When the curtain falls on 2024, it will be hard to name an Americana/roots band that had a better year than Alabama’s Red Clay Strays. Last October, they traveled by van and played 3rd & Lindsley to a few hundred people. By the time they pulled their new bus in for their debut at the Ryman Auditorium in September, they had enough momentum to sell out three nights. That run has been curated into Live At The Ryman, announced recently for a quick turn Nov. 15 release, and that’s just the latest landmark in a remarkable rise.
An industry talent buyer said that the band’s asking price skyrocketed by ten times early in 2024 and then kept on climbing like Nvidia stock. Their trajectory, he said, has possibly outpaced even the recent big bangs of Billy Strings and Goose. And there have been other leading indicators. The Strays jumped from an indie label to RCA Records and engaged super-producer Dave Cobb for their 2024 album Made By These Moments. They won Emerging Act of the Year at this Fall’s Americana Honors and Awards. And they’re nominated for their first CMA Award (Vocal Group of the Year, TBD in November), despite only marginal exposure on country radio.
Instead, the Strays are a viral success story, one for whom savvy social media became an accelerant for their spiritually attuned, sometimes dark, but therapeutic songs. At a time when the statistics say that younger Americans are struggling with life’s basic needs and maintaining mental health, the Strays aim directly at those vulnerabilities and uncertainties, often with holy overtones.
“I'm on display, I've lost my way/Oh God, I pray/Let this pass over,” sings Brandon Coleman in the popular Strays song “I’m Still Fine.” In “The Devil In My Ear,” the narrator wrestles with temptation, trapped in the crossfire of a holy war between heaven and hell. And the song “On My Knees” feels like a straight up gospel rave, set to a clap-along train beat:
“I'm gonna fall down on my knees
And praise The Lord, for bringin' me peace
I'll lift my hands, in His company
For you know, I am grateful
For what He has done for me”
Coleman wrote “I’m Still Fine” and contributes to some of the songs on the Strays’ second album Made By These Moments, but most of the lyrics come from his brother Matthew, who is not in the band, and guitarist Drew Nix, who is. Even so, the lead singer has made it clear that the band is on a mission of faith alongside a mission of connection.
“All I’m trying to do is fulfill God’s calling that He’s put on my life,” Coleman told writer Garrett K. Woodward in a Smoky Mountain Living profile this year. “I’m a firm believer that He has put us all here with a job to do and I’m obsessed with getting it done.”
I learned what that felt like on the second night of the Strays’ Ryman run last month, which hit like a mix of tabernacle revival and Southern rock throwdown. The band (like so many these days) dressed like Skynyrd of the 1970s, making Coleman’s pompadour hair and slender suits - evoking Elvis and Johnny Cash in equal measure - all the more striking and statuesque. He reached his fans like a magnetic worship leader and conjured mystique with small gestures that contrasted to the drama of his hefty, leathery voice. Many in the crowd sang his lyrics back to him on songs like “Drowning,” a grim anthem (penned by Nix) from a crushed soul fighting substance abuse.
The musical mojo of the Red Clay Strays comes from their terse, riff-heavy rock and roll, qualities that were on full display in “Good Godly Woman,” a song that likens the wrath of the almighty to the partner who’s gonna lay into him for his lowdown lapses. It smoldered at first then grew into a blast furnace with wailing and sliding electric guitar from Nix and Zach Rishel. Recently added keyboard players Sevans Henderson (formerly with the wonderful Cordovas) rounded out a classic Southern rock band format and brought some transcendent organ to the church service.
Most engaging to me was the dynamic between Coleman and his unforgettable drummer. That’s John Hall, a bearded redhead who comes off as a mashup of Ginger Baker, Levon Helm and Animal from the Muppets. Where Coleman is cool, Hall brings a hot blast of emotion, gesture, and elation, not to mention dank and funky beats. I don’t know if he’s the musical director, but he came off that way with his conducting and cajoling, and it’s to his credit, because this band plays brilliantly together, with passion as deep as its pocket.
Another moment worth mentioning, because it bolsters the roots cred of this overnight sensation, is that toward the homestretch of the concert, Coleman invited opening act The Castellows - a Georgia neo-bluegrass sister trio - to sing a capella with him on Ralph Stanley’s “Gone Away With A Friend.” The harmonies weren’t perfect, but the feeling was deeply in tune with Ryman lore.
While at first their name triggered me into thinking they must be from the Texlahoma scene, it’s red clay not red dirt. The quintet is proudly from Mobile, AL, marking the first widely known band with its vibe to break out of that Gulf Coast town since Wet Willie in the 70s. Iteration number one of the Strays was a cover band featuring Coleman, Nix and bass player Andrew Bishop. They reconfigured, adding Rishel and Hall and hit the road with their first original material. The pandemic interrupted their momentum but less than most artists. During the lull, they crowd-funded their debut album Moment Of Truth, which came out in April of 2022, sparking a Billboard charting hit with the viral “Wondering Why.” They parlayed a string of high profile opening slots - Old Crowe, Elle King, Dierks Bentley, Eric Church - into major venues on their own and the RCA record deal. And here they are, living their moment and attracting fans of diverse ages and social backgrounds at industrial scale.
The Red Clay Strays feel like part of a Southern rock revival that’s embraced 49 Winchester, Whiskey Myers, Muscadine Bloodline and a few others in recent years. Over the longer haul, we’ve seen bands like Blackberry Smoke and the Ozark Mountain Daredevils keep that shaggy 70s thunder alive, and it’s no real stretch to count the Tedeschi Trucks Band and even Jason Isbell’s 400 Unit in the lineage. After all, it’s among the least definable of genres.
In the 2014 book Southbound: An Illustrated History of Southern Rock, author Scott Bomar quotes Gregg Allman’s waggish remark that the genre’s name is a redundancy: “‘Southern rock' is like saying 'rock rock.' Rock and roll was born in the South.” Yet those of us who grew up in the South sensed that the country and gospel inflected pile-driving sound of Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Charlie Daniels Band, and the Allmans deserved its own category. It was Marshall amps meeting Southern swagger, with life experiences set in bars and jails and churches that gave 13-15-year-old me a window into grassroots grownup lives and primed my later love for country music.
The South is more integrated into national culture than it was in its heyday when the genre was a signifier for what Bomar calls “the shared experience of becoming long-haired music freaks in an environment that was fairly conservative.” Today’s new wave feels more like one of many possible expressions of American roots music and an avatar of geo-targeted regional pride, as with 49 Winchester’s namesake hometown address. And when it comes to the Strays, with their religious streaks and populist messages, conservatism may be more a guiding light than a culture to counter.
The Ryman show began with dimmed lights and a full volume walk-on recording of Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)” from the Afghanistan invasion era. About a third of the fans stood and sang along, like an impromptu anthem. I was taken aback, because I’ve not heard that song in twenty years and didn’t think of it as timeless. Not another ounce of political valence touched the show, but it was deliberate. While many Americana shows resound with explicit or implicit progressive messages, the Strays may be speaking to a redder shade of our American clay.
