ARTICLES
Kathryn Scheldt, Alabama Singer/Songwriter by Frye Gaillard
www. ame r i c ana ga z e t t e .ne t 7 August/Sept. 2011
http://americanastreet.com/new-april-issue-of-americanastreet-magazine/
On the dusty main street of Georgiana, AL, the Ga-AnnaTheater looks like it’s seen better days – and in fact, it has. Among other things, it’s the place where Hank Williams, a native of Georgiana,made his first public appearance, and though the brick exterior looks faded and old, it is, for a handful of artists in the know, a historic stop on the Americana circuit. Two years ago, the headliner for the first and only show I’ve ever seen there was the Grand Ole Opry’s George Hamilton IV, who was paying tribute to Georgiana’s most famous son. Before the hometown folk, the hardest of hard-core Hank Williams fans, he introduced his special guest for the evening, an Alabama songwriter named Kathryn Scheldt, who ended her set with something she had only recently recorded. “Rufus andHank,”co-written by Scheldt in memory of Williams, was also a tribute to Rufus Payne, an African-American street singer who had been the musical mentor to a teenaged Hank. They made a funny pair down by the railroad track - Skinny white boy and his friend who was black. In rural Alabama in the 1930s, it was borderline scandalous for a rough and hard-living man of the streets, especially if he was black, to be hangingout with a young white boy. But as music historians are quick to tell you, the music that Payne and Williams made together left a permanent impression on Hank, infusing his country sound with the blues. I knew as I listened to Scheldt in Georgiana that this was a writer who understood that tradition, and without a lot of fanfare,was doing her part to keep it alive. Already, I had seen her career evolve over the course of four well-crafted CDs. I had heard her play in listening rooms and other grass-roots venues throughout the South, and had even written afew songs with her, having discovered a kindred Americana spirit. Earlier this summer – with her fifth CD scheduled for release this fall – the two of us sat down together to talk about that record, and her musical roots.
Frye: You have a new CD coming out in a month or so on Lamon Records in Nashville.Tell me about it.
Kathryn: It’s called“One Good Reason,” and it’ll be one of the featured releases in Lamon’s celebration of its 50th anniversary as an independent record label.That’s a pretty good run for an independent, and I’m happy to be in the company of some of their other great artists like GeorgeHamilton IV and Dave Moody,who’s a Dove Award winner and Grammy nominee. And Ed Bruce,who wrote “Mama’s, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys,”used to record for them too.
Frye: You’ve done some appearances with George IV?
Kathryn: Yeah, two or three. I just love him. He’s one of the truly fine gentlemen of country music, really of Americana music, because back inthe ‘60s he helped introduce the world to those great Canadian folk singers – Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen. Back then, he was recording their songs more than anybody else.
Frye: When did you start playing this kind of music? How did you first get into it?
Kathryn: I grew up in a family where music was important.My parents both sang.They sang in beautiful harmony together, and in their marriage it was probably the only time they were ever in harmony. I also played the flute when I was a kid, but then I pawned it. I was hearing folksongs and Beatles songs, so I went down to Bernie’s Pawn Shop in Camden, SC, and traded my flute for a cheap guitar. It was killing my fingers,and my parents were furious, but they took me to Columbia and we bought a classical guitar and a Joan Baez songbook. I sat in bed and learned those songs, as well as some by Peter, Paul & Mary, the Kingston Trio, Josh White, Elvis, the Beatles. Music has beena big part of my life for as long as I can remember. It was the motivating factor for megetting out of bed – the only place I felt like I could be myself.
Frye: Did you play in any bands back when you were a teenager?
Kathryn: I sang in a band called The Friends of Mind, a rock band with my brother,Richard, and Mike and Pat Severs, two friends who are now great session players in Nashville. Both of them play for Don McLean; Pat was a founding member of Pirates of the Mississippi, and Mike has played for Dolly Parton,Gretchen Peters, a whole bunch of other great artists. Back in our rock ‘n’ roll days we sang songs from Motown, Juice Newton,Grace Slick. I was in high school then.
