Feature

It’s hard to be a musician in Muscle Shoals, Ala., without taking advantage of the various musical outlets waiting for fresh talent. And this was certainly the case with Alabama’s latest batch of jamsters, Fiddleworms.

Russell Mefford (guitar/vocals), Rob Malone (guitar/vocals), Clint Bailey (keyboards/vocals), David MacKay (bass) and Daniel Ledford (drums) are taking their sound down the same Southern-fried rock path as the Drive-By Truckers. After getting started in the mid-’90s, the band drifted apart amid the tragic death of their original guitarist Chris Quillen.

Years later, the Fiddleworms crossed paths and have since put out two studio albums, a live album and possibly an upcoming double-disc. I spoke with guitarist Russell Mefford to get the lowdown on this rising band.

SC: You guys got together back in the mid ‘90s and then broke up. A few years later you had an impromptu reunion at the W.C. Handy Festival and decided to give it another try. What was it about that performance that got the magic going again?

RM: Actually, I got a call. We had lost a band mate in ‘96, and our guitar player Rob Malone stepped in to play. We were both very close to Chris Quillen, that was his name. Rob’s always been my favorite guitar player on the planet, and we went up to Nashville to do some recording. Then, we disbanded, and I got a call. The guy said that he still had these recordings, so we played that show to knock some rust off and went back to Nashville. I hadn’t talked to Rob in probably eight years, something like that. I called him up and asked him if he wanted to finish the record. We went up and finished the “Year of the Cock” record, and he was like, “If you want me to, I’ll move back to Muscle Shoals.” That summed it up for me, and I was all in (laughing)!

SC: Muscle Shoals has an extremely rich music heritage. How did the Muscle Shoals scene treat you guys?

RM: The neat thing about Muscle Shoals is the general population. I don’t think that they’re necessarily not interested; they just go on with their every day life. You know, you’ll run into David Hood on the street or Donnie Fritz, and all those guys are real giving individuals. So, when we were coming up, all those guys reached out to us, which is really helpful with your confidence.

SC: I gotta ask where you got the name Fiddleworms from?

RM: We were driving to see Pink Floyd in Birmingham, and there was a sign on the side of Highway 157 in between Muscle Shoals and Cullman that said “Fiddleworms for sale.” I didn’t know what a Fiddleworm was, and a friend of mine that was driving the car told me that you split a sapling and run a saw blade on the sapling, and the vibrations bring these really large earthworms out of the ground. It’s called fiddlin’ for worms. Being from the South, we though that was a cool Southern thing.

SC: That’s great! I had always heard of doing that but never knew the formal name.

RM: (chuckle) Yeah!

SC: A lot of critics are saying that jam is dwindling or on the way out. As a member of an up-and-coming band that falls into that category, what’s your opinion on this? What’s been your experience at shows?

RM: We’ve had a real positive experience so far. It’s a lot like anything else you do. It’s about meeting people and working hard. As far as whether the jam scene is on the way out, people are always trying to predict stuff whether it’s the stock market or the music business. I think that I read somewhere one time that The Beatles were passed on every contract because they were told that acoustic guitars were on the way out. So, we’ve been real fortunate.

SC: You followed up “Yellowhammer” with “Year of the Cock,” and with it, you released a red vinyl 45. What made you decided to take that avenue with its distribution?

RM: Being that we’re old as vinyl (laughing)! I was originally just gonna do a long-play LP, but the pressing company told me that if you go over like 20 minutes per side, then you’ll get needle distortion. This is another cool thing about living in Muscle Shoals. I called Jimmy Johnson, who’s a producer here, and talked to him about it. He was like, “Sh*t, man, why don’t you just do a single.” So, we pulled three songs off of the LP. Rob had written a song called ‘Burgundy,’ so we made it a red album.

SC: Your last album is a live one, appropriately called ‘Live Bait.’ What was it about that show that made you want to capture it and release it to the public?

RM: Donna Jean, before she got real busy with The Tricksters, was available, and we had been doing some rehearsing with her. She went out and did a series of shows with us, so we wanted to get that documented.

SC: When can we expect a new studio album?

RM: We’ve got 12 tunes in the can and about 18 more. We’re cutting 10 more songs the first weekend of November, and we’ll cut another eight or 10 songs in December and then figure out whether we’ll do a double-CD. We’ll be releasing something in the spring of ‘08 for sure.

SC: What can the fans expect off of that one?

RM: That’s the thing to decide. There’s probably a batch of the songs that are not totally acoustic but acoustic oriented. There’s another batch of the songs that are more hard driving. It’s got a lot more contributions form Rob as a songwriter on this album. Instead of the two songs from Rob Malone, you can look forward to four or five.

Stephen Centanni is Lagniappe music editor. Contact him at scentanni@lagniappemobile.com.

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