Something In the Roll Tide: Alabama Artists Are Taking Over Country and We're Drinking It Up

Every generation or so, country music is blessed with a Hank Williams.

Well, not necessarily a musician of his caliber – a talent like Hank’s is once-in-a-lifetime – but an artist or an outfit with the ability to impact the genre, its heart and soul … an act that also just so happens to be from the great state of Alabama.

In the 1980s, it was the band Alabama, the beloved Fort Payne trio that altered mainstream country with their glossy yet down-home sound. With the 2000s came Jason Isbell, the blue-collar poet from Green Hill who remolded the singer-songwriter for the 21st century. Fast forward to 2024, and the floodgates have opened.

This year alone, seemingly all in quick succession, Alabama’s finest – from Mobile to Madison County, from the state’s snaking coastal plains to its jagged mountain ridges – appear to have taken over. What was once a trickle of talent from the Yellowhammer State has become a steady stream, and we’re cherishing every single drop of it.

While home-state heroes like Jacksonville’s Riley Green and Mobile’s Muscadine Bloodline both infiltrated country music around 2019 and The Red Clay Strays (also from Mobile) have been steadily making their ascent since their hit ‘Wondering Why’ went viral last year, it feels like they’re all just now finding their footing. It just so happens to be alongside several other hot new hitmakers and fellow statesfolk who are flying the crimson cross of St. Andrew.

Throw in Haleyville’s Reid Haughton, Hope Hull’s Ella Langley, Demopolis’ Taylor Hunnicutt, and most recently Alexander City’s Kashus Culpepper, and it’s evident 2024 is shaping up to be the year of the Alabama act.

Of course, great music can come from anywhere – and it does; exceptional country music has come from across the nation, all over the globe even – but for this amount of talent to come from the same place at around the same time, it makes one wonder: Is there something in the water?

As Holler’s token Alabaman, I’m here to answer … yes and no.

Alabama is a relatively diverse place, making the region’s quintessential sound extremely difficult to pin down. Where many musical styles have become synonymous with neighboring states – Mississippi got the Delta Blues, Tennessee claimed country, bluegrass and Appalachia go hand-in-hand – somewhere along the way, Alabama got left out of that equation, the state forced to stitch together all those sounds with touches of ever-present gospel and a little jazz wafting in from the Gulf.

For generations, the state’s artists have perfected this patchwork sound to create something wholly Alabaman, something free of form but full of feeling. It’s a style, no, a sensibility, that this recent wave of talent is washing over us now. It may not come assigned with some shiny distinction like “Red Dirt” or “bluegrass” and these artists may not arrive ready-shaped for some arbitrary subgenre, but maybe that’s the point. It’s something that has to be felt rather than heard outright. It’s something that courses through The Red Clay Strays’ latest opus Made By The Moments and pulsates within Kashus Culpepper’s haunting new singles ‘After Me?’ and ‘Who Hurt You’.

So, yes, maybe there is something in the water – or rather, something in the veins – that has brought forth so much extraordinary music recently. But also, no; this current phenomenon goes deeper than roots. It’s thicker than water.

These Alabama artists have arrived already backed by community, a sense of camaraderie being nurtured among them. While on tour, outfits like Muscadine Bloodline and The Red Clays Strays have recruited their own, with Hunnicutt and Haughton both joining them as support on the road respectively.

Many of them have also teamed up in the studio. Earlier this year, Muscadine Bloodline joined forces with another Alabama native, Drayton Farley, for their ‘Have Faith in Me’. The Red Clay Strays spent time with fellow statesman Anderson East when writing the songs for their latest effort. And most notably, Riley Green was tapped for Ella Langley’s hugely popular ‘you look like you love me.’ Alabamans may be taking center stage, but it seems they’re making a point to do so arm-in-arm.

This statewide success may be coincidence, or even just some flash in the pan, but maybe there’s more to it. Perhaps this isn’t a conversation of “Why now?” but instead “Why not?” Alabama artists have finally seized their moment, and be it thanks to timing, community, the water, we're thirsty for what they’re bringing to the table.

For more on the current wave of Alabama artists taking over country, see below: