{"id":7072046,"date":"2026-10-01T23:52:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T23:52:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7072046"},"modified":"2026-10-01T23:52:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T23:52:13","slug":"how-john-paul-white-built-a-career-without-leaving-the-shoals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7072046","title":{"rendered":"How John Paul White Built a Career Without Leaving the Shoals"},"content":{"rendered":"


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I had a question ready about what it was like to move home from Nashville. I never got to ask it, because the premise was wrong.<\/p>\n


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\u201cIt’s a common misconception that I lived in Nashville,\u201d John Paul White told me about six minutes in. \u201cI never did.\u201d<\/p>\n


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I made my hay here, and by the time I could afford to, I didn’t want to.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n


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For two decades \u2014 writing for EMI, BMG and Warner\/Chappell, then as half of The Civil Wars, then on his own \u2014 he was driving two and a half hours up, sleeping on couches for a few days, and driving back. He has lived in the Shoals since his early twenties. On Episode 123 of Unexpected Adventures in North Alabama, we talked about the talent show that changed his life, why his recording studio is still somebody’s house, what the Muscle Shoals legacy actually did for his generation, and where he sends people when they come to Florence.<\/p>\n


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\u201cAnd It Was News to Me\u201d<\/h2>\n


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He was born in Muscle Shoals and grew up in Loretto, Tennessee, on a chicken farm, thirty miles and one state line away. This was pre-internet and pre-cable. His whole music education was whatever records his parents and neighbors had, plus Top 40 radio. His dad played old country and, John Paul says, would argue to this day that country died around 1980. His mom played crooners and show tunes \u2014 Johnny Mathis, Dean Martin, the West Side Story soundtrack.<\/p>\n


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\u201cIf I’m zooming out and listening to the body of my work,\u201d he said, \u201cyou could probably tell that’s the case.\u201d<\/p>\n


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Nobody in his family played. Nobody in Loretto made a living at music. Then some friends who actually were musicians entered a talent contest, planning to lip sync AC\/DC’s \u201cBack in Black,\u201d and he ended up as the singer because he was the one who knew all the words.<\/p>\n


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At the practice, he sang \u201cStand By Me\u201d into the microphone just to get a level.<\/p>\n


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\u201cLike the proverbial record scratched, and everybody stared at me like, \u2018You can sing.\u2019 And it was news to me.\u201d<\/p>\n


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He was obsessed after that, but he still didn’t think it was a job. \u201cI thought I’d go get a real job,\u201d he said. Things just kept getting a little bigger. \u201cIt’s incredibly hard to make a living. And even if you are, it’s a tough way of life. It’s not for the meek. You have to be a little bit crazy, I think, and I am.\u201d<\/p>\n


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The Move That Never Happened<\/h2>\n


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When he was young, he told me, your hometown is the lamest place on earth. He figured he’d end up in Nashville or New York or LA, where the jobs were. He couldn’t afford to.<\/p>\n


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So he stayed, and made it work from here, and somewhere in there the math flipped.<\/p>\n


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He’s clear-eyed about why that was lucky. \u201cIf I lived in an industry town, I think I’d probably work myself to death, ’cause there’s always an opportunity.\u201d Somebody’s co-write fell through. Somebody needs a guitar part, a harmony. \u201cI would’ve done it all. I would’ve never flinched.\u201d<\/p>\n


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Here, he said, he’s forced to take a breath \u2014 and that’s what lets him run headlong into the next thing.<\/p>\n


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I told him I did a version of the same thing: left for college certain I was never coming back, ended up home about eleven years later, no regrets.<\/p>\n


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\u201cIt happens,\u201d he said. \u201cEither people get out forever, or they get sucked back in before you know it.\u201d<\/p>\n


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\"Picture<\/p>\n


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A House That Is Still a House<\/h2>\n


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He recorded parts of Beulah and The Hurting Kind at\u00a0FAME<\/a>\u00a0in Muscle Shoals. But most of the work now happens at Sun Drop Sound, a turn-of-the-century house next door to his own in Florence’s historic district. The commute is about twenty yards.<\/p>\n


