A Second Helping of Southern Rock, Part 2 of 2

A revival of veteran acts and an explosion of new blood in the '90s threatened to rival Southern Rock's golden era. This week: bands of the '90s redefine what it means to be Southern.

Oct 25, 2024

If you haven’t read Part One yet, click here first.

The New Breed

As the 1980s became the 1990s, the South started doing it again.

From out of Atlanta, in addition to the Georgia Satellites, Drivin n’ Cryin caused a buzz with their signing to Island Records on the strength of their debut, Scarred But Smarter. Mixing a hard rock edge with folk and country tendencies, Drivin n’ Cryin, led by Wisconsin transplant Kevn Kinney, could fit just as easily with the R.E.M. crowd as with the Black Crowes (they’ve toured with both, in fact). The band’s third album, 1989’s Mystery Road, contained what’s rightfully considered a modern-day Southern Rock classic, “Honeysuckle Blue.”

Also busting out of Atlanta in February of 1990 was Shake Your Money Maker, the debut album from the Black Crowes. Like the Georgia Satellites, the Crowes leaned more toward the Faces and Stones than Skynyrd and Hatchet. It was as if the Crowes and the Sats were reclaiming the swagger from those Brits, bringing it back down south, where it originated.

Make no mistake, however, the Black Crowes were part of the new generation. As Rich Robinson told Rolling Stone in 1991, “I was born in the South, and I'm very proud of that. But I'm not waving a rebel flag, you know?”

Also in 1990, from Alabama by way of LA came Terrell, whose On the Wings of Dirty Angels made a brief noise on rock radio with the single “Shoutin’ Ground,” most notable for interpolating a verse from Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” The band’s namesake, Charles Terrell, came off as more Ronnie Van Zant-like than even Ronnie’s brother Johnny at the time. Terrell’s music was southern-fried funk infused with a hard rock punch and an aw-shucks outlook.

With the success of these and other artists from below the Mason-Dixon, Capricorn Records decided it was a good time to start up again. Teaming up with Warner Bros, and basing its operations out of Nashville, Capricorn’s first signing in the new era was Athens-based Widespread Panic. Drawing from the Allmans as well as the Grateful Dead, WP helped usher in what became known retroactively as the jam-band era.

Although Capricorn had success with acts such as Cake and 311, they were still rooted in the South, proven by signings such as Col. Bruce Hampton and the Aquarium Rescue Unit (who rose from the ashes of the Hampton Grease Band and were managed by Walden in the early ‘70s) and Gov’t Mule (featuring Warren Haynes and Allen Woody from the ABB as well as former Dickey Betts Band drummer Matt Abts).

Just as the first wave of Southern Rock groups helped define a “New South” during the time of the Carter administration, this second wave started around the time another Southerner was campaigning for the White House, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton. He was inaugurated in January of 1993, and like Carter, brought a love of rock’n’roll (and southern-tinged jazz) and a youthful, Southern energy back to Pennsylvania Avenue.

However, it was different this time. This generation of Southern Rockers did not use, nor identify with, the term “Southern Rock.” Gone were the Confederate flags that decorated the stages and audiences of the 1970s. These artists distanced themselves from those tropes, choosing instead to celebrate a more diverse South and the mysteries and complexities it holds. This was helped in no small way by R.E.M., whose Out Of Time, released in 1991, built upon their already complicated vision of growing up Southern.

Drivin n’ Cryin hit big on MTV that year as well with the title track to Fly Me Courageous, which was misinterpreted as a pro-war song at the onset of Operation Desert Storm. The album also features the more folk-leaning “Let’s Go Dancing” to offset the riff rock of the title song.

The Black Crowes followed up their successful debut with their masterpiece, The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion in 1992. Digging deeper into their Stones and Faces fascinations, the Robinson brothers along with new hires Marc Ford on guitars and Eddie Harsch on keys (Georgia-born legend and former Allman Brother Chuck Leavell handled keys on Money Maker), offered up the best set of songs of their career.

By 1993, Dan Baird of the Georgia Satellites returned with his solo debut on Def American. The Sats split after their third - and best - album, 1989’s In the Land of Salvation and Sin. Baird then teamed up with former Satellite Mauro Magellan, along with former pre-fame Satellites Keith Christopher and Brendan O’Brien - with songwriting and vocal assists from Terry Anderson - and unleashed one of the best balls-out rock’n’roll albums of the decade, Love Songs for the Hearing Impaired.