Frye: You also went through a time when you played classical guitar. How did that come about?
Kathryn: I went to college as a voice major and after two years, I was totally miserable. I have a contralto voice, and all my teachers seemed to want me to do was sing higher and louder. My boyfriend was in Vietnam, my parents were splitting up, so I transferred to the University of South Carolina, and I heard music coming out of a practice room. It was a woman playing Bach on a classical guitar, and I knew immediately I had found a place to put my soul. I put everything into studying a beautiful instrument. I went to study with Aaron Shearer,a famous guitar instructor at the Peabody Conservatory, and later I studied under David Russell, a Grammy Award-winning classical guitarist. I got my Master’s and began to teach and to write music books.
Frye: You also went to Italy in there somewhere.
Kathryn: Yeah, I had fallen and broken my wrist and couldn’t play for a while, so I went to Europe to heal. This would have been in the 1980s. I picked up my guitar again and began to play folk and country songs. I call it my have-guitar-will-travel phase.
Frye: What kinds of places did you play?
Kathryn: I got a job singing in a cantina on the island of Ischia, and later I sang in clubs withTony Scott, the jazz clarinetist, who was livingin Rome at that time. He had played with Billie Holiday.
Frye: What prompted you eventually to synthesize all this and to enter the world of Americana music? To become a full-time singer-songwriter?
Kathryn: I got my Masters in 1994, and I did my thesis on Neapolitan songs from the south of Italy, which are folk songs, country songs. I was teaching in college, first in North Carolina and then in Alabama,but I just decided that the time had come to make a break from academia. So about eight years ago, I called Mike Severs in Nashville and said,“Hey, I’ve got all these songs in me, all these lyrics I’ve been keeping in my journals.” So I went to Nashville and I met with Mike and we started working on some demo stuff. I was working with another writer, Anne Kent Rush,down on the Alabama coast,and we had written some pretty good songs.
Frye: It was about then that you and I met.
Kathryn: Yeah,my husband and I had already settled back in Alabama. That was where my family was from. I had spent summers there as a kid. Right after Hurricane Katrina, Kent and I had written “Mercy, Send a Dove,”which was one of the first of a whole bunch of songs that have come out in recent years about hard times down on the Gulf. Steve Earle,Emmylou Harris, Stevie Nicks, a lot of folks have been doing them. But you really liked hearing“Mercy, Send a Dove.”
Frye: Yeah, it seemed to me like it was straight from the heart of the country-Americana tradition, the kind of music I’ve loved for years.
Kathryn: Well, I had always listened to Emmylou,Dolly Parton,Bobbie Gentry. I cut my teeth on those songs. And I was aware of your work as a writer. I read WatermelonWine, your book on country music, and when you liked my song I said,“Damn, this is a guy who has interviewed Emmylou, Dolly, Linda Ronstadt, Loretta Lynn. Maybe he knows what he’s talking about.”
Frye: Well, I had written a lot about music, but I had never actually written any songs until you sort of roped me in. It was after I had written the liner notes for “Gettin’Ready,” your first CD.
Kathryn: Yes, and after that we collaborated on “Southern Girl,” and “SouthernWind,”two CDs that have gotten some attention internationally – airplay in the UK and Australia,stuff like that, plus a few dozen stations in this country. Enough to get me some listening room gigs – Eddie’s Attic in Atlanta,where I was on the bill with my friends, Peter Cooper and Eric Brace; Moonlight on the Mountain in Birmingham, the Rutledge in Nashville. I sang onThacker Mountain Radio in Oxford, MS,which goes out all over that state and parts of Alabama, and Marshall Chapman and Matraca Berg were kind enough to share the stage at the Bluebird.
Frye: What about the next CD?