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I asked what that room gives him that a big studio can’t.<\/p>\n


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He has worked in plenty of proper studios \u2014 acoustically treated, isolation booths, floors floated off the ground so no vibration gets through. \u201cThat’s all great,\u201d he said. But there’s something else in those rooms.<\/p>\n


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\u201cYou feel the clock ticking. You know this place is expensive. Whether you’re paying for it or not, you can just tell everything in here is expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n


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His place is still a house. The control room is the master bedroom. He has kept it that way on purpose, so people relax. \u201cI always tend to perform better and create better in spaces like that than something that feels a little more corporate.\u201d<\/p>\n


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FAME still comes into play when he needs a bigger room \u2014 when there’s a band and you want everybody looking at each other.<\/p>\n


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\"Split
John Paul joined us from the house in Florence \u2014 a few steps from the studio he built next door.\u00a0(Still from the Episode 123 recording. Visit North Alabama \/ Brand Revolt.)<\/figcaption>
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\u201cThey Treated Me Like an Equal When I Was Nobody\u201d<\/h2>\n


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Here is where I expected a tourism answer and got something more honest.<\/p>\n


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I asked whether living inside the Muscle Shoals legacy \u2014 Aretha, Wilson Pickett, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan \u2014 is a weight or a gift. A gift, he said, no question. And then he complicated it.<\/p>\n


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In the ’80s and ’90s, he said, there wasn’t much going on here. The city spent most of its energy promoting the past for tourism, \u201cas they should, because we’re all incredibly proud of that music. But that wasn’t doing us, my generation, any good.\u201d The places to play kept closing, and communities weren’t eager to let new ones open. By the end of the ’90s the live scene had largely died. That, he said, is why a band like the Drive-By Truckers ended up in Athens, Georgia.<\/p>\n


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What saved it for him wasn’t the history. It was the people who made it, still walking around.<\/p>\n


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I got to learn from David Hood and Spooner Oldham and Jimmy Johnson, and they treated me like an equal when I was nobody. And when you live here and you see those guys at the coffee shop or at the restaurant, you realize \u2014 okay, they did it from here. They never left here. Why can’t I?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n


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\u201cI don’t think a lot of communities can say that,\u201d he added. \u201cIf I was born in Kansas I probably would not have felt like the dreams were realizable.\u201d<\/p>\n


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Then the 2013 Muscle Shoals documentary came out \u2014 he’s in it \u2014 and something shifted. A lot of people who live here learned their own history from that film. \u201cEverybody got a little more proud of it and a little more willing to support it and help it grow again.\u201d<\/p>\n


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His verdict on the scene right now: \u201cIt’s more vital than it has been in my career.\u201d<\/p>\n


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Not a Record Label. A Co-Op.<\/h2>\n


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He didn’t dream of running a label either. What he had was a lot of nights sitting around with other artists complaining about labels.<\/p>\n


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\u201cWe would all bellyache about labels and how they were the devil \u2014 which isn’t true, but when you’re an artist, it just never feels like they’re doing enough.\u201d<\/p>\n


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Single Lock<\/a>\u00a0started with a conversation between Ben Tanner \u2014 John Paul’s studio partner, and formerly of Alabama Shakes \u2014 and Will Trapp, who works in finance and loves music. Their question was simple: what do artists around here actually need to succeed?<\/p>\n


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The answer was money. Enough to quit one of their three jobs. Enough for a van. Enough to make a record in a real studio with a real producer, and to get CDs and records and merch printed to sell on the road.<\/p>\n


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There was no big marketing budget and no radio promo budget. \u201cWe pretty much just put them in a van and filled the tank up and said, \u2018Go get to work.\u2019\u201d Fifty-fifty partnership. He lobbied against calling it a record label at all.<\/p>\n


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\u201cWhat we do feels more like a co-op. Sometimes it feels like philanthropy, to be honest.\u201d<\/p>\n


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Thirteen years in, the thing he keeps coming back to is that it’s still here. \u201cThere’s a lot of labels that can’t say that.\u201d<\/p>\n


