What are your earliest memories of Southern Rock? Tell us a little about your younger years, any memorable shows you attended, favorite albums I was born in 1975, so I completely missed out on the big Southern rock boom of the mid- 1970s. I’m an only child, so I spent a lot of time around adults when I was growing up. Maybe that made me an old soul, but I’ve al- ways been interested in the music of the past. When I was in high school, I was really into Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and contemporary bands like that, but I was also obsessed with classic rock radio. One of my best friends and I first met in the hallway in high school be- cause I heard him say he liked the Guess Who. This was about 1991. Nobody our age liked the Guess Who. We went out to the parking lot during lunch and sat in his beat up Datsun hatchback listening to “These Eyes” over the single mono speaker mounted in the middle of the dash. After that, we formed a band.
But I digress. Growing up in the South, classic rock radio was heavy on Southern rock. I first heard Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Allmans, the Mar- shall Tucker Band, 38 Special, and all these groups on 104.5 “The Fox” in Nashville. I don’t think that station exists anymore, but it was part of my education. My concert experi- ences were obviously after the golden era of Southern rock, but the most memorable would have to be the time I saw Lynyrd Skynyrd in Memphis. A very drunk woman passed out, fell in my lap and proceeded to pee her pants. I instinctively shoved her off very quickly and she kind of rolled down this little grass hill for several feet before getting entangled with some other concert-goers. So, I’d like to apologize to the drunk wet-pants lady wherever she is today. Maybe she’s still passed out on that grass!
What compelled you to write South- bound? Mike Edison used to work at Backbeat Books. They put out an illustrated history of prog- rock, and he wanted to do something similar with Southern rock. My understanding is that there were some false starts before Mike reached out to Randy Poe, who wrote the Duane Allman biography, Skydog. Randy suggested that I take on this book since he was already juggling some other projects at the time. So, the short answer is that Randy Poe compelled me to do it. Ha! Actually, Randy just opened a door for me. He’s a re- ally great friend, and I can’t say enough good things about him.
Give our readers a brief synopsis of the book. Southbound is my attempt to present a his- tory of Southern rock that’s as comprehensive as possible within the confines of the space of a single book. I wanted to use a wide net to catch as many roots and branches of the genre as as I could, while still getting into enough detail that real fans would feel like they had something of substance. I hope I captured that. I think it’s a book that will ap- peal to the hardcore fans, as well as people who know very little about Southern rock, but are curious to learn more. My original draft was literally twice as long as the final product. The publisher basically said, “You’ve gotta cut this in half before we will even read it.” So now I have one copy of the original 700 page version in a giant binder in my garage. As you can probably tell from my answers to your questions, I’m not great at shutting up.
I thought I had seen every picture in Southern Rock history, but you came up with some that just blew my mind.
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