Southall

One Liner: Pretty great southern rock/red dirt country in the vein of Turnpike/Flatland
Wikipedia Genre: No real Wikipedia for the band, but Red dirt country, southern rock
Home: Stillwater, OK

Poster Position: Last Quarter - Line 22
Day: Saturday
Weekend Two Only.

BMI Stage at 5:15.

Thoughts:  Southall is a section of London, but in this instance is the current name of what used to be known as the Read Southall Band.  They are an American country rock band from Stillwater, OK formed by Read Southall that sounds very much like Flatland Cavalry to me.  Rolling Stone did an article in 2023 that I am not allowed to read because of dumb paywalls, but I can see that they are referencing the explosion of Oklahoma country acts that was presaged by Zach Bryan's rise to fame.  In that article, they cite to Southall, Wyatt Flores, Kaitlin Butts, and Lance Roark.  Flores and Butts have already played Two Step, and are great stuff, so now we get another slice of this world.

Five albums - 2015's Six String Sorrow, 2017's Borrowed Time, 2018's live album, 2021's For the Birds, and then, after the re-branding, 2023's Southall.  Let's go old school with the first one.  That second album boasts five of their most popular tracks, but "Why" crushes all the others with 124.2 million streams.

Almost sounds like Kaitlin Butts is the harmony-singer on there, like in a bunch of the old Flatland tunes.  Good, if very sad, song about losing love.  Also, the comments are very sad - loads of people being like "damn, I screwed up with you and I'm sorry and now when I hear this song I'm just so damn sorry."  The early single "Clean Slate" is also very good.

I watched a nugget of a documentary called Southall or Nothing, which is super generic and silly.  "Man, as long as you are real to yourself, bro, you get what you give, man."  But they did note that the band, when the name changed, went from Read being more in charge to it being the whole band giving their input and being involved.  Sounds like a good thing to my ears.  Looks like maybe they record in an old church?  The video did a bad job of actually explaining this.

For the next, let's go with the new sound of the revamped and renamed band.  This is "Scared Money" with just about 4 million streams and a real video!

A little more southern rock than Red Dirt in that one.  Like Lynyrd Skynyrd on training wheels. I also heard both "Tulsa Time" and Jason Isbell's "Super 8."  Also on that new disc, "Out Alive" comes on a little like grunge, maybe if Kings of Leon was covering Soundgarden.  "DLTGYD" is almost metal underneath.

I played this for the wife last night as we drove to dinner and she was in.  I really like it.