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Huntsville and the Shoals<\/h2>\n


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We just spent an episode on\u00a0what Huntsville has built<\/a>, so I wanted the view from the other end of the region.<\/p>\n


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\u201cYou can bet we’re paying attention,\u201d he said. There’s a lot happening there he’d love to grow here \u2014 though he’s realistic about why it’s harder. Huntsville is the biggest city in the state now. More people, more money, more appetite.<\/p>\n


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And the Shoals still carries a hangover from the ’90s. \u201cPeople got so used to not going and listening to live music here that sometimes it’s a chore to get people out of their apartments or their homes and go to a show. Which is so strange to say about a town with such music history.\u201d<\/p>\n


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But it’s improving, and he credits ShoalsFest with proving the point: people will come here if the event is great.<\/p>\n


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He also thinks the two towns are knitting back together. For most of his life, he said, the Shoals felt disconnected \u2014 not just from Huntsville but from Birmingham, Memphis, even Nashville \u2014 which wasn’t true in the ’60s and ’70s, when the ties ran to Memphis, Chicago, Detroit and Macon. Now there’s more cross-pollination than there used to be.<\/p>\n


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His phrase for it was one I’d heard from Huntsville’s music officer two weeks earlier, almost word for word: all boats rise.<\/p>\n


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He’s living the collaboration, too. This past June he headlined the very first show presented by the new Tangled String Syndicate at the Straight to Ale Speakeasy in Huntsville, with Common Man opening.<\/p>\n


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Who to Listen to Right Now<\/h2>\n


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I asked who deserves attention past the marquee names. He apologized for not having a better finger on the pulse of a small town, and then rattled off a list.<\/p>\n


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Caleb Elliott<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 \u201ca brilliant artist,\u201d with a new trio.\u00a0Carver Commodore<\/strong>, who he says live in Huntsville and the Shoals both.\u00a0Billy Allen + The Pollies<\/strong>, who are touring hard; Single Lock put out a record on The Pollies, and Billy joined later. \u201cHe’s one of the best vocalists I’ve ever heard. It blows my mind listening to him sing.\u201d<\/p>\n


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And\u00a0Gary Nichols<\/strong>, from Tuscumbia, who had a long run with the SteelDrivers and is doing his own thing now.<\/p>\n


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I mentioned that when I heard Gary play at the governor’s conference and learned he’d been in the SteelDrivers, my first thought was Chris Stapleton \u2014 and then: this is all right here.<\/p>\n


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John Paul enjoyed that. \u201cWhat huge shoes to have to fill. Chris is next level. He’s an alien.\u201d Then the part most people don’t know: the SteelDrivers won their Grammy with Gary out front, not Chris.<\/p>\n


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\u201cThere’s really no shortage of great talent around here. It takes a lot of perseverance, it takes a lot of willpower, it takes a lot of luck. But there’s plenty of people that have got what it takes.\u201d<\/p>\n


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John Paul’s Florence<\/h2>\n


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I asked where he’d send someone building a trip around all of this. He didn’t hesitate.<\/p>\n


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Do the studio tours.<\/strong>\u00a0FAME and Muscle Shoals Sound, both. Non-negotiable.<\/p>\n


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Helen Keller’s birthplace<\/strong>\u00a0in Tuscumbia, where the well is still standing \u2014 the one where she learned the word water.<\/p>\n


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Downtown Florence<\/strong>, which he remembers as tumbleweeds in the ’90s and now calls a great place to hang.<\/p>\n


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Odette<\/strong>\u00a0on North Court Street. \u201cI’ll put it up there against any restaurant, especially the farm-to-table type thing.\u201d<\/p>\n


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Yumm Thai: Sushi and Beyond<\/strong>, directly across the street. \u201cI’d also put it up with anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n


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Bunyan’s Bar-B-Que<\/strong>\u00a0on the west side, known for a hot mustard slaw he swears is the most addictive thing going.<\/p>\n


