It’s been twenty years since I released The Heart of Dixie album. I had hoped to do some type of fancy re-release with an updated webpage, digital single online, etc., but that just hasn’t happened…oh, well:)
But it’s important to me to mark this 20-year anniversary, as I believe the music on that album, and that song in particular, is the real ‘heart’ of my story, and its release also marks what was the beginning of a ‘new chapter’ for me in the transition from leaving Nashville to coming back to Mississippi.
This morning, I’ve been looking back through one of my journals from 2004, and I’m grateful all over again for the happenings of that year….both good and bad…easy and difficult…joyful and heart-wrenching. It was obvious that God made a way ‘out of no way’ that year.
The process, environment, and tools for recording music have changed drastically over the past twenty years, but even with today’s technology, the making of an album requires an enormous amount of focus, persistence, and resources in pursuit of an artist’s vision. First, the writing and collecting of songs; then the selection of musicians, engineer, and producer; an affordable studio space; the alignment of the stars; good, strong coffee, and so much more.
The album was recorded and released in 2004, three years before the introduction of the iPhone, meaning I don’t have any cell phone video or pictures of the sessions so this little written history on the Heart of Dixie recording project will have to do…
In March of 2004, recording sessions began at the Blue Mountain Retreat (which was actually the studio at Nashville State Community College where I was teaching songwriting in their music technology program), under the watchful eye and ear of the brilliant engineer, Wayne Neuendorf, who was also my director at NSCC. Wayne was a native of Alabama, a genius of an engineer, and an incredible musician in his own right. Some of his engineering credits include: The Last Waltz (The Band), In A New Age (Mickey Newbury), Where There’s Smoke (Cheech & Chong), The Warner Brothers Years (Steve Earle), and so many more. Wayne passed away several years ago, but I’m so thankful I had the chance to work with him on multiple projects, particularly The Heart of Dixie.
I was blessed to have some of the best musicians in Nashville play on the recording. I played some acoustic, but Paul Brannon carried the bulk of the guitar load along with my fired and fellow Mississippian, J. Fred Knobloch, on his song “Feels Like Mississippi.” I played piano, but Carson Whitsett (who went to elementary school with my sister in Jackson, Mississippi…small world…) made the Hammond B-3 organ sing. Don Kerce, who played on almost all of my Nashville demos and projects, handled the bass guitar, while another fellow Mississippian, Vince Barranco, played the drums. I always love how Vince ‘plays the song,’ rather than just playing his drums…tasty. Buddy Greene added soulful harmonica to some tracks, and the ‘hillbilly poet,’ Davis Raines, added some BGVs.
The album was mastered by Jim DeMain and Mark Chevalier at Yes, Master, and the enhanced CD features (that was a BIG deal 20 years ago) were provided by Jerry Gowen Digital. I took the cover photo in 1978 on the from porch of Dixie’s home near Harriston, Mississippi. The photography for the album was done by Tony Phipps, and my hair and makeup was done by Calene Rader (she used to share some great stories about Dolly’s wigs during my regular haircuts).
Special thanks on the album went to: The Lovely Hearts Club Band, my Ya-Yas, Sista, Doris, Rebecca Bain, Nat and Brian, Sacred Heart Monastery, the Creative Coffee Group, Trace, Greg & Jack, and all who walked with me in the desert (Hosea 2:14-15). For Marie and Jannie, the truest and dearest hearts of Dixie.
Rough mixes were ready in May, and the album was released in September of 2004. Remember, this was BEFORE streaming became the ‘thing,’ so I saved up my funds and ordered 1,000 CDs for my initial pressing. I got up to 5,000 copies in orders before the demand for physical CDs began to decline. I only have a few hard copies left for my files, but the album is still available on all the online platforms (Apple, YouTube, Spotify, Amazon, Pandora, etc.).
I posted the text below on my website not long after the project was released:
The Heart of Dixie project slowly came together after a deep searching and self-inventory of sorts as I felt the call back to my home state of Mississippi after two and half decades of living and working in Tennessee. The songs in this collection give voice to the places and people and Southern culture that shaped me from the time I was a child.
