North Mississippi Allstars (21+ Event)

A forgotten roll of film inspired a musical accompaniment, the North Mississippi Allstars’ new record Up and Rolling. Shot before the turn of the century, the photographs resonate with the music of four families from the Mississippi hills. The album captures the communal spirit upon which the band was founded. In 1996, a photographer from Texas, Wyatt McSpadden, traveled to North Mississippi looking to photograph local musicians. Brothers Luther and Cody Dickinson had grown up just south of Memphis and cut their teeth playing experimental rock & roll together, as well as the roots repertoire pioneered by their father, Jim Dickinson, a legendary producer (Big Star, the Replacements) and session player (Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan). Their feet were firmly planted in the North Mississippi mud and music scene, and they were excited to show Wyatt around their community, to introduce him to the musical families of Otha Turner, RL Burnside and Junior Kimbrough. Their first stop was Otha Turner’s farm. Then in his late eighties, he was the last living fife and drum musician in the hills -- “and a friend to all,” Luther exclaims. “He looked sharp that day, still in his Sunday best and ready for a good time.” They all sat together on Otha’s fabled front porch, which was something like a classroom for the elder Dickinson brother. The two would sit for hours, the kid playing guitar while the old man made up lyrics on the spot. That’s how “Call That Gone” came into the world, decades before the Allstars recorded it for Up and Rolling. After Otha treated Wyatt to an impromptu concert featuring his family band of drummers, the fife player sent them down to Junior Kimbrough’s nightclub. They crossed the county line to see Junior and his Soul Blues Boys perform electrified, multigenerational cotton patch blues in their own unique style. Later that evening RL Burnside showed up, took the bandstand with beer in hand, and proceeded to tear the house down. “Wyatt was so smooth nobody felt he was taking photos,” Luther recalls. “No one was self-conscious or posing. Wyatt had a cloak of invisibility.” Once the Peavey amps were turned off and the jukebox unplugged, Cody and Luther parted ways with the Texan. Wyatt shared a handful of the images with Otha and the Dickinsons but no one saw the remaining photographs for decades. Wyatt’s images were forgotten. The Dickinsons had other matters demanding their attention -- namely, a new band they envisioned as a loose collective of local musicians who would play the community’s repertoire. A month after Wyatt took those photos, the North Mississippi Allstars made their Memphis debut, incorporating their father’s concept of roots music as a framework for improvisation and blending experimental/psychedelic excursions into Hill Country anthems. As Luther tells it, “after NMA first shook em’ down in Memphis, RL Burnside hired me to tour with him in ’97. A natural momentum began building up that slowly led to Cody and I hitting the road full-time. Our lives changed forever with the release of Shake Hands with Shorty in 2000. The music that rings thru the hills carried us away and became our home away from home as we began touring around the world. In orbit, we lost track of time and of ourselves.” Shake Hands with Shorty made the Allstars one of the most celebrated roots acts around. In 23 years they’ve released ten studio albums, three of which were nominated for Blues Album of the Year Grammys. (Luther has notched another four nominations in various categories on top of that.) More important, they’ve played countless shows in front of avid crowds, touring alongside Robert Plant, Patty Griffin, Mavis Staples, and John Hiatt, among many others. Says Luther, “I’m grateful to work together as a family -- with Cody, the musicians we roll with and the people who support our live shows. Together, we keep this