Kathryn: I’m really excited about it. Mike Severs is producing it, and he and Pat (Severs) are both playing on it. We got Byron House to play stand-up bass. He’s the best. He’splaying right now for Robert Plant and the Band of Joy, and on this record he just did some amazing stuff. He has a classical background, you know, which is pretty cool. John Gardner is playing drums,and he’s played for pretty much everybody – the Dixie Chicks, people like that. I really love his work.
Frye: What about the songs?
Kathryn: There are ten originals, and a cover version of “The Tennessee Waltz.” I had done it recently at a jazz festival in Camden, SC, accompanied by a friend of mine named Jim Mings, who’s a great jazz guitarist from South Carolina by way of Austin.He’s got a little country in his soul also. And there was a guy on sax named Bryson Borgstedt, and he was fabulous.We did a kind of jazz-country version, and peoples eemed to love it. On the record, Pat Severs plays the saxophone part on steel.
Frye: What about the songs you wrote yourself?
Kathryn: Well, I should say that eight of the ten I co-wrote, and I love them all. But the one that’s close to my heart these days is called “Mama’s Lullaby.” It’s pretty much a true story, inspired by my Mama,who’s been my biggest cheerleader through the years,but is now battling Alzheimer’s. It’s one of those soul-wrenching country things.
Frye: There’s something to be said for soul-wrenching.
Kathryn: Yeah, it’s one of the great traditions of country music, Americana music, taking something sad and turning it into something beautiful. It’s why people love those songs.They need to know they are not alone.
Written by: Frye Galliard Photo supplied.
Article from Lagniappe
Lagniappe
‘Southern Girl’ Tells a Tale of Relationships, Life, Feelings
By Amy Brown
Issue #189
October 20, 2009
Frye Gailliard, author of “Watermelon Wine: Remembering the Golden Years of Country Music,” and a writer in residence at University of South Alabama was contacted by Kathryn Scheldt, above, to write songs about the South. Gailliard jumped at the opportunity after hearing some of the project.
The only thing more Southern than sweet tea, Saturdays full of SEC football and crawfish festivals is some good ‘ol soulful, blues-inspired country music. Real Southern tunes are those that tug at your heart strings while making you want to dance and sing along. Kathryn Scheldt’s latest album, “Southern Girl,” does just that.
Just like its songs, “Southern Girl’s” origin has a story to tell. According to Frye Gaillard, University of South Alabama writer-in-residence, the seed for “Southern Girl” was planted last fall. Gaillard and Scheldt co-wrote 10 of “Southern Girl’s” 13 songs. Scheldt wrote the first three songs before the pair officially began collaborating.
Scheldt explains how she pushed Gaillard into teaming up with her for “Southern Girl.” “For my last record, I used the title from one of his books, With Music and Justice for All,” she said.
Scheldt felt the need to contact Gaillard and tell him she borrowed his title, which put the two in contact, although, Gaillard said, “Kathryn and I met back in 2005 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. It wasn’t long after Hurricane Katrina and we heard this incredible solo she’d written with Kent Rush, another songwriter from Daphne.”
The song was called “Mercy Send a Dove,” and was about compassion in the face of disaster. Despite being hard of hearing, Gaillard’s mother was extremely moved by the song. The song was so real and authentic that Gaillard, his wife and his mother waited to compliment Scheldt after the service. When Gaillard’s mother passed away, Scheldt was asked to sing at the funeral, and that’s when they began collaborating.
Gaillard, author of “Watermelon Wine: Remembering the Golden Years of Country Music”, is a sharp writer with a clear, honest voice who has done his research on the nature and evolution of country music. Collaborating with country songstress Scheldt seemed like a natural fit, except Gaillard didn’t see himself as anyone’s poet.
“He said, ‘I don’t rhyme’.” Scheldt knew it would take a little arm twisting to get Gaillard fully on board for “Southern Girl.”
“Kathryn played those (first few) songs to me just to get my reaction to them. I thought they were good songs, so I said, you know, these songs ought to be the heart of your next CD, which should be called ‘Southern Girl,’ and it should be both Southern and female. A woman’s kind of view,” he said. Scheldt wasn’t so sure at first.
