Biscuits & Jam

Jess Pryles was born and raised in Melbourne, Australia, but her fascination with the American South eventually led her to Austin, Texas, where she’s now lived for about 15 years. It didn’t take long for Jess to fall in love with the food in Texas, especially the barbecue, and since then she’s made it her life’s mission to learn the art and science of cooking meat. She’s so obsessed she actually c...

Mitchell Tenpenny basically grew up in the music business, with a grandmother who was the CEO of Sony Publishing and a mother who advocated for songwriters throughout her career. It was this unique vantage point that made Mitchell realize he wanted to be a songwriter, too, but the journey took him a while. It wasn’t until his boss on a construction site put him in touch with an LA producer that Mi...

Sid talks to a couple of guys from Alabama who are founding members of one of the hottest young bands in the country—the Red Clay Strays. Brandon Coleman, the charismatic lead singer, spent his youth running around with siblings and cousins on a family compound outside of Turnerville, just north of Mobile. Meanwhile, Drew Nix, who plays guitar and writes a lot of the songs, grew up further north,...

Anne Byrn was born and raised in Nashville and, though she calls Tennessee home, her career has taken her all across the South as she’s written about the people who define this region’s extraordinary cuisine. For 15 years, she was the food editor at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, where she interviewed legends like Julia Child and Nathalie Dupree, and you may also know her as the Cake Mix Doctor...

John T Edge grew up in Clinton, Georgia, raised in a Confederate general’s house that introduced him early on to the complicated legacy of the South. His childhood was complicated, too, and not always happy, but his mother and father shared a curiosity about food and cooking that never left him. For more than 20 years, John T headed up the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississipp...

Texas troubadour Hayes Carll was born in Houston and raised in the Woodlands, a famous planned community that was much smaller back then, surrounded by thousands of acres of pine trees. He grew up listening to Kenny Rogers and Willie Nelson, and later, Jerry Jeff Walker and Townes Van Zandt, all of whom seemed like mythical figures to a kid from the suburbs. His family wasn’t particularly religiou...

Ricky McKinnie, the leader of the Blind Boys of Alabama, was born and raised in Atlanta, where he got his start singing in the church alongside his mother. Not long after that, while still in his teens, he embarked on a career as a singer and a drummer, often performing with a band called the Soul Searchers. Around the age of 20, he began to lose his eyesight, but as Ricky says, he never lost his...

Since 2016, Fawn Weaver has been obsessed with uncovering the true story of Nearest Green, a former slave who helped teach Jack Daniel the complicated process of making whiskey. Along the way, Fawn became so invested in her research that she bought the farm in Lynchburg, Tennessee, where Jack Daniel and Nearest Green worked together, and she’s since launched the Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey brand...

Wynonna Judd was one half of one of the most famous duos in country music history, and she’s also been plenty successful out on her own. She was last on the show nearly three years ago, back during the height of the pandemic, and a lot has happened since then. On April 30th, 2022, the day before the Judds were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, she lost her mother, Naomi, to suicide, an...

Brian Kelley was born and raised in Ormond Beach, Florida, just North of Daytona. At one point, he thought he might have a baseball career ahead of him, but when he didn’t make the road team at his beloved Florida State, he spent his free time discovering the power of music. He also ended up heading to Daytona State College where the baseball coach taught him valuable lessons of perseverance that...

Ashley Christensen is a two-time James Beard Award winning chef, restaurateur, and cookbook author from Raleigh, North Carolina, who has a way of taking classic Southern dishes and making them the talk of the food world. She grew up with parents who loved to cook, entertain, and play music in the kitchen, and Ashley has channeled that spirit of hospitality into her restaurants like Poole's Diner a...

Jennifer Nettles was born and raised in rural South Georgia, where she got very involved in 4-H as a kid, a relationship that’s still a big part of her life. She went on to an extraordinary music career, winning a long list of Grammys, CMA Awards, and ACM Awards with Sugarland in the mid 2000s. By 2015, she’d started to work more in film and television, including her roles as Dolly Parton’s mother...

Tyler Florence is a Southern chef and Food Network star who, after 16 previous cookbooks, is finally releasing one that focuses on his passion for grilling. Tyler has been working in restaurants since he was a teenager in Greenville, South Carolina. Since then he’s lived and worked in Charleston, New York City and, for more than a decade now, California – where he and his partners run several high...