music up and rolling.” All those years of touring took the Dickinson brothers far away from their North Mississippi home and the people who taught them this music. “The elders passed on in our absence -- Junior, Otha, RL, our father,” Luther says. “Every time we returned home, it was less recognizable.” In 2017 Wyatt tracked the brothers down and shared those photographs with them. “The images stopped me in my tracks and blew my mind. The music that changed our lives was captured in these photographs. Cody and I wanted to set the music free and record an album to accompany these photographs illustrating what Mississippi music sounded like in 1996 -- and what it sounds like now. The fantasy of what music could have been on the radio that day in ’96 was the portal for the new original songs we recorded for this soundtrack. ‘Drunk Outdoors’, ‘Up and Rolling’, ‘Bump That Mother’, and ‘Living Free’ sing about life in Mississippi, be it our memory, reality, or dream for the future.” Inspired by Wyatt’s images, the Allstars returned home to their family recording studio, the Zebra Ranch, to make the record they heard in those photographs. "We trimmed back the wisteria, emptied the traps, and swept out the old barn. Firing up the tube amps and the old computers, we began conjuring up modern Mississippi music, ancient and futuristic." Along with originals, they covered some of their favorite songs by these local heroes, with help from Cedric Burnside and Sharde Thomas, Otha’s granddaughter. “She was only a child when she became his apprentice and heir to the bamboo throne of fife and drum music,” says Luther. “Now she’s the Queen of the Hill Country and my favorite singing partner.” In addition to duetting with him on RL’s raunchy “Peaches,” she also sings with Luther on Otha’s “Call That Gone.” “She read over her grandfather’s lyrics and proceeded to nail it in one take. It was like she was singing from the collective soul of her family.” Cedric Burnside, RL’s grandson and two-time Grammy nominee, is featured on two tracks. "It's an honor to play with Cedric. "Out on the Road" was a highlight of the RL tour we played together in '97 and he sang his heart out on the new version." “When we make a record,” says Luther, “we invite the people close to us at the time to join us. Recording with the musicians we are touring with or hanging with help capture a record’s time frame.” The great Mavis Staples takes them all to church on the old spiritual “What You Gonna Do?” Jason Isbell joins to record a tune that has been in the Dickinson family for years: “Our father recorded ‘Mean Old World’ with Duane Allman and Eric Clapton during the Layla sessions. Jason invited me to record an acoustic, slide guitar duo version. Cody came up with the new arrangement and wanted to record an electric version with Jason and Duane Betts, using Mean Old World as a vehicle to lay down an epic statement about modern-day roots rock guitar.” As Cody puts it, “It’s all inclusive. Everyone is invited, the bar is always open, and drinks are on the house. But it’s important to us that we stay true to the vision of Hill Country music. There is incredible talent here in North Mississippi, so I’m always learning. The best thing about being in this band this long is developing a sound and identity that is unique. That’s truly a blessing, so we do our best to keep the music honest.” While inspired by the community and music of that Sunday more than 20 years ago, Up and Rolling is the sound of modern Mississippi. Luther hopes, “the music is rooted, but spreads evasively from the kudzu jungle grown over Junior’s concrete slab and Otha’s porch boards thru the Zebra Ranch’s razor wire chain link fence. Transcending time and space, music reaches out into the dark of night like the wisteria vine, looking for free-hearted souls to latch onto and wedge into the foundations of hate, slowly tearing down walls a generation at a time.”Downloads