“Frye, these are pretty rockin’ and bold. You think I can come out with this kind of stuff?” asked Scheldt referring to her lyrics’ deep subject matter.
“They weren’t shocking; just real…emotions,” Gaillard replied. Gaillard’s experiences in literature predisposed him to look at the stories in music.
“I had written enough about music that I could think of it that way. Conceptually, I could think of what holds an album together,” he said.
Knowing she had Gaillard’s interest, Scheldt once again asked for help writing a song. “I had an idea for a song. The idea was words get in the way. So, I challenged Frye to that, and then we started writing together,” said Scheldt.
Prior to this involvement, Gaillard contributed “a word here or there” to “With Music and Justice for All.” “With ‘Words Get in the Way,’ I wrote the chorus, and Kat wrote the lyrics. It bowled me over that I wrote four lines. It was like cocaine; I was hooked,” recalled Gaillard.
Gaillard was hooked, but Scheldt didn’t fully reel him in until after a performance at St. Bridgette’s Catholic Church in Prichard. In front of “the church, which was established in 1867, is a historical marker that says ‘the famous railroad engineer, Casey Jones, was Baptized in this church.”
“I’d heard the legend, but I didn’t know ‘Casey Jones’ was real,” said Gaillard referring to a children’s song written by Willis Saunders that was sung about Jones’s bravery in the face of death.
“With Frye being a historian, I saw this as a way to snare him in. We started Googling and sending messages back and forth,” Scheldt said.
Eventually, Scheldt and Gaillard produced the bluesy folk ballad “Casey in Love,” which was their first-ever full-fledged writing experience. The song tells the story of the swashbuckling Casey Jones who got baptized because he wanted to marry a Catholic girl. Jones had worked in the railroad yards in Mobile, and according Gaillard, “What you could tell from reading his life story, he was hooked on the adventure of driving trains and going fast and wandering around. On the other hand, he was in love with this woman, and as they began to have a family and have children, there was this fundamental tension in his life.”
How the song ends, well, you’ll have to listen to find out, but it is indeed epic.
After “Casey in Love,” the talented twosome were off and running. They “wrote frantically,” penning nine-and-a-half songs between February and April 2009. “Southern Girl” was recorded partly in Nashville and partly in Daphne.
Of their finished product, Gaillard said, “Mercifully, I don’t sing anything. I just help write it, and I did help produce it. I made decisions about the order of the songs. Every song was written to stand alone. Some people feel like they know Kathryn afterwards. It’s a woman’s perspective on things.”
According to Scheldt, her album’s title cut is about wanting to be kidnapped to escape. . Why? “I think there’s a Southern girl in every woman. That’s where I’m coming from with it,” said Scheldt.
Gaillard acknowledges his role in co-writing an album from the feminine perspective was a unique one. “I don’t know how to account for that, but it’s just a really interesting thing to do…try to get inside of the head of someone from a different gender. But it’s not totally different than what you do as a journalist. You try to get into the head and story of someone who’s not you,” said Gaillard, relating his experiences with “Southern Girl” to his experiences as a professional journalist.
Scheldt said of working with Gaillard, “It’s natural. Very natural. I’d send some things to him, and I’d be like ‘can I really share this with somebody’?’”
The song “Every Shade of Blue,” for example, was about a nightmare Scheldt had. Scheldt said she heard the tune and wrote it down.
“It all came to me. This one came like a crash of thunder.”
“Kathryn sent me the lyrics in an email and said ‘this is a nightmare I had last night, and I just wrote.’ I sort of shaped it a little bit, but it was basically this sort of thing that apparently you woke up and wrote it down.” Gaillard said.
“Every Shade of Blue” was finished by e-mail, which is how a lot of songs were worked on because the partners live on opposite sides of Mobile Bay."
Of having Gaillard on the other end to listen to ideas, Scheldt said, “it would have stayed in my journal, but I could share it with him. He gave me a lot of courage to voice my own truth.”
