Dixie Lullaby A Story Of Music, Race, And New Beginnings In A New South

Veteran music journalist Mark Kemp ponders the transformative effects of rock and roll on the generation of white southerners who came of age in the 1970s. Growing up in North Carolina, Kemp burned with shame and anger at the attitudes of many white southerners, some in his own family, toward the recently won victories of the civil rights movement. "I loved the land that surrounded me but hated the history that haunted that land," he writes. Then the down-home, bluesy rock of the Deep South began taking the nation by storm, and Kemp had a new way of relating to the region that allowed him to see beyond its legacy of racism and stereotypes of backwardness. Kemp maps his own southern odyssey onto the stories of such iconic bands as the Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd and R.E.M., as well as influential indies like the Drive-By Truckers. A thought-provoking, searingly intimate, and utterly original journey through the South and its music from the 1960s through to the 1990s.

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