I wrote the title song, “The Heart of Dixie,” after the death of the woman who helped care for me when I was little. When I added it to my set list and started singing it publicly, the song began to garner strong audience reactions in places like the Bluebird Cafe and was then featured in publications like the Oxford American.
Like so many white families in the South of the 60s, my working class family from a small Mississippi town enlisted the help of a local African-American woman to help with domestic work and young children. The relationships that grew between members of these families and the ‘help’ was a complicated one, forged in a segregated society and yet connected somehow beneath the surface of skin color or the perceived levels of social class. Dixie was such a person to me. Like the song says, she began working for my grandmother when she was a teenager and then continued to work for my mother when I was a child. My mother grieved her death deeply and was the solitary white congregant asked to speak at her funeral. To me, Dixie felt every bit a part of my family as my blood kin, but the social mores of the times drew different boundaries around us which are still difficult to explain. I felt unconditional love from her….never judgment or bitterness for our different stations in life…”The Heart of Dixie” is my gift to her and is, hopefully, a reflection of the unconditional love of the countless uncelebrated saints of that time and place and culture.
SONG NOTES
“Page Out Of History” (Kenny Meeks) – History is important so as not to repeat the bad parts.
“Ode To Billie Joe” (Bobbie Gentry) – One of the greatest story songs every written.
“New South” (Kate Campbell) – A whimsical look at the South’s ‘progress.’
“All The Way Home” (Kate Campbell/Tricia Walker) – Can we ever really ‘go home’ again?
“Honey Chile” (Tricia Walker) – The name honors one my hometown’s unique characters.
“Funeral Food” (Kate Campbell) – A funny take of Southern culture during times of bereavement.
“Henry” (Kevin Moore/John Lewis Parker) – To honor a man who worked for my Papa Dear (grandfather).
“Feels Like Mississippi” (J. Fred Knobloch) – Well, just because…it does ‘feel like Mississippi.’
“Crazy In Alabama” (Kate Campbell/Kenya Slaughter Walker) – I remember how this time felt.
“Dixie” (Daniel Decatur Emmett) – A beautiful melody…longing for home…complicated.
“Look Away” (Walt Aldridge/Kate Campbell) – I grew up near the ruins of Windsor.
“The Heart of Dixie” (Tricia Walker) – Unconditional love shown over and over in the place/time of my youth.
My friend, Natalie (also the mother of my godson), produced a video of the title song as part of a plan to ‘pitch’ the stage show I developed around the songs. Of course, this was 20 years ago, when video was still ‘standard definition’ and not the crisp, clean ‘high definition’ of today, but I’m very proud of it…it still holds up well.
Thanks for coming along with me for a look back at the release of The Heart of Dixie twenty years ago….here’s a quote that was included in the CD jacket…one of my faves:
The greatest confluence of all is that which makes up the human memory – the individual human memory. Here time, also, is subject other confluence. The memory is a living thing – it too is in transit. But during its moment, all that is remembered joins, and lives – the old and the young, the past and the present, the living and the dead. __________Eudora Welty
P. S. Found a few other things of note in my 2004 journal:
- The Women in the Round performed a selection of songs under the title, “All The Way Home,” live with the Nashville Ballet
- Hosted a student/faculty film crew from Utah Valley State College that was doing a documentary (as yet unreleased) about me called, Burden of Memory
- Met Harper Lee (she signed my copy of To Kill A Mockingbird)
- Met Robert Redford (sang for his Christmas program at Sundance)
- Performed an ‘in the round’ with Amy Grant, Kathy Mattea, and Michael Johnson as part of the Bluebird Cafe’s Alive Hospice benefit series
- Produced the Riverbluff Acoustic Music Festival
- Found a note wondering if I might come back to Mississippi and start a music tech program at Co-Lin
I am blessed…grateful…and praying for an increased capacity for joy in the days to come:)
Peace,
Tricia