The Runarounds

Austin Snell (21+ Event)

Nashville might be known as a 10-year town, a place where it takes a decade or more to get noticed. But for River House Artists/Warner Music Nashville’s Austin Snell, the rules have never really applied. You’re not supposed to fuse hard-rocking sonic aggression with the deep-feeling confessions of a country troubadour. You’re not supposed to just drift into Nashville with a battered old guitar and write a career-launching hit, either. But Snell has done both. And now, just one year into his Music City tenure, he’s well on his way to making “grunge country” as familiar a term as “honky tonk.” After his gritty “Excuse the Mess” gathered 1 million streams in its first week of independent release, Snell has gone on to drop a handful of hard-core country rockers, with momentum building behind the sound. A quarter of a million TikTok followers and over 50 million total streams. Big time playlist placements on Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, and more. A rare SiriusXM Highway Find accolade – the same one bestowed on now-superstars like Maren Morris and Luke Combs. And distincA native of small-town Dudley, Georgia, Snell grew up with a modern rock-loving father and a mother drawn to country radio – a fact reinforced by the family’s collection of four total CDs, ones by Nickelback, Three Doors Down, Creed, and Alan Jackson. Traveling the South to race go-karts on weekends, Snell ended up internalizing every note of those records, and feeling at home whenever they were playing, no matter where he was at the time. But it wasn’t until joining the Air Force that music became a passion. Nineteen years old, 1,000 miles from home, and alone for the first time, he passed the long evenings with a cheap acoustic guitar, belting out the same tunes he grew up on with a few clumsy chords. But you can only pretend to be Chad Kroeger for so long. Already obsessed and unable to visit home due to COVID-19, Snell dove into writing songs like he heard on country radio – heartfelt, melodic, and filled with clever hooks. Then his mom did what moms do. tion as just the second artist ever chosen for SiriusXM’s Artist Accelerator program. It all points to that rare sort of star who has found his mark early – and there’s more on the way. But if you ask the humble hitmaker, he’s no visionary genius. Just a guy who loves hard rock and country in equal measure, with a deep understanding of struggle … and a voice that sheds light in the dark. “It seems to keep clicking, and I don't really know why,” the emerging star admits. But that modesty belies a wild ride. “I let my mom talk me into posting my stuff on Facebook for our friends,” he says with a chuckle. “People ended up liking it, so that's what I did in my free time. I would write songs and just post them, to see what people though Unsurprisingly, his audience soon grew, and the wild ride got wilder. After returning home and deciding he’d rather write songs than work a shift, Snell made up his mind to try Nashville. But after doctors found a benign tumor in his back, it was the spring of 2022 before he finally arrived. At first, Snell just went with the flow, learning the ropes of Nashville’s well-established co-writing scene. But at 24 years old, and only 5 years after first picking up a guitar, things were about to change. “I moved with the plan of not putting anything out until I found something different, something nobody else was doing that felt authentic for me,” Snell explains. “I didn't know how long that was gonna take, but then we wrote ‘Excuse the Mess,’ and it just opened my world.” Co-written with Presley Aaron and Christian Yancey, the low-down power ballad was the first track Snell wrote with a hard-rock edge – and it was definitely different. With distorted, dark-energy guitars, thundering drums, and a wounded vocal at the end of its emotional rope, it mixed metal toughness with the gritty imagery of a classic country depression ballad, soaked in booze and strung out on love – and like all the best Nashville tunes, it was true. Feeling alone and overwhelmed during a rough patch in his Air Force days, Snell sent up a prayer and signed off with the eventual hook, “excuse the mess.” “I don't express myself a whole lot, so these songs are kind of my way to do it,” he says. “I posted that one online the same day we wrote it, and by the next day, it had over 600,000 views." After that, the rising star released two more hard-charging, left-of-center anthems (an unexpected cover of Cassadee Pope’s “Wasting All These Tears” and “Get There First”), signed publishing and record deals, and has now begun the next chapter. Tunes like “Send You the Bill” follow in the footsteps of “Excuse the Mess,” another shadowy example of soul-crushing pain wrapped in a grungy exterior – like a brokenhearted cowboy ballad for the modern age. Likewise, “Cold” stands as a slow-burning rocker with an icy message to a former flame, a somber steel guitar adding some desolate country desperation. But it’s the heavy-hearted power ballad “Pray All the Way Home” where Snell solidifies his sound. Co-written with Andrew Baylis, Michael Whitworth, and Cam Walker, it’s a track about living fast and running hard – and knowing without a doubt, your mistakes will catch up eventually. Mixing blacked-out rock aggression with inward-facing, late-night country reflection – plus a bit of an electronic buzz – it points the way forward for one of Nashville’s most exciting new talents, proving some rules are really more like suggestions. It’s only been a year so far. Imagine what 10 will bring. “I grew up on both sides of this music, so I just hope people know it’s real to me,” Snell explains. “I think that's my main goal, to make my own sound and let everyone know I’m not trying to copy anybody else. I’m going to pave my own way.”

Southall (21+ Event)

Founding member Read Southall hails from Oklahoma and is joined in the six-piece group by Reid Barber, Jeremee Knipp, Braxton Curliss, John Tyler Perry, and Ryan Wellman. Southall's musical influences range from Country to Rock to Metal and more in between, making for a wholly original sound reminiscent of "being in the crowd at a young Merle Haggard show," according to The Anniston Star. The guitar-driven band never loses focus on meaningful lyrics, penning tunes that speak to every aspect of life and help drive a Rock and Roll experience for their audience, whether they're listening at home or at a packed show. The act throws gas on the fire beneath their fast-rising career with their most recent release, Southall – their raw and explosive self-titled album released via Smoklahoma Records. Southall's 2021’s For the Birds features the epic six-minute long single "Where We Belong" and “impressive standout” (Raised Rowdy) “Rose Gold” and follows their 2017 album Borrowed Time, which includes their RIAA GOLD-certified single "Why." Full of ‘70s Soul, Country-inspired lyricism, and Rock and Roll heart, Southall’s music draws packed crowds and evokes old-school Country and early Grunge all at once. The band has tallied nearly 600 MILLION total streams and 1.2 MILLION cumulative monthly listeners. With the celebratory 10 YEARS OF SIX STRING SORROW TOUR now underway and more new music to come, Southall is just getting started.

Boot Scootin Boogie (21+ Event)

Nick Shoulders (21+ Event)