-[narrator's voice] Nestled in the heart of Appalachia, the University of Virginia's College at Wise is where students experience unique regional culture and the great outdoors.

UVA Wise, empowering students to learn and lead in their communities and the world.

[♪ ♪ ♪] -[Josh Deel's voice] There's something about the Shoals that sticks to you.

Maybe it's the river-- slow, heavy, patient.

The Yuchi called it the Singing River, said it carried voices.

♪ I'm going down to Florence ♪ ♪ Going on wear a pretty dress ♪ Maybe they were right.

If you stand still long enough, you can almost convince yourself that you hear it, too.

♪ Voices in my head ♪ Not ghosts exactly, just echoes of what's been made here.

Four small towns, one heartbeat.

They call it the Shoals.

Around here, music isn't manufactured; it seeps out of cracked walls, old amps, worn hands.

It's sweat and cigarettes and something divine hiding in the groove.

I came here chasing a question.

How can one little corner of Alabama hold so much soul?

What I found was a community that still moves to the same rhythm it's always known-- the sons and daughters of giants, the ones who kept the lights on, historians, dreamers, storytellers-- all hanging on to a sound that refuses to die.

♪ A feather's not a bird ♪ ♪ The rain is not the sea ♪ ♪ A stone is not a mountain ♪ ♪ But a river runs through me ♪ In the Shoals, history hums through every note, every scarred instrument, every bend in the river.

This isn't nostalgia; it's a pulse that's still beating.

♪ The rain is not the sea ♪ ♪ A stone is not a mountain ♪ ♪ But a river runs through me ♪ They say the place you're from shapes you.

Maybe it defines you.

I've always thought you can't really understand yourself until you understand where you come from.

I'm Josh with PBS Appalachia.

In this series, I'm going from town to town, exploring the places people still call home, their hometowns.

From Appalachia to the rest of the country, I've found we share more than we think, but it's the details-- the food, the voices, the pride and traditions-- that make us different.

This isn't a story told from New York or LA; it comes with roots embedded in Southwest Virginia, an often overlooked, misunderstood corner of the map.

That perspective matters because the character of America doesn't just live in its big cities.

It's the small towns, the back roads, the kitchens, and the bars where people gather.

That's the lens I bring to this journey because the character of America isn't written in headlines; it's lived in neighborhoods, on porches, at kitchen tables.

And this season, we're pushing past borders into communities far from here, into new towns, new kitchens, new homes, searching for what home means here and everywhere.

[♪ ♪ ♪] -[Billy Warren] I am a local yokel.

-[Josh] You're a local yokel.

-I was born here.

-[Josh chuckles] -I'm of the opinion that a person owes something to the soul that nurtured him.

That probably sounds very syrupy and very corny, but that is a core belief of mine.

-So in your lifetime then, from Muscle Shoals to just the whole area-- the Shoals-- what's been some of the most significant changes you've seen, or have you?

-With, of course, technology and its advancement, both good and bad, [chuckles] it's no longer an isolated, way-up-in-the-Northwest-corner -of-Alabama kind of town.

-Do the Shoals--like the-- what's four towns roughly that comprise that?

Are they siloed, or do they kinda collaborate?

-It hasn't always been a spirit of collaboration, I have to be honest, but it is now.

I think, I think over time, it has now gelled to that point that, yes, I think we have recognized that we can do much more together than we can do separately.

That sounds a little trite, I guess, until you get to that recognition; then you'll always live in a silo, in some kind of echo chamber.

It's part of, like John Dunn said-- you know, that poem, you know-- no man is an island and part of the main and all of that.

You know we're not just a little isolated town up in this corner of the state.

The Shoals area is known, again, for this beautiful river.

-And what river--you keep referring to this river?

-The Tennessee River.

-Okay.

-The Tennessee.

Yeah.

-And that was, that was referred to, or is referred to, as what--the Singing?

-Yeah.

Yeah.

It's called the Singing River.

And-- -Where did that come from?

-That came from the native Americans, actually.

The native Americans could hear a voice in that river singing to them.

In fact, a guy named Tom Hendrix helped to start that whole term, or revitalize that term.

Tom died a few years ago, but he built that wonderful wall.

[♪ ♪ ♪] -[Trace Hendrix] They believed that there was a woman who lived in the river who sang beautiful songs to them and spiritually supported it.

They call--that's why they call it the Singing River.

The dams and the bridges and all this have quieted her voice some, but if you can find the right place, open your heart to her, she will sing to you.

I have heard her.

Only a few times, but I have heard her.

And it's an unbelievable feeling.

