Check out these wonderful, limited edition lomography cameras from The White Stripes. Lomography cameras are really for everyday snapshots. They create imperfect images, often blurring or over-saturating the colors in the image. It is a really cool and whimsical form of photography. On The White Stripes website, you can see a gallery of images taken with each camera as well a gallery of shots taken by fans.

Also, if you want to know more about lomography, there is a website dedicated to this art - The Lomographic Society International. This is a fun site with lots of photos. 

It is almost time for Alabama Studio Weekend. It will take place April 19th and 20th in the Shoals area of Alabama, so mark your calendars. Come explore the the musical heritage, creative talent, storytelling and good food that make my hometown so unique and rich in Southern culture!

You can tour FAME studios, Muscle Shoals Sound, Ivy Green (the birthplace of Helen Keller), the Frank Lloyd Wright Rosenbaum Home and the home of W.C. Handy (the “Father of the Blues”).  There will also be opportunities to see the current creative talent living and working in the area: Alabama Chanin, Billy Reid and Robert Rausch. These are the folks that are responsible for pulling the event together.

Don’t miss the screening of the movie Seven Signs by J.D. Wilkes and music by Joshua Black Wilkins on April 20th, starting at 8:00pm at GAS Studio.

For more information, times and locations of events, please check out the Alabama Studio Weekend website. 

 

And they’ve been known to pick a song or two

Lord they get me off so much

They pick me up when I’m feeling blue

Now how about you?

(Chorus)

Sweet Home Alabama

Where the skies are so blue

Sweet Home Alabama

Lord, I’m coming home to you 

If you are from Alabama, you know this Lynyrd Skynyrd song by heart and if the time is right (we do have manners), you sing it to the top of your lungs. You know what I am talking about … don’t pretend. If you happen to be from the Muscle Shoals area (like myself), you may be particularly interested in the slice of the song listed above. The Swampers, also known as the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, were a group of studio musicians who worked at Muscle Shoals Sound. Lynyrd Skynyrd is from Jacksonville, Florida and wrote this song as a tribute to the studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where they recorded their demo album in 1971. Sweet Home Alabama became their first hit song from their second album. 

The song also mentions Neil Young - “I hope Neil Young will remember a southern man don’t need him around anyhow”. Neil Young had written Southern Man and Alabama, which may have made people think that all Southern people were racist and stuck in the past. Lynyrd Skynyrd responded with Sweet Home Alabama which highlighted all things good about Alabama. This was a lighthearted feud between the bands and Neil Young performed the song at a memorial when three members of Lynyrd Skynyrd were killed in a plane crash in 1977. 

Muscle Shoals Sound  

Muscle Shoals and the Shoals area is one of the most unaffected “music capitals” in the world. The music that is recorded there is distinctive because of the mixture of soul, gospel, country and rock. The city is situated between Nashville (known for country) and Memphis (known for blues). In the 1960’s, during the Civil Rights Movement, the Shoals was full of creativity and black and white artists worked side-by-side. A lot of people praise the area for its innovative thought, but it was nothing new for North Alabama, where you could find black and white musicians working together since the 1930s regardless of racial tension in other Southern regions.

There are thousands of songs that were recorded in Muscle Shoals. Some people say that the song I’ll Take You There by The Staple Singers is the perfect example of the Muscle Shoals Sound. Pretty impressive!

Here are a few artist that you may recognize that recorded in Muscle Shoals, Alabama:

Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Bob Seger, Boz Scaggs, Carlos Santana, Cher, Eric Clapton, Etta James, Helen Reddy, Jason Isbell (Drive-by Truckers), Jimmy Buffet, Joe Cocker, Linda Ronstadt, Melissa Etheridge, Otis Redding, Paul Simon, Percy Sledge, Rod Stewart, Simon and Garfunkel, The Allman Brothers Band, The Osmonds, The Rolling Stones, Travis Wammack, Widespread Panic, Faith Hill, Reba McEntire, Willie Nelson, etc., etc……