Southern Rock Is Once Again Free as as Bird

Scroll through a list of last week’s leading pop singles in Billboard, and you’ll come upon plenty of names you’d expect: Ella Langley, Taylor Swift, Olivia Dean, Sombr and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Wait, what?

Your eyes would not be deceiving you. There at no. 31, sandwiched between current singles by Luke Combs and Harry Styles, lies a song first released in 1974.

Along with vintage records by the late Toby Keith (“Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue [The Angry American]”) and Miley Cyrus (“Party in the USA”), Skynyrd’s combination of Southern swagger and good-natured Neil Young dis was given a boost by the recent July 4th and sesquicentennial celebrations.

But there may more to it than flag waving. Sometimes you can see a pop music revival barreling toward you several miles away. Some people appear to be nostalgic for so-called “butt rock,” a la Nickelback. Hence the success of Dexter and the Moonrocks’ “Freakin’ Out,” which has returned mope-grounge to the charts.

Other times, you never can tell—which is the case with the renewed interest in Southern rock.

By that term, I don’t mean the current or recent wave of guitar-centric bands who hail from that part of the country, like Wednesday, MJ Lenderman or the reunited Alabama Shakes. We’re talking about the vintage acts from the same era that gave us “Sweet Home Alabama.”

It feels as if we’re regularly reminded of a time when bands brandishing cowboy hats and guitar solos roamed the earth. The Toy Factory Project, whose lineup includes jam-band faves like Marcus King and Oteil Burbridge, is playing shows saluting the legacy of Toy Caldwell, the late frontman and songwriter of the Marshall Tucker Band. (He’s the guy who wrote all their most-remembered songs, from “Can’t You See” through “Heard It in a Love Song.”)

Charlie Daniels nostalgia alone is worth a paragraph. On a new collection of protest-style songs, Margo Price includes a cover of his “Long Haired Country Boy,” substituting “girl” for “boy.” Daniels’ story-song parable “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” the unlikeliest single ever to duke it out with disco back in 1979, was added to the Library of Congress’ prestigious National Recording Registry last month. Timed to our 250th birthday, we were even bequeathed with a new Daniels video: a clip accompanying a lesser-known later song, “My Home,” complete with an AI Charlie popping up throughout it.

Add in a new documentary on Gregg Allman that’s been warmly received and Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” as the goal song for the U.S. Men’s Soccer Team. And speaking of that classic-rock behemoth, who can forget that new-age piano instrumental of “Free Bird” used in a cruise-ship commercial? If you leave your TV on for any length of time during the day, you’ll be constantly reminded of it.

Several aspects of this revival jump out just like those final guitar solos in “Free Bird.” Back in the day, Southern rock was considered neither “cool” nor “classy” in the way other period genres like punk and prog, respectively, were. It was beloved by rebels or wanna-be rebels both north and south of the Mason-Dixon Line (including my New Jersey high school classmates), although everyone else considered the music and its makers to be rowdy, uncouth and too boisterous by a country mile.

The way in which some of those bands placed a Confederate flag onstage to denote regional loyalty was an added complication. So to have a branch of the government and a luxury vacation company associate themselves with the music is a too-legit-to-quit moment for Southern rock.

Aside from a few America-birthday tie-ins, though, it’s a little hard to figure out why all of this is transpiring right now.

Southern rock, the heyday of which was five decades back, was a burly, male-dominated branch of the rock & roll tree. In today’s culture and climate, none of those aspects could be called dominant. One of the few women to break through during Southern rock’s peak was Dale Krantz, the frontperson in the post-plane-crash Skynyrd offshoot the Rossington Collins Band. (And if you haven’t heard her wail on “Don’t Misunderstand Me,” check it out.)

One could cite MAGA as a fan base, but that movement has been around for a decade now, so that’s not an especially new angle. Similarly, the bond between Southern rock and mainstream country (which loves a guitar solo too) has been apparent for a while.

A new twist is the connection between Southern rock and alt-country. It was felt last year in Brent Cobb’s Ain’t Rocked in a While, one of the most Southern-rock-sounding albums since the presidency of genre fan Jimmy Carter. From its dobro lick to its lyrics, Price’s “Long Haired Country Girl” treats the Daniels original like a sacred text, recasting it for new-gen mavericks male and female alike. And surely some of its sentiments (“A drunkard wants another drink of wine/And a politician wants your vote/I don’t want much of nothin’ at all/But I will take another toke”) resonate now with people who are just sick of … everything.

Like Price, maybe some people—musicians or music heads alike—are being reminded of the quality of the records that emerged during that era. Listening back to prime Marshall Tucker Band, I was struck by both the durability of Caldwell’s songs and the seamless way the band wove in Western swing (which helped introduce suburban dorks like me to Bob Wills records).

I asked Alan Paul, author of two best-selling books on the Allman Brothers Band (and also a member of Friends of the Brothers, an excellent ABB homage band), who connected the Southern rock revival to broader social themes. (He’s also co-writing an upcoming memoir by Jaimoe, the last man standing from the original Allmans lineup and subject of my recent profile in Rolling Stone.) “I simply think that a younger generation is looking for more down-to-earth, authentic, pre-digital experiences,” he says. “The earthiness and rootsiness of Southern rock songs harken back to a different era that those of us lived through yearn for—and our kids are wistful to have missed, Of course, like all nostalgia, it’s romanticized, which doesn’t make it any less visceral or real. And, crucially, the songs themselves stand up.”

What’s also undeniable about the Southern rock renaissance—and sets it apart from, say, the yacht-rock movement—is that it’s not rooted in kitsch or irony. No one is cranking up “Simple Man,” “Whipping Post” or “Can’t You See” and reveling in its ridiculousness (while pretending to love it). Then and now, Southern rock was no laughing matter, and for all its issues, bless its ornery heart for it.

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