I was thinking about Southern rock. What prompted these unnatural thoughts was The Black Crowes release of a new album with the same title as a rejected name for this very website, Happiness Bastards. I hadn’t much thought of Atlanta’s Robinson Brothers and their on again off again band recently; I do however listen to ‘Remedy’ from 1992’s album The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion at least 3-4 times a year. However, I decided that The Black Crowes are not Southern rock. They are more Southern France rock in that they are essentially an Exile on Main St. tribute band. That can be at times a very good thing, indeed. But, I will save you the time in listening to this new one: just give Mick and the boys’ decadent druggie rummage through the history of American music another spin instead. And listen to ‘Remedy,’ which is great.
But, in any event, it got me to thinking, what is Southern rock? And, who cares? I struggled with the answer to the first question and got into a late-night argument about it with opinionated friends at an underground bar in a Las Vegas seafood restaurant. (This argument became particularly heated when, tangentially, I said that ‘Fast Car’ wasn’t that great the first time around and I didn’t need a Luke Combs version).
I then tentatively settled on these minimum criteria: it is (a) originating in the South, (b) white, (c) male and (d) I don’t like it. The final criterion was necessary to avoid snaring Florida native Tom Petty. Or Hattiesburg, Mississippi’s remarkable MSPAINT, who are most definitely not playing “Southern rock” under any definition.
I immediately thought first of The Allman Brothers Band as Southern rock. It seems that the term was first applied to them, but they vehemently rejected it. Warren Haynes said, “The problem I have is a lot of people associate it with rednecks and rebel flags and backward mentality.” Dickey Betts hated the label and wanted to be known as “a progressive rock band from the South.” This was encouraging because I have no bone to pick with the Allman Brothers Band and its fans and realized I wasn’t wild about the band because it was jammy, nothing more complicated than that. Plus, I had now an amended definition: Southern rock is (a) white, (b) male, and (c) associated with rednecks, rebel flags and backward mentality.
Mr. Haynes’s formulation works as it eliminates geographic origin and adds malign effect, thus twice fixing the Tom Petty problem, and also allowing carpetbagging racists like Michigan’s Kid Rock to be included. Personal dislike is a given and need not be its own subpart.
So, if the Allman Brothers Band is not the progenitor of this genre, who is? Lynyrd Skynyrd comes immediately to mind. They fit the criteria. (There is debate on whether Lynyrd Skynyrd was racist or not. I think not, but there is no question the band’s ethos was ambiguous enough to be enthusiastically adopted by those who were.) But, I think the chief perpetrator is Charlie Daniels who distilled rock, country and the Confederacy into a foul rotgut that has now taken over Nashville and popular country music, which is largely Southern rock Lite.
Country music’s male artists used to be authentically lovelorn abusive alcoholics and petty criminals like George Jones and Merle Haggard. Those motherfuckers lived those songs. Now, they’re small guys in skinny jeans and big hats singing bloated anthems to an imagined victimhood, the music watered down Molly Hatchet, the lyrics cribbed from Facebook posts.
So that brings us to the “who cares” part of the inquiry. And why not just ignore the whole genre, no matter where it raises its head? That should be easy enough.
My answer is there remains something redeemable in the idea of Southern rock. And, honestly, fuck these people. You can have Jason Aldean, you can listen to your dipshit hokum and get a little frisson from lynching allusions. But, you don’t get to co-opt an entire segment of music as yours.
Drive By Truckers have been valiantly fighting this battle for years. ‘Ronnie and Neal’ lays down the gauntlet on the 2001 album titled Southern Rock Opera no less. Drive By Truckers sound so authentically Southern rock that even with the explicit rejection of ‘Lost Cause’ mythology and iconography the music still occasions in me a negative visceral reaction. DBT is a band I greatly admire that I never listen to.
But, Asheville, North Carolina’s Wednesday has sauntered into the fray and I now have my dog in this fight. Rat Saw God was my 2023 album of the year. It is country and grunge and screamo. It is very Southern. It is rock. Why can’t it, too, be “Southern rock” despite the definition I just created?
Beyoncé then comes out with Cowboy Carter, not just a “country” album really, but a Southern music survey with double middle fingers to the delicate bigots offended that she darkened the Country Music Awards with her presence. I’m not a dabbling dilettante here, Beyoncé announces, this is MY music.
Having reached a similar if less focused state of bitter exasperation, I’m down with this attitude. The flag isn’t yours, the anthem isn’t yours, the Constitution sure as shit isn’t yours. I will not cede you anything, not even a music genre I’m generally ambivalent towards. I wouldn’t piss in your mouth if your head was on fire, to use a quaint Southern phrase.
In November, I will scream along with Karly Hartzman in Wednesday’s ‘Bull Believer’: FINISH HIM! Then maybe I’ll blast some Lynyrd Skynyrd, those enigmatic hippie rednecks, and two-step on your grave.
Words by Rick Larson
Picky Bastards 
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