It was a hit at rock radio on the strength of the Anderson-penned novelty “I Love You, Period” but it was the closing track (also co-penned by Anderson) about a runaway teen who wins a wet-t-shirt contest on the strength of her song choice (Skynyrd’s “Gimme Three Steps”) that stands out as a ‘90s self-aware Southern Rock classic.

During this time, more Southern groups were being signed to both majors and indies, and rock radio was all over them. Again, Athens stepped up, this time by delivering Allgood. Mixing Allman-esque leads over a mildly funky rhythmic sense with vocals reminiscent of Stevie Ray Vaughan, they were signed to A&M for their second album in ‘93. However, their sound wasn’t unique enough to stand out from the many jam bands of the era.

Also in 1993, out of Birmingham, Alabama came the self-titled debut by Brother Cane. They hit rock radio that year with the single “Got No Shame” which, despite its harmonica intro and a little more twang, didn’t sound much different than the glam/pop metal from the late ‘80s/early ‘90s that was now on the way out thanks to the onset of grunge. Some of their debut does lean more toward the familiar sonics of Southern Rock, albeit in a more generic way. After some lineup changes a couple of years later, their follow-up, Seeds, sprouted the number one rock hit, “And Fools Shine On.” It was 1995, and that single sounded like a completely different band, virtually indistinguishable from the grunge and post-grunge sound dominating the airwaves.

Meanwhile, 1993 also saw the debut album from Raleigh, NC’s Cry of Love, Brother. One of the best rock albums of the decade, debut or otherwise, Brother was produced by John Custer and sounded nothing like anything that was on the radio at the time unless that radio station was playing an old Free or Humble Pie track. Audley Freed’s strat-strangling leads and powerful riffs led bassist Robert Kearns and drummer Jason Patterson through ten rock’n’soul workouts. The pure old-school rock voice of Kelly Holland soared above it all.

Cry of Love hit number one on the mainstream rock chart with “Peace Pipe,” number two with “Bad Thing,” and number 13 with “Too Cold in the Winter.” Aside from those singles, Brother boasts the statement-of-purpose full-throttle “Highway Jones,” the tough swagger of “Carnival” and “Hand Me Down,” and the driving Bad Company-esque “Pretty As You Please.” Overall, Brother offered a loud, but life-affirming moment in the middle of an overall miserable era of rock radio.

Yet another debut in 1993 belonged to Nashville’s Screamin’ Cheetah Wheelies. Fronted by the soul-soaked vocals of Mike Farris, the single, “Shakin’ the Blues” off their self-titled album hit the top ten on the mainstream rock chart.

Many of these artists were as influenced by ‘70s funk as by the first wave of southern rockers and, of course, blues-based rockers from Mountain to Free. In that respect, no other Southern band from the ‘90s were as powerful in sound or as diverse in their influences as Gov’t Mule.

Inspired by the power trios of the late ‘60s and beyond such as Cream, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, James Gang, ZZ Top, and others, Gov’t Mule grew out of jams between the Allmans’ new bloods Warren Haynes and Allen Woody, along with former Dickey Betts Band drummer Matt Abts. They were also influenced by everyone from Frank Zappa to John Coltrane, Michael Hedges to Funkadelic. Their self-titled debut, released in 1995, drew inspiration from all these sources and many others while crafting a true modern Southern Rock classic.

It was their live shows, however, where they fully exhibited their strengths.

The mid-’90s were a fertile time for bands around the South as many signed to bigger labels on the strength of initial self-released or indie success, such as Clemson, South Carolina’s Cravin’ Melon, whose self-titled EP - and especially its full-length follow-up, Where I Wanna Be - caught the attention of Mercury Records. The label released Red Clay Harvest in 1997. Its opening track, “Come Undone” hit the top 40 Mainstream Rock chart in Billboard, but here in the Carolinas, the big hit was a simple celebration of “Sweet Tea” (which had previously been released on 1995’s Where I Wanna Be).

However, no other South Carolina group - or southern group for that matter - hit as big as Hootie and the Blowfish with their 1994 debut, Cracked Rear View. With a title inspired by a line from John Hiatt’s “Learning How to Love You,” Cracked Rear View was a massive hit. It was the biggest-selling album of 1995 and eventually reached double-diamond status, hitting sales of over 21 million worldwide.