Equally grateful of Scheldt’s help in engaging him with songwriting, Gaillard said, “I wouldn’t be doing this at all if it weren’t for Kathryn’s encouragement. It’s an art form I’d always admired and enjoyed, but it literally never occurred to me to do it myself until she and I started working together.”
Gaillard and Scheldt acknowledge that their commonality, being Southern is part of what makes “Southern Girl” such an honest album.
“We have a relationship with where we’re from,” Scheldt said.
Gaillard and Scheldt agree the album is a healthy expression of a woman and Southerner’s point of view. There is a lot of Southern imagery in the album, but it’s healthy. There are a few passing mentions of the racial tensions in the South, a mention of the Vietnam Era, which echoes today with the war in Afghan and Iraq.
Ultimately, the album is about relationships, life and feelings.
“It leaves people feeling good, not bad, but it does make its excursions through sadness,” Gaillard said.
“It lets people know it’s OK to have feelings. It’s life,” Scheldt added.
“Southern Girl” was officially released on Oct. 4 at the Fairhope Unitarian Fellowship. Scheldt was accompanied by Tom Morley of Mithral, Corky Hughes, Jimmy Roebuck and Fred Baldwin. Morley is also the violinist and fiddle player for the album.
Also on the album are a panoply of talented musicians: Catherine Styron Marx, Mike Severs, Pat Severs, Denny Walley, Kerry Marx, Richard Scheldt, and Peter Cooper.
Although the original band from the album won’t be with Gaillard and Scheldt during their current tour, Scheldt does perform with local artists, and Gaillard shares excerpts from his country-music inspired books “Watermelon Wine, With Music and Justice for All,” and “Some Southerners and Their Passions.”
For more information on Southern Girl or Gaillard and Scheldt’s current tour, contact Suzanne@newsouthbooks.com or jekman@usouthal.edu.
The Discussion
1. dkann88 says:
October 23, 2009
03:30 PM
I picked this album up last week and simply haven't been able to put it down. Great album from top to bottom.
Andrew Kann
Magazines Major
University of Georgia
2. cynmosteller says:
October 22, 2009
04:57 PM
I am blown away by the honesty of Kathryn Scheldt's and Frye Gaillard's lyrics. I can definitely relate and feel that the music expresses for me an authentic view of what it is to be a "Southern Girl."
The ballad of Casey Jones is absolutely brilliant! Actually I think there is not one but several potential Grammy Award winning songs on the CD.
Each of the songs has real staying power and sometimes I have a hard time getting to sleep because they are playing over and over again in my mind.
I congratulate Kathryn and Frye and wish them every success with their new CD and look forward to the ones that follow.
Cynthia "Maggie" Mosteller
‘Southern Girl’ Tells a Tale of Relationships, Life, Feelings
By Amy Brown
Issue #189
October 20, 2009
Frye Gailliard, author of “Watermelon Wine: Remembering the Golden Years of Country Music,” and a writer in residence at University of South Alabama was contacted by Kathryn Scheldt, above, to write songs about the South. Gailliard jumped at the opportunity after hearing some of the project.
The only thing more Southern than sweet tea, Saturdays full of SEC football and crawfish festivals is some good ‘ol soulful, blues-inspired country music. Real Southern tunes are those that tug at your heart strings while making you want to dance and sing along. Kathryn Scheldt’s latest album, “Southern Girl,” does just that.
Just like its songs, “Southern Girl’s” origin has a story to tell. According to Frye Gaillard, University of South Alabama writer-in-residence, the seed for “Southern Girl” was planted last fall. Gaillard and Scheldt co-wrote 10 of “Southern Girl’s” 13 songs. Scheldt wrote the first three songs before the pair officially began collaborating.
Scheldt explains how she pushed Gaillard into teaming up with her for “Southern Girl.” “For my last record, I used the title from one of his books, With Music and Justice for All,” she said.
