during my interview, he played some of the original demos by Skynyrd. I’d never heard playback that loud. Jimmy looked at me and asked, ‘You think you’re as good as they are?’ Well, how could I say no if I wanted to pass the audition? So I looked at him and said, ‘You damn right I’m that good.’ Anyway, we got signed.” Russell, his brother Dennis, drummer Ronnie Vance, guitarist Britt Meacham, and keyboardist Tommy Patterson were dubbed Jackson Highway after the street address of the studio. In the mid to late 70s, Jackson Highway decided to market itself heavily in Chattanooga. Radio play was picking up, and listeners started to request their single. Muscle Shoals Studios called and said they had landed Jackson Highway a deal with Capitol Records. Capitol and Muscle Shoals Studios formed a joint venture to sign the band. Jackson Highway was building a fan base and touring with rockers such as Ted Nugent, UFO, and Triumph. They were set to play the Omni in Atlanta, what might have been “the big gig” to take them to the next level. But arrangements changed and they ended up playing a smaller venue. Jackson Highway returned to Muscle Shoals, and the day they were to perform a showcase for Capitol to renew their contract, Russell’s father passed away. “If there was anybody in this world that ever stood by me from the time I played gospel music to the time I went to Muscle Shoals and all of it, that was my dad. I could not stay in Muscle Shoals,” Russell says. He and Dennis went home to help with the funeral arrangements and be with family. Without an appearance at the showcase, Jackson Highway’s contract was discontinued. He apologized to his bandmates because he felt he caused the Capitol contract to lapse, but he did what he had to do. After losing his record deal, he returned to Nashville and began doing sideman gigs, playing with artists such as Gary Buck, who’d played on the Grand Ole Opry. The touring schedule left him with six months of the year where he didn’t play anywhere. In 1986, he ended up moving back to Fort Payne, broke and not knowing what he would do next. A chance meeting at a benefit concert resulted in Russell being hired to oversee a new park in Fort Payne. His work with the City of Fort Payne led Russell to get involved in forming the Big Wills Arts Council, named for Big Wills Valley and nearby Big Wills Creek. Russell took a leap from being a rock musician to working on organizational bylaws and grant distribution. Talk about different worlds. The sometimes cutthroat competitiveness of the music industry was nothing like the arts, he soon discovered. “I stepping into the nonprofit arts world where, if I needed something, if I didn’t know how to do something, I could call somebody within the network and have the answers or access to the supplies and the whole nine yards,” he says. “I’ve never been part of a network of people who were that supportive of each other. That’s why I felt like I did about the name Big Wills Arts Council. It goes back to part of the area’s heritage. It goes all the way back to the Native Americans.” As his work with arts in the community and the schools attests, Russell is a believer in spreading the cultural wealth wherever possible, exposing as many people to the arts as resources will allow. “I’ve always been a firm believer that the arts have no boundaries,” Russell says. “In fact, I was criticized one time because I got an arts in education grant for children’s theater. I put it in our city schools, but I also put it in four or five of the county schools. Somebody came up to me and said, ‘Why are you spending our money out in the county schools?’ I was astounded. I looked at them and said, ‘I got it in the city schools, but we had enough money to put it out there, and I felt like the county needed that service more than the city did.’ “I said I was going to do it any time I could. I don’t believe the arts have boundaries,” Russell says. “They’re as deserving as we are. And if I can help, I will. I’ve helped people out at Mentone, and I did an art residency out at Dogtown, for example.” Russell eventually left the arts council and decided to concentrate on songwriting and performing with a blues band called the Beat Daddys (one of his songs went to No. 16 on the Billboard charts). A misunderstanding (not uncommon in the industry) led to his being cut from the group. After a chance meeting with some members of the BWAC board of directors, he learned that unused grant funds were available from the state arts ...…
As a young DJ at his dream job in Myrtle Beach, Greg Fowler repeatedly read an ad encouraging people to visit The Bowery to hear a group who, at that time, was known as Wild Country. Little did he know that spark would change his life, eventually intertwining his path with that of the most successful band in country music history — ALABAMA. Read the accompanying story here, and watch the interview on YouTube !…
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