-Yeah.

-Because you feel it first and then you hear it, and it feels like it just envelops you.

It's--you can't describe it.

-[Josh's voice] Trace's father, Tom Hendrix, spent decades building a stone wall to honor his great, great grandmother, Tulane, a Yuchi woman forced from her homeland during the removal of Native American tribes.

She eventually returned back to her home along the Singing River, and each stone represents a single step along her harrowing journey.

Known as Tom's Wall, it's the largest unmortered stone wall in the United States.

It's a lasting tribute to her strength and spirit.

What was going through your head when you started seeing Dad doing this?

-Well, because it was something I understood, and because of our heritage and why he did it, I thought it was very interesting.

He built it all himself, though.

He was very adamant about that.

-Yeah.

-And he picked up some big rocks.

Now, he would call me when he found some really big ones and tell me to eat my Wheaties and bring my big trailer, and I think, well, I'm gonna be sore by Monday.

-[Josh] Did he have a master plan?

I mean, he know when he was gonna be done?

-[Trace] No.

-[Josh] No?

People would ask him, when will you be done?

He said, when I'm not here.

He said, it'll never be done when I'm alive.

He said, the rocks may not be as big, but it won't be done.

After my father passed away, I was out here every weekend.

This one guy was always out here, and he sat a lot in the prayer circle.

One day he walked up to me and handed me a rock.

He said, I found this up on the South China Sea on my first tour in Vietnam.

He said, I did three tours.

Said this represents the bad things that I brought back, but I no longer need it because this place has given me back what I lost.

It's part of what's here.

It's the creator.

There's something about this place.

I've had people walk in and get just about five feet in and stop and say, okay, what just happened?

-[Josh's voice] Standing in front of it, it hits you.

The scale, the silence.

Thirty years, nearly 10,000,000 pounds of stone, one man's hands.

It's not a monument, it's a confession-- a lifetime carved into rock, one piece at a time.

I feel the weight of it, not just the stone, but the love, the loss, and the need to make sense of it all.

-Google Roseanne Cash, A Feather's Not a Bird, or do you know it already?

She talks about-- in that song-- she talks about coming to that wall.

We've had Roseanne Cash come in and write the only song she's ever won a Grammy for about the wall, played it on David Letterman, showed pictures.

We've had the band Journey here.

Aerosmith was gonna come over here, and somebody told them we were closed, which we weren't.

-[Josh] Uh-huh.

-So I had to call them and talk to them, and I carried them some cards.

I said, look, if somebody like that wants to come here, call me and let me know.

I'll meet them out there.

[♪ ♪ ♪] -Just across the river is the town of Muscle Shoals, and it's actually known worldwide because, you know, all those famous rock stars have actually recorded there through the years.

-[Debbie Wilson] So the first people, the first artist they recorded, was Cher, and later that year, the Rolling Stones show up.

And they recorded Brown Sugar, “You Gotta Move,” and “Wild Horses,” which--Wild Horses--was written, part of it was written, in the restroom upstairs, the bathroom.

-Wow, and they recorded right here?

-Yeah, they recorded Muscle Shoals Sound for three days.

-What made the Muscle Shoals Sound unique?

-It's just a very-- it's one the reasons they were called Swampers-- because of the river and, you know, the myth of the singing, the woman in the Singing River, the native American.

A lot of things that aren't real tangible.

Now David Hood will be the first to say it was talent.

It's just a lot of hard work.

Yeah.

And that's true.

But there was just also the synergy with maybe coming from the river.

-Back in the day, there were as many as maybe 15 studios going in this tiny little place, you know, some of them smaller than others.

The two main ones were always Fame and Muscle Shoals Sound Studio.

And it started with Fame.

Rick Hall started a publishing company called Florence Alabama Musical Enterprises.

So people think the name Fame comes from being famous, which maybe that was why they acronymed the Florence.

Famous--named after Florence-- and it's in Muscle Shoals, and Muscle Shoals Sound is in Sheffield, Alabama, and named after the Muscle Shoals Sound.

-All right.

Muscle Shoals Sound Studio.

That's where we are, right?

-Right, right.

And we're actually ran by a 501(c)(3) organization, Muscle Shoals Music Foundation.

-How'd that come about?

-The Shoals documentary came out, and Doctor Dre of Beats Electronics saw the documentary in Santa Monica and decided right then that he wanted to form a nonprofit called Sustain the Sound.

And we were his first project, and so we formed the Muscle Shoals Music Foundation.

-So tell me, I mean, a little bit about this place for people who don't know, like how it got established.

Just a little historic background.