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Staggs Grocery<\/strong>\u00a0in the Sweetwater District of East Florence for a burger. \u201cIt’s been there forever, and it’s a staple.\u201d<\/p>\n


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Billy Reid’s flagship store.<\/strong>\u00a0Billy designed everything John Paul wore during the Civil Wars years. All those suits.<\/p>\n


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And then the one he most wanted people to know about:\u00a0Tom’s Wall.<\/strong><\/p>\n


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Tom Hendrix spent more than thirty years building an unmortared stone wall on his property off the Natchez Trace, one rock at a time, as a monument to his great-great-grandmother Te-lah-nay \u2014 a Yuchi woman who was forced to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears and walked back to the Singing River. It’s the largest unmortared wall in the United States and the largest memorial to a Native American woman. Hendrix died in 2017; his family keeps it open.<\/p>\n


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John Paul is not a man who reaches for the word spiritual.<\/p>\n


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\u201cMore often than not, I’ll smirk when somebody talks about a place being spiritual. I’m always like, I’d have to see that to believe it.\u201d He paused. \u201cBut every time I go, and every time I send somebody there \u2014 I don’t know how to describe it. It’s kind of an out-of-body experience.\u201d<\/p>\n


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\"Black
\u201cOh, I can do this. I don’t have to have their counsel, ’cause they’re trying to figure it out as they go, just like I am.\u201d\u00a0Photo by Allister Ann, 2021. Courtesy of the artist.<\/figcaption>
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\u201cNobody Knew What They Were Doing\u201d<\/h2>\n


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I close every episode by asking what has surprised the guest most. His answer is the thing he tells his students at the University of North Alabama, where he teaches songwriting.<\/p>\n


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\u201cAs I worked my way through the ranks, I started realizing that nobody knew what they were doing.\u201d<\/p>\n


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You spend your whole youth assuming everyone else has more information than you do \u2014 that your ideas aren’t good yet, that the heavyweights with the experience are the ones with the answers. \u201cAnd I started realizing the more I did it that was not true. It’s a pretty equal playing field.\u201d<\/p>\n


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He called it disappointing and liberating at the same time. \u201cOh, I can do this. I don’t have to have their counsel, ’cause they’re trying to figure it out as they go, just like I am.\u201d<\/p>\n


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Which leads him somewhere useful for anybody making anything:<\/p>\n


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\u201cWe all want to sign that record deal that makes you millions of dollars overnight. Typically that’s not how it works. And typically if you do, it’s probably not the record label \u2014 it’s the music that you’ve made. It’s still all about songs and records.\u201d<\/p>\n


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Plan Your Trip<\/h2>\n


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The\u00a0Music Trail of North Alabama<\/a>\u00a0is our digital passport covering the studios, the venues, the festivals \u2014 everything music in the region. Check in at stops and earn prizes like T-shirts and guitar picks.<\/p>\n


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A few practical notes before you go. Bunyan’s and Staggs are both weekday operations \u2014 Staggs closes at 2 p.m. and neither is open Saturday or Sunday. Odette is closed Sunday and Monday. Tom’s Wall is at 13890 County Road 8, just off the Natchez Trace at milepost 338, open daily; call Florence\/Lauderdale Tourism if you want to line up a guided visit.<\/p>\n


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And if you’re reading this the weekend it goes up: ShoalsFest is at McFarland Park in Florence on October 3 and 4.<\/p>\n


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For John Paul’s music, tour dates and everything Single Lock has coming, he says go old school and start at the websites \u2014\u00a0johnpaulwhite.com<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0singlelock.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n


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Listen to the Full Conversation<\/h2>\n


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There’s more in the episode than fit here: why writing songs over Zoom during the pandemic didn’t work (you can’t sing harmony with a lag), what he thinks artists actually need from a label, his case for which streaming service pays musicians best, and the project he has percolating that he couldn’t talk about yet.<\/p>\n


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Listen to Episode 123 with John Paul White on\u00a0Apple Podcasts<\/a>,\u00a0Spotify<\/a>, or wherever you listen.<\/p>\n


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