Singles like “Hold My Hand,” “Let Her Cry,” and “Only Wanna Be With You” were inescapable by 1995 and, as it often happened during that era, the enormous success of Hootie and the Blowfish caused a backlash from the “cool” set. In every way you looked at it, they were just a good bar/frat-party-type band that made good. They didn’t trash stages or destroy their instruments. They weren’t as aggressive as the Seattle scene. They weren’t edgy like the bands grunge and alternative rock fans had come to expect. They actually smiled in their photos and acted like they were enjoying their damn selves. (The horror!)

I never got the hate. I was proud to see a band from somewhere close by get that big, and even more importantly, they had great taste and championed bands from our region (Dillon Fence was famously name-checked on “Only Wanna Be With You”) and elsewhere.

Another SC native, Edwin McCain, got caught up in the mid-’90s wave started by Hootie and the Blowfish and recruited their lead singer, Darius Rucker, to duet on McCain’s song “Solitude,” which rock radio picked up from his major label debut in ‘95.

Despite the subject matter in “Solitude,” Hootie, Edwin, and Cravin’ Melon all shared a sound that was much more easy-going than the aggression and angst that dictated much of what was in heavy rotation on rock radio during the mid-’90s.

Texas Flood

Disclaimer: Texas gets its own section because I’ve always felt the Lone Star State played more of a tertiary role in the Southern Rock world. I mean, Texas is its own thing. It has its own sound whether we’re talking country, blues, or rock. Hey, even Gregg Allman once said, “Texas ain’t the South.” (Gregg also rightfully believed the term “Southern Rock” was redundant. He felt since rock’n’roll first came from the South, it would be like calling it, “rock rock.” For the record, he considers the ABB “a progressive blues band.”) That said, since ZZ Top was mentioned in the Charlie Daniels Band’s Southern Rock rallying cry, “The South’s Gonna Do It,” let’s head out west…

After putting out a string of classic albums in the 1970s, ZZ Top hit superstar status - with the help of MTV - with 1983’s Eliminator. That same year, Stevie Ray Vaughan, a young guitar slinger from Dallas, brought straight-up blues back into the mainstream with his debut, Texas Flood. Meanwhile, SRV’s older brother, Jimmie Vaughan, was strangling his Strat in the Fabulous Thunderbirds, who hit big on rock radio and MTV a couple of years later with “Tuff Enuff.” Both brothers were reaping the benefits of the roots/heartland rock boom of the mid-’80s.

On August 27th, 1990, another aerial tragedy occurred when Stevie Ray was killed in a helicopter crash after performing at the Alpine Valley Resort in Wisconsin. Unlike the members of Lynyrd Skynyrd who were killed in a plane crash 13 years earlier, however, the death of SRV did not signal the end of an era. Instead, it inspired the dawn of a new one.

In 1992, at a chance meeting at the Austin Rehearsal Complex (yes, ARC) where each of them was either working on separate projects or just had equipment stored, Charlie Sexton, Doyle Bramhall II, and Double Trouble - SRV’s rhythm section, Chris Layton and Tommy Shannon - formed what became the Arc Angels. They’ve only released one studio album (so far), but from “Living in a Dream” to “Paradise Cafe” and the two odes to SRV, “Sent By Angels” and the devastating “See What Tomorrow Brings,” it stands as one of the best rock albums of the era.

In 1993, another self-titled debut from an Austin-based guitarist entered the world by way, appropriately enough, of the relaunched Capricorn Records. Ian Moore had honed his chops by playing guitar for the mighty Joe Ely in and around the Lone Star State. He was soon opening for the Rolling Stones and ZZ Top. His self-titled debut may not have broken any new ground, but tracks like the soul-soaked “Satisfied” and the sublime “Blue Sky” still sound downright celestial in 2024.

After it looked like the Arc Angels were going to be a one-off, in 1993-94 Layton and Shannon of Double Trouble joined up with former Mavericks guitarist David Lee Holt as well as David Grissom (another guitarist who toured with Ely) for an impromptu jam session at the legendary Antone’s in Austin. After recruiting Malford Milligan to handle vocals, the band, christened Storyville, released their debut, Bluest Eyes. Industry buzz from that album gained them a major label deal with Atlantic’s subsidiary, Code Blue, which released A Piece of Your Soul in 1996. It included the powerful “What Passes for Love” and one of the best blues-rock songs of the decade, “Good Day for the Blues.”

