‘That is the magic’

On August 26, a record-breaking Alabama Colloquium crowd of nearly 1,100 in Huntsville saw Brittany Howard and Jason Isbell honored as AHA’s newest Alabama Humanities Fellows. The pair joined in conversation to share about their Alabama roots, their musical journeys, and the power of storytelling in song.

It was a special occasion made even more so by the presence of much-beloved musician Patterson Hood, who introduced each honoree. And the night ended with a pair of songs played by our honorees — soul-deep performances that al.com’s Matt Wake noted “anyone with a heartbeat could feel. Wow. Just wow.”

Photos from the event are available on AHA’s Facebook page.

Video of Howard and Isbell in conversation and song are on AHA’s YouTube channel.

Finally, below is an essay about the evening, written by the event’s moderator, Ann Powers, NPR Music’s critic and correspondent. Powers’ essay first appeared in the September 1 edition of the NPR Music newsletter. 

***

How Alabama shaped Jason Isbell and Brittany Howard

By Ann Powers (NPR Music)

Though I lived there for a shorter time than I did anywhere else, I still have some Alabama in my veins. Huntsville is where I headed Monday to meet up with two artists who, in recent years, have done a lot to deepen music lovers’ perceptions of that state. Jason Isbell was fresh from performing his song “Something More Than Free” at the Democratic National Convention; Brittany Howard would soon head into rehearsals for fall national tour. They’d carved out time that evening to be recognized as Alabama Humanities Fellows by the Alabama Humanities Alliance — an honor also granted to senators, [historians], educators, writers and artists. Along with another great songwriter (and my good friend), the Drive-By Truckers’ Patterson Hood, I’d been tapped to help bestow the prize, sitting with Isbell and Howard for a warm conversation punctuated with much laughter and the occasional shout-out to family members in the audience (Howard’s dad and Isbell’s mom were both sitting up front.)

We could have talked about anything — politics, production techniques, the never-ending debate over what musical categories like “Americana” and “country” mean — but instead, Howard and Isbell ended up sharing stories of home.

“I can’t get Alabama out of me because I was made from this stuff,” Howard said. “I am red clay, you know what I’m saying? Like, I was playing in it. My mama told me not to eat the poke salad berries and I didn’t, you know? I was getting chased by water moccasins and that’s just in me. I remember waking up and my great aunt Brenda would be playing, like, ‘90s country music. I never could understand what they were talking about. It was a real small speaker, but I could kind of understand the vibe. And I’d just be like, yeah, it’s a beautiful country morning.”

Hood had introduced both Howard and Isbell that evening with his own anecdotes about meeting them as artistic embryos: Isbell first gained national fame as a teenage guitarist for the Truckers, while the band helped launch Howard’s former group, Alabama Shakes, toward stardom by taking them on tour early on. In a speech in which every joke landed like a kiss, Hood conjured the spirit of the strivers these two now-established talents once were.

Living in Tuscaloosa in the mid-2010’s, I saw one of those early Shakes shows at the beautiful BAMA Theater. After watching Howard captivate the audience and then sell every single piece of band merch she had from behind a card table in the lobby, I knew that she would become the festival-headlining, Grammy-winning generational voice she is now. Around that same time, Isbell, after an alcohol-related crash and burn that found him relocating to Nashville, where he got sober and serious at 33, released Southeastern, the album that established him as a songwriter on par with legends like John Prine and Lucinda Williams. Like me, Howard and Isbell found in Nashville a better footing for their growing careers.

But Alabama has always stayed with them. “This night is actually being sponsored by the Athens Appreciation Society!” Howard said, chuckling, after several rows of old friends caused a ruckus when she said the name of the small town where she grew up. As we talked, names of favorite clubs and hangouts filled the air. “I feel like I should talk about Athens, too,” Isbell quipped. (Born in Green Hill, he was raised in the more cosmopolitan, though still semi-rural, Muscle Shoals area, an hour away.) “That Subway there, right off the freeway, that’s where I used to meet up with the Truckers!”

Our talk unfolded in this way, punctuated by the names of fondly remembered clubs like the Nick in Birmingham and famed Tuscaloosa dive the Chukker, where generations of dirty rockers who never made it nationally burned out their amps amid the cigarette smoke. House parties came up, too, like the one in which Isbell, who knew Hood casually and had already impressed him, sat tensely on the stairs while the Truckers played and a SPIN reporter took notes. (That reporter, in fact, was my husband Eric Weisbard — we’d heard the Truckers at a tiny Pittsburgh festival the year before and were doing our best to convince our New York media friends of their greatness.) Missing a guitarist who’d gone AWOL, the Truckers were burning things down anyway — but Isbell thought they could use a hand.

