Biscuits & Jam

Grace Bowers grew up in Northern California, but when she was not quite 15 years old, her parents decided to move the family to Nashville for better schools and a different kind of life. At first, the culture shock was too much for her, but as Grace became more and more serious about the guitar, she found a music community that recognized her incredible talent—and took her in. Now, at just 18, she...

Brenda Lee spent the early years of her life in Georgia, and though her family didn’t have a lot of money, they always made sure she had batteries to run the radio so she could listen to the Grand Ole Opry. Between that and singing at their Baptist church, her interest in music became clear, and her extraordinary talent became even clearer. She was still a kid when her mother moved the family to M...

Jessica B. Harris may have been born and raised in New York City, but she has Tennessee roots through her father and has spent much of her life split between homes in the Northeast and the South – specifically New Orleans. For more than fifty years, she has been a college professor, a writer, and a lecturer, and her many books have earned her a reputation as an authority on food of the African Dia...

Craig Conover is one of the longest running stars of Bravo’s reality show, Southern Charm, which means audiences have been following his roller-coaster dating and personal life for a decade now. But part of Craig’s charm is that he wasn’t always a city kid. He grew up near the beach in rural Delaware, where his dad built a construction business and his mom was a teacher. In high school, he discove...

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...

Evie McGee-Colbert grew up in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, the daughter of a true Southern hostess and a father who would take her to her dance classes on the handlebars of his bike. Now she’s got a cookbook out that leans heavily on the Lowcountry traditions she grew up with as well as the ones she’s built up with her own family in recent years, especially during the pandemic. The book is...

In this week’s episode, Sid Evans, Editor-in-Chief of Southern Living, revisits some of his favorite conversations from Season 5 - many of which have never aired - about his guests’ holiday traditions and memories. You’ll hear stories from Kimberly Schlapman, Tyler Florence, Brittney Spencer, Scotty McCreery, and more. Happy Holidays! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adch...

Cody Johnson was born and raised in a little place called Sebastopol, Texas, about a half hour northeast of Huntsville. It was the kind of small community where everybody knew everybody, and his family went to a small country church where his musical interest and skill found an audience. When he was 18, he went to work with his father in the prison system, an intense experience that taught him a l...

Growing up in Los Angeles, Toni Tipton-Martin lived for a time with her Southern-born grandmother who happened to be a professional chef, and who exposed her to what would eventually become a lifelong passion. As Editor-in-Chief of Cook's Country Magazine and as author of books like The Jemima Code, Jubilee, and last year’s Juke Joints, Jazz Clubs, and Juice, Toni has spent much of her career as a...

Lucy Buffett grew up as the kid sister of Jimmy Buffett in a working class neighborhood in Mobile, Alabama. A self-proclaimed gypsy rebel, she had plenty of misadventures that took her from Key West to Southern California to New Orleans and the Caribbean, but eventually she moved home to open up a gumbo and burger spot called Lulu’s when she was 46 years old. Now she’s got three locations in Alaba...

Bethany Joy Lenz was born in Florida and grew up in Texas, which is where she first got involved in the performing arts, carrying on a tradition she inherited from her grandparents. Her family eventually headed to New Jersey, where her Southerness drew the wrong kind of attention from some of the girls in her class, but she made it through the experience and eventually landed on the hit TV show On...

Grace Bowers grew up in Northern California, but when she was not quite 15 years old, her parents decided to move the family to Nashville for better schools and a different kind of life. At first, the culture shock was too much for her, but as Grace became more and more serious about the guitar, she found a music community that recognized her incredible talent—and took her in. Now, at just 18, she...

Leanne Morgan was raised in Adams, Tennessee, a little farming community not far from the Kentucky border. Her parents ran a small grocery store, and eventually a meat processing plant, but meanwhile Leeanne was nursing dreams of a career in Hollywood. It took her until her fifties to get there, but after more than 20 years of selling jewelry, doing small gigs on the comedy circuit, and some serio...

Kelsey Barnard Clark was raised in Dothan, Alabama, which is a short drive from the Gulf Coast. But it wasn’t until she spent several years living in fast-paced New York City and working in the even faster-paced kitchens of Michelin-star restaurants that she truly appreciated her hometown. Since she moved back to Dothan in 2012, she’s been busy. She won Season 16 of Bravo’s Top Chef, becoming the...

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...