 The rise of southern rock from the 1950s all the up through the 80s and 90s-from Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Charlie Daniels Band to R.E.M. and The Dave Matthews Band.
The southern rock movement "changed our lives and gave us a sense of community and purpose. We had southern rock, and therefore we had each other." Those are the words of one Mark Kemp, of Allan's guest this week. He is a veteran music journalist and author of the new book, Dixie Lullaby: A Story of Music, Race, and New Beginnings in a New South.
Mark Kemp is a former music editor of Rolling Stone and former Vice President of Music Editorial at MTV Networks. He began his journalism career covering the crime beat for a small North Carolina daily. Mark's articles, essays and criticism have appeared in numerous books, magazines and newspapers including Rolling Stone, Spin, Option, The New York Times, The Charlotte Observer, The Village Voice and L.A. Weekly. He has written and co-written music documentaries for MTV and VH1. In 1997 he was nominated for a Grammy for his liner notes to the CD Farewells & Fantasies, a retrospective of music by the 60s protest singer Phil Ochs. He's now the entertainment editor at The Charlotte Observer.
Growing up in the South comes with an understanding that the past is filled with demons. It comes with a long legacy of prejudice and violence, and the likelihood of being perceived as racist—simply for being southern. For the young southerners who grew up in the 1960s and 70s, with newly desegregated schools and images of Martin Luther King, Jr., on television, that legacy was an especially heavy burden. They desperately sought others who shared their confusion, who despised and rejected the South's dark past as they did. What they found was a powerful force that united their generation and helped to assuage their pain, anger, and feelings of guilt. What they found was southern rock 'n roll.
In Dixie Lullaby: A Story of Music, Race, and New Beginnings in a New South, veteran music journalist Mark Kemp blends personal narrative with social and musical history to provide an inside look at both the rise of the southern rock movement and its healing and unifying impact on an entire generation of southerners who came of age under its influence.
Kemp, who was in the third grade when his Asheboro, North Carolina, grammar school was integrated in 1968, grew up surrounded by the racial tensions of that time. He is a firsthand witness to the "emotional baggage" that goes along with being a southerner, but he can also attest to the new identity that southern rock gave to his generation: an identity that went beyond outside perceptions of the South as one big racist backwater, and gave young southerners something they could be unabashedly proud of.
In an interview, Kemp can discuss how southern rock bands like The Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd rose to fame, and how their music influenced the attitudes and ideals of subsequent generations, inspiring the music of groups like R.E.M. and The Dave Matthews Band, country artists from Alan Jackson to Gretchen Wilson, and even young rappers like Bubba Sparxxx. Reaching far beyond a personal narrative, Dixie Lullaby is a powerful and original journey through the South from the 1950s to the 90s, combining dozens of interviews with musical groups and their fans, with an in-depth look at one of the most volatile periods in our history. Shedding new light on the heart of a social and music movement, Kemp shows how southern rock forever changed the landscape of rock 'n roll and the very face of this country. |