“I just remember sitting there for the first third of the show and thinking, if they take a break, I’m just going to go tell them I can play the guitar parts on this,” he recalled. “Like it was just going through my head over and over and over and over… finally they took a break and I went up to Patterson and I was like, ‘You need somebody to play the third guitar on this, I can do that.’ And he was like, ‘Fine….’ And I was so excited. I was so excited. And then I was in the van the next day.”

That house party wasn’t exactly like the ones happening all across indie rock American at the turn of the 21st century, and that’s for Alabama reasons, too. The northern edge of the state, most music lovers know, is home to Fame and Muscle Shoals Studios, where many of the greatest albums of the classic rock and soul era were recorded with session men like Hood’s bassist dad, David, providing support. Even before he joined the Truckers, Isbell was learning about musical professionalism from Fame studios head Rick Hall, who put him on staff as a fledgling songwriter at 21. “I always had plenty of songs to turn in,” he recalled of the brief period when he was learning at the feet of Hall and local heroes like Spooner Oldham and Donnie Fritts. “I would come in and demo the songs and, you know, they loved them, but they were like, ‘I don’t think Tim McGraw is going to sing this.’” He wasn’t going to become a Music Row songwriter like his high school best friend and bandmate Chris Tompkins — who’d go on to pen Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats,” among many other hits — but Isbell learned a lot about hard work and songcraft in those days.

Ten years younger than Isbell, Howard found a different community in Athens the way indie kids have in countless small towns. Growing up on a small farm, she took solace in what records she could get her hands on. “I usually found music through friends,” she said. “CDs were 14 dollars apiece, you know, there’s no way that was happening.” She’d learned about prog rock and metal from a Pink Floyd-loving classmate at 14 and was avidly scouring the internet for similarly heavy music on her clunky desktop computer when she saw an older kid walking down the East Limestone High School hall wearing an At the Drive-In t-shirt. That was Zac Cockrell, who became the Alabama Shakes’ bassist and continues to collaborate with Howard on her solo work. Overcoming her shyness, she gave him a demo she’d made in her bedroom; soon they were jamming, adding members from other local bands and the nearby music store, Railroad Bazaar. “I knew about the Drive-By Truckers from North Alabama,” she said. “I saw them touring the world. And I remember saying, if they can do it, I can do it. Big inspiration. Woo!”

Listening to these stories, I recognized their universal qualities: young dreamers diving into new experiences and finding footing with assistance from mentors who recognize their spark; dirty little rooms vibrating with noise that points toward a future nobody beyond their walls knows is possible. Such miracles happen all the time in towns from Muscle Shoals to Tunis to Tokyo. But the particulars shaped Howard and Isbell. Alabama humidity, the long nights she’d spend fishing or chasing fireflies because it was too hot to sleep, helped form Howard’s sensibilities, and the “post-genre” eclecticism that makes albums like her latest, What Now, great stems from a community that’s more diverse than outsiders would expect. “There’s a lot of different kinds of folks there,” Howard said of Athens. “That’s something I couldn’t appreciate until I left home. People who have everything, people who have nothing. And I got to experience all kinds of people…. Especially when we’re young, we were all trying to figure out how to get out. We’re like, oh, it’s going to be so much better out there …. But as time goes on, I appreciate Athens so much.”

For Isbell, the Shoals area offered not just a chance to play music every day, but the conviviality of great players and songwriters who weren’t just faces on a poster he hung in his bedroom but friends who became like family. His distinctive blend of high craft and deep vulnerability is rooted in those teenage encounters with men and women who looked just like his own working-class folks, but who’d written and recorded some of the most beloved songs of all time.

“People like Spooner Oldham and Donnie Fritts and especially David Hood,” he said, “I was just shadowing those folks when I was growing up. Now I kind of cringe to think of some of the questions I asked them. They were patient. I remember asking David, ‘How do you do this? How do you get there, become a musician and that’s your only job?’ And he would say, ‘Show up on time, make sure all your gear works and be nice.’ I was like, ‘I want the magic, David!’ And he just said, ‘That is the magic.’” Small town magic. Home-grown magic. It’s different depending on where you call home — but the experience of carrying it with us connects us all.

Learn more about the Alabama Colloquium and AHA’s Alabama Humanities Fellows here: alabamahumanities.org/alabama-humanities-honors