Scheldt felt the need to contact Gaillard and tell him she borrowed his title, which put the two in contact, although, Gaillard said, “Kathryn and I met back in 2005 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. It wasn’t long after Hurricane Katrina and we heard this incredible solo she’d written with Kent Rush, another songwriter from Daphne.”
The song was called “Mercy Send a Dove,” and was about compassion in the face of disaster. Despite being hard of hearing, Gaillard’s mother was extremely moved by the song. The song was so real and authentic that Gaillard, his wife and his mother waited to compliment Scheldt after the service. When Gaillard’s mother passed away, Scheldt was asked to sing at the funeral, and that’s when they began collaborating.
Gaillard, author of “Watermelon Wine: Remembering the Golden Years of Country Music”, is a sharp writer with a clear, honest voice who has done his research on the nature and evolution of country music. Collaborating with country songstress Scheldt seemed like a natural fit, except Gaillard didn’t see himself as anyone’s poet.
“He said, ‘I don’t rhyme’.” Scheldt knew it would take a little arm twisting to get Gaillard fully on board for “Southern Girl.”
“Kathryn played those (first few) songs to me just to get my reaction to them. I thought they were good songs, so I said, you know, these songs ought to be the heart of your next CD, which should be called ‘Southern Girl,’ and it should be both Southern and female. A woman’s kind of view,” he said. Scheldt wasn’t so sure at first.
“Frye, these are pretty rockin’ and bold. You think I can come out with this kind of stuff?” asked Scheldt referring to her lyrics’ deep subject matter.
“They weren’t shocking; just real…emotions,” Gaillard replied. Gaillard’s experiences in literature predisposed him to look at the stories in music.
“I had written enough about music that I could think of it that way. Conceptually, I could think of what holds an album together,” he said.
Knowing she had Gaillard’s interest, Scheldt once again asked for help writing a song. “I had an idea for a song. The idea was words get in the way. So, I challenged Frye to that, and then we started writing together,” said Scheldt.
Prior to this involvement, Gaillard contributed “a word here or there” to “With Music and Justice for All.” “With ‘Words Get in the Way,’ I wrote the chorus, and Kat wrote the lyrics. It bowled me over that I wrote four lines. It was like cocaine; I was hooked,” recalled Gaillard.
Gaillard was hooked, but Scheldt didn’t fully reel him in until after a performance at St. Bridgette’s Catholic Church in Prichard. In front of “the church, which was established in 1867, is a historical marker that says ‘the famous railroad engineer, Casey Jones, was Baptized in this church.”
“I’d heard the legend, but I didn’t know ‘Casey Jones’ was real,” said Gaillard referring to a children’s song written by Willis Saunders that was sung about Jones’s bravery in the face of death.
“With Frye being a historian, I saw this as a way to snare him in. We started Googling and sending messages back and forth,” Scheldt said.
Eventually, Scheldt and Gaillard produced the bluesy folk ballad “Casey in Love,” which was their first-ever full-fledged writing experience. The song tells the story of the swashbuckling Casey Jones who got baptized because he wanted to marry a Catholic girl. Jones had worked in the railroad yards in Mobile, and according Gaillard, “What you could tell from reading his life story, he was hooked on the adventure of driving trains and going fast and wandering around. On the other hand, he was in love with this woman, and as they began to have a family and have children, there was this fundamental tension in his life.”
How the song ends, well, you’ll have to listen to find out, but it is indeed epic.
After “Casey in Love,” the talented twosome were off and running. They “wrote frantically,” penning nine-and-a-half songs between February and April 2009. “Southern Girl” was recorded partly in Nashville and partly in Daphne.
Of their finished product, Gaillard said, “Mercifully, I don’t sing anything. I just help write it, and I did help produce it. I made decisions about the order of the songs. Every song was written to stand alone. Some people feel like they know Kathryn afterwards. It’s a woman’s perspective on things.”
According to Scheldt, her album’s title cut is about wanting to be kidnapped to escape. . Why? “I think there’s a Southern girl in every woman. That’s where I’m coming from with it,” said Scheldt.
