Band is standard-bearer for Stillwater, red dirt music
High winds, swirling sand and unusual eyewear couldn't diminish the thrill for Read Southall as a teenage fan watching one of the most famous bands to come out of Stillwater play live.
“I went to watch (Cross Canadian) Ragweed at the speedway when I was like 14 years old. It was so damn windy … and blowing sand so bad and dirt and everything that the motocross shop there in town brought them motocross goggles, and they all wore motocross goggles on stage,” the Altus native recalled with a chuckle.
“I remember getting chills whenever they came out, the lights came on, and they hit their first chord. It was rock `n' roll, and I always loved how they did that, always loved that there was
that `want to kick a wall over' aspect to it that they did — that Cody (Canada) still does today. I've always loved that rock `n' roll thing. ... We're all pretty rural people whether we like it or not, so I think it's our best take at being rock `n' rollers. It just kind of comes out as the red dirt ... because that's just kind of the way we're built.”
With his Read Southall Band, the singer, songwriter and guitarist has emerged as a next-generation standardbearer for Stillwater's red dirt music scene, following in the footsteps of the Red Dirt Rangers, Mike McClure and The Great Divide, Ragweed, the late Brandon Jenkins and more.
“Man, it's really overwhelming. I don't feel like I deserve to be thrown in with those guys, because those guy are my heroes,” Southall said. “There's a lot of times when I look around and I'm like `How the heck? How did we end up here?'”
Hitting the road
Last week, “here” was Sacramento, where the Read Southall Band was playing the last of three California shows on the latest leg of the red dirt quartet's 2019 tour, which winds back to Oklahoma for shows Saturday in Ardmore, Aug. 24 in Stillwater and Aug. 29 in Yukon.
“The first part of the year we did the East Coast and we ran up to New York and did New York and D.C., and on the way over, we did Tennessee and Georgia. … It went really well. Heck, we had a sold-out show in D.C., and that was crazy so we're going back there … and then this summer tour was kind of our shot at going West,” Southall said.
“They're pretty much standing-room-only most of the time when we are home. … It's been nice to come back home and see the support, the true support of your home state.”
In 2015, Southall released his solo acoustic album “Six String Sorrow,” which accumulated 8 million streams in three years. The singer-songwriter preferred to proceed as a band, with John Tyler Perry (lead guitar and vocals), Reid Barber (drums) and Jeremee Knipp (bass) joining him in the Read Southall Band. In spring 2017, the band released its first studio album, “Borrowed Time,” followed by a live album recorded at the Tower Theatre last Christmas.
Making new music
Along with hitting the highway for concerts, Southall and Co. have been traveling to Denton, Texas, to reunite with producer Taylor Kimball, whom the band worked with on “Borrowed Time,” which took three tries to record before they were satisfied with the sound.
Although he is now based in Oklahoma City, he and his band continue to represent Stillwater play their music across the country.
“Every night at the end of our set (we say), `We're the Read Southall Band, and we're from Stillwater, Oklahoma,' `cause Stillwater's what made us who we are as a band,” he said.