Storyville would record one more album, the solid Dog Years, in 1998, which garnered them a rock radio hit with the tough-ass kiss-off “Born Without You” but, sadly, that would be it. It’s a damn shame because they were one of those bands that had it all: an incredibly soulful voice with Milligan, two amazing lead guitarists in Holt and Grissom, an unequaled and legendary rhythm section (Double Trouble, for crying out loud), and hook-heavy yet deeply felt songwriting inside a powerful blues-based rock framework.

Though they may have leaned more to the country side of life, Shaver, the band that included legendary songwriter Billy Joe Shaver, his guitar-strangling son Eddy, original Georgia Satellite bassist Keith Christopher (who’s now, incidentally, playing with Skynyrd), and rotating drummers that included Greg Morrow, Craig Wright, and David Crockett, burned down dive bars and juke joints throughout the US on the strength of their mid-’90s albums, Tramp On Your Street, Unshaven: Live at Smith’s Old Bar, and Electric Shaver.

As for that little ol’ band from Texas, ZZ Top got back to basics in 1996 and released Rhythmeen, their most dirty, blues-soaked album since Deguello, mainly because Frank Beard was finally flailing away behind the kit again and didn’t sound like a metronome.

Strictly “Southern” or not, Texas - especially Austin - kept high-quality rock’n’roll alive and well in a decade where rock radio filled their playlists with angst and down-tuned dirges from Nirvana to Alice in Chains.

Honorary Southern Rockers

Toward the end of the 1980s, Guns n’ Roses brought a sense of danger back to rock’n’roll after several years of neo-glam bands having nothin’ but a good time (which, musically, always sounded to me like a pretty decent Molly Hatchet song; Danny Joe may have written some different lyrics, though). Suddenly, we were in the jungle and we were gonna die. In Gn’R’s wake, labels (especially Geffen), started signing up similarly-styled bands like JunkYard (an LA band who issued their own song called “Simple Man” on their self-titled debut that owed more than just a tip of the hat to Southern Rock), Little Caesar, Circus of Power, The Four Horsemen, and Raging Slab.

Of these, Raging Slab most obviously carried the torch for Southern Rock, regardless of being based in New York City. Their self-titled third album was their major label debut for RCA in 1989 and included the dusty, ferocious Don’t Dog Me among several others that sounded more Southern-fried than many of the veterans that had been wading through the ‘80s searching for relevance. One critic famously described the band as “Skynyrd meets Metallica.”

It was their 1993 follow-up on Rick Rubin’s Def American label, however, that is their masterwork. Dynamite Monster Boogie Concert (with one-time Georgia Satellite-turned ‘90s super producer Brendan O’Brien behind the board) is heavy, but it swings. The songs are inventive, the lyrics are ridiculously surreal in the best sense, and they convey a sharp wit and a sense of humor that was all but missing in hard rock during the early ‘90s.

Other artists in the ‘90s may not have come from south of the Mason-Dixon, but you can tell they grew up on a steady diet of Skynyrd, the Allmans, the Outlaws, Marshall Tucker, Molly Hatchet, and/or others. One of the most badass of all was Sass Jordan. Hailing not only from up north but way up north in Montreal, Jordan’s MCA debut, 1992’s Racine, delivered such bare-bones southern-tinged rock’n’roll that Cry of Love courted her to be their lead singer when Kelly Holland split in 1994. (They ultimately recruited Robert Mason, who sang on their follow-up, Diamonds and Debris, which is a great album, but I still think of it as one of the biggest missed opportunities of the decade.)

You can also hear and feel the southern soul dripping from California-bred Sweet Vine and their self-titled 1997 album, especially the opener, “Mountainside.”

Then, there’s Pride & Glory, fronted by New Jersey-born Zakk Wylde, whom I recently wrote about here.

Southern Legacy

Over the last 25 years, a handful of groups have brought the Southern Rock thing kicking and screaming into the 21st century, most notably Blackberry Smoke, Jason Isbell, and (his former band) the Drive-By Truckers (DBT’s Southern Rock Opera, The Dirty South, and Decoration Day are required listening not just for Southern Rock fans, but every rock fan).

Gov’t Mule and Widespread Panic are still out there spreading the rock wherever they can. The Black Crowes just released a new album this year, and other new groups such as the Georgia Thunderbolts are keeping the sound alive.

Ultimately, though, no matter how gussied up it got over the years, from forays into jazz and prog-rock in the ‘70s to synth-happy pop in the ‘80s, Southern Rock owes its sound and attitude solely to the blues, country, and early rock’n’roll - all sounds, fittingly, born in the south.

The Mixtape

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