Gaillard acknowledges his role in co-writing an album from the feminine perspective was a unique one. “I don’t know how to account for that, but it’s just a really interesting thing to do…try to get inside of the head of someone from a different gender. But it’s not totally different than what you do as a journalist. You try to get into the head and story of someone who’s not you,” said Gaillard, relating his experiences with “Southern Girl” to his experiences as a professional journalist.
Scheldt said of working with Gaillard, “It’s natural. Very natural. I’d send some things to him, and I’d be like ‘can I really share this with somebody’?’”
The song “Every Shade of Blue,” for example, was about a nightmare Scheldt had. Scheldt said she heard the tune and wrote it down.
“It all came to me. This one came like a crash of thunder.”
“Kathryn sent me the lyrics in an email and said ‘this is a nightmare I had last night, and I just wrote.’ I sort of shaped it a little bit, but it was basically this sort of thing that apparently you woke up and wrote it down.” Gaillard said.
“Every Shade of Blue” was finished by e-mail, which is how a lot of songs were worked on because the partners live on opposite sides of Mobile Bay."
Of having Gaillard on the other end to listen to ideas, Scheldt said, “it would have stayed in my journal, but I could share it with him. He gave me a lot of courage to voice my own truth.”
Equally grateful of Scheldt’s help in engaging him with songwriting, Gaillard said, “I wouldn’t be doing this at all if it weren’t for Kathryn’s encouragement. It’s an art form I’d always admired and enjoyed, but it literally never occurred to me to do it myself until she and I started working together.”
Gaillard and Scheldt acknowledge that their commonality, being Southern is part of what makes “Southern Girl” such an honest album.
“We have a relationship with where we’re from,” Scheldt said.
Gaillard and Scheldt agree the album is a healthy expression of a woman and Southerner’s point of view. There is a lot of Southern imagery in the album, but it’s healthy. There are a few passing mentions of the racial tensions in the South, a mention of the Vietnam Era, which echoes today with the war in Afghan and Iraq.
Ultimately, the album is about relationships, life and feelings.
“It leaves people feeling good, not bad, but it does make its excursions through sadness,” Gaillard said.
“It lets people know it’s OK to have feelings. It’s life,” Scheldt added.
“Southern Girl” was officially released on Oct. 4 at the Fairhope Unitarian Fellowship. Scheldt was accompanied by Tom Morley of Mithral, Corky Hughes, Jimmy Roebuck and Fred Baldwin. Morley is also the violinist and fiddle player for the album.
Also on the album are a panoply of talented musicians: Catherine Styron Marx, Mike Severs, Pat Severs, Denny Walley, Kerry Marx, Richard Scheldt, and Peter Cooper.
Although the original band from the album won’t be with Gaillard and Scheldt during their current tour, Scheldt does perform with local artists, and Gaillard shares excerpts from his country-music inspired books “Watermelon Wine, With Music and Justice for All,” and “Some Southerners and Their Passions.”
For more information on Southern Girl or Gaillard and Scheldt’s current tour, contact Suzanne@newsouthbooks.com or jekman@usouthal.edu.
The Discussion
1. dkann88 says:
October 23, 2009
03:30 PM
I picked this album up last week and simply haven't been able to put it down. Great album from top to bottom.
Andrew Kann
Magazines Major
University of Georgia
2. cynmosteller says:
October 22, 2009
04:57 PM
I am blown away by the honesty of Kathryn Scheldt's and Frye Gaillard's lyrics. I can definitely relate and feel that the music expresses for me an authentic view of what it is to be a "Southern Girl."
The ballad of Casey Jones is absolutely brilliant! Actually I think there is not one but several potential Grammy Award winning songs on the CD.
Each of the songs has real staying power and sometimes I have a hard time getting to sleep because they are playing over and over again in my mind.
I congratulate Kathryn and Frye and wish them every success with their new CD and look forward to the ones that follow.
Cynthia "Maggie" Mosteller