Since 1985, Emily Sailers and Amy Ray have been known as the Indigo Girls, and they’ve never once stopped making music or sharing their message of acceptance. The two met when they were kids in Decatur, Georgia,, and once they started playing together in high school, it didn’t take long for their unique sound to find an audience—first regionally, then nationally, and eventually worldwide. Last sum...

Kimberly Schlapman, a founding member of the band Little Big Town, has been a musician almost all her life. As a little girl she played piano alongside her mother at a Baptist church near where she grew up in Cornelia, Georgia, and even then people knew her voice was something special. Years later, on a choir camp bus when she was at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, she met Karen Fairchi...

Brian Baumgartner may be best known to many people, across at least a couple of generations, as Kevin from The Office, but there’s much more to the actor than his famous onscreen persona. Born and raised in Atlanta, Brian has a deep love for the South, a wicked sense of humor, an obsession with sports, and a successful podcast called Off the Beat. He also has a lifelong passion for barbecue – both...

Darius Rucker gained fame in 1994 when David Letterman heard his band, Hootie and the Blowfish, on a local radio station and insisted they play The Late Show later that week. The band’s debut album, cracked rear view, went on to sell over 20 million units worldwide and made them a household name. Despite all that success, Darius was always drawn to the songs and stories of country music, and for t...

Pat Martin probably knows as much about whole hog barbecue as anyone in the world. Best known for his eponymous restaurant chain, Martin’s Bar-B-Que Joint, he’s also the host of a new TV show on the Outdoor Channel called “Life of Fire,” cooking with barbecue legends and hearing their stories. Pat wasn’t always headed for a culinary career - at one point he was working in finance - but he eventual...

Scotty McCreery burst onto the country music scene when he became the youngest male singer to ever win American Idol back in 2011, when he was just 17 years old. He grew up in Garner, North Carolina, just outside of Raleigh, where he developed his talent by singing and playing music at the local Baptist Church. Scotty talks with Sid about his new album, Rise & Fall, which showcases some different...

TODAY Show co-host Craig Melvin has put a lot of thought into what it takes to be both a father and a son. His 2021 memoir, Pops: Learning to Be a Son and a Father, dealt with his experiences living with a dad who was an alcoholic and a gambling addict—and writing the book ultimately helped him salvage the relationship. At times emotional, Melvin also shares with Sid some of the backstory and moti...

Sid Evans, Editor-in-Chief of Southern Living Magazine, chats with Lauren Daigle, a musician who began her career as a Christian artist, but who’s more recently become a crossover sensation. Lauren Daigle grew up in Lafayette, Louisiana, where she enjoyed fishing with her dad, dancing to Cajun music with her grandparents, and rooting for LSU with her entire family. And while the rich musical tradi...

The Castellows are three sisters—Eleanor, Lily, and Powell Balkcom—who started sharing their music on Instagram just a couple of years ago, and now they seem to be everywhere. Their newfound success has led them to a fast-moving career in Nashville and to the recent release of a new EP called A Little Goes a Long Way. With beautiful harmonies and lyrics about a simpler way of life, many of the son...

Tyler Hubbard was born and raised in Monroe, Georgia, where he grew up working in the garden with his family, competing in motocross races, and playing music at his church. He met his bandmate, Brian Kelley, at Belmont University in Nashville, and by 2012 Florida Georgia Line was one of the hottest acts in country music. These days, he’s entered a new phase in his life and career. He’s a father no...

Emmy Russell was born in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee, and grew up touring and performing with her grandmother, Loretta Lynn, as well as her mother, Patsy Lynn. She doesn’t sound much like the “Queen of Country,” but Emmy has a beautiful voice and plenty of talent as a songwriter. On an episode of American Idol earlier this spring, she wowed the judges with an intensely personal song that caught the...

Jennifer Nettles was born and raised in rural South Georgia, where she got very involved in 4-H as a kid, a relationship that’s still a big part of her life. She went on to an extraordinary music career, winning a long list of Grammys, CMA Awards, and ACM Awards with Sugarland in the mid 2000s. By 2015, she’d started to work more in film and television, including her roles as Dolly Parton’s mother...