-Well, the four young men, The Swampers, started the studio.

They had been with Fame Recording Studios, which is just down the street from here with Recall.

And they decided in 1969, with the help of Jerry Wexler, who was over Atlantic Records at the time, to start their own studio.

Looking back, it was, you know, a feud, but it also resulted in us having a lot more hits from the whole area.

-They would say that back in the day that, you know, you could bring people here and they would focus.

You know, you--if you take, if you take the Rolling Stones to Los Angeles or New York, it's a party.

If you bring them here, there's, you know, there's not a whole lot else to do besides make music.

I'm sure they found different ways to party themselves, but, you know, the major distractions-- the focus becomes the music when you're here.

[musical instruments playing] -Muscle Shoals, it was founded in 1922 as a result of Henry Ford's visit here, actually.

He was gonna buy Wilson Dam, he thought, and create a metropolis all the way from here to Huntsville.

And he brought Thomas Edison with him too, by the way, and the whole hydroelectric power thing through Wilson Dam was the big draw.

And it was a big hoorah that went on here.

A lot of people wanted it to happen.

Well, was all these land speculation things, and so you can go into part of Muscle Shoals now and you'll find street names and sidewalks that don't go anywhere.

But Muscle Shoals then has become that hit capital of the world.

-[Josh's voice] In the nineteen twenties, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison stood on the banks of the Tennessee River with a wild idea-- a city powered by the river itself.

They called it the Electric City.

Factories, homes, schools, you name it-- all running on clean energy.

A self-sustaining future decades before the world was ready for it.

But the dream got tangled in red tape and politics.

It flickered out before it ever caught fire.

A century later, a new kind of current runs through the shoals.

Inside an old industrial block in Florence, the sound isn't turbines anymore, it's fans.

Rows of Bitcoin miners hum in the dark, converting electricity into digital gold.

The same river power still feeds it all.

Different tools, same instinct-- to turn current into creation.

And that's where I met Will, a new kind of builder chasing the same current Ford and Edison once dreamed of harnessing.

-I just got on the phone, I started calling, and Florence picked up, and they said, you know, as is typical for this industry, they said, we've already fielded a thousand calls from Bitcoin miners.

Like, what makes you guys any different?

Right?

-Yeah.

And the answer to that is?

-And the answer to that was, is that, like, we are using only off peak power.

What we do is we completely shut off during those, like, those peak six hours of the day.

All of the devices are hooked to a power distribution unit on the wall, and those are all able to be remotely switched off.

And so everything gets turned off.

-What is Bitcoin crypto, roughly?

-You know, it really depends on who you talk to on, like, what Bitcoin is.

But I would lean more heavily towards the definition that it is a system that allows people to freely transact on a system without any government intervention, without any government permission, right, to actually, like, hold value, send it anywhere in the world, participate in an economic system anywhere in the world without having Big Brother looking over you saying, you can't do that.

We're having this conversation last night, and someone from the group was like, you know what?

I think the world is likely to collapse.

Right?

Here, like, I think the probability might be kind of high.

Where do you wanna be in that scenario?

Right?

You wanna be in towns like this, like towns like Florence, towns like Muscle Shoals, Tuscumbia, etcetera, where there's a fairly cohesive community, not a ton of people, an abundance of resources from power to water to arable land.

♪ Here I go once again ♪ ♪ Down the road that just never seems to end ♪ ♪ If I don't or if I do ♪ ♪ I'll be damned my whole life through ♪ -So are you from this area originally?

-I am.

-Yeah?

-Born and raised just across the river in a little town called Tuscumbia.

-[Josh] Tuscumbia, okay.

-[Janna Malone] Birthplace of Helen Keller.

-[Josh] Helen Keller.

-[Janna] Yeah.

-[Josh] That's part of the Shoals, right?

One of the Shoals?

-Yes.

Four cities that make up the Shoals.

Tuscumbia, Sheffield, Muscle Shoals, and Florence.

So, born and raised, graduated high school, -Yeah.

-never left.

-Listen to Muscle Shoals Sound the whole time?

-Absolutely.

-Yeah.

-I'm chair of the Department of Entertainment Industry here at the University of North Alabama.

In 1975 they started the commercial music program, and I think the first class had like 75 students.

-Were you a student here?

-Mhmm.

-Yeah.

-Graduated from-- -Graduated from here.

-I was in school, and Miss Janna Malone, who runs the department now, she had just gotten here.

-John Paul, when I first started working here, he was a student.

He was my-- he first group of students.

I found out one day, by just talking to him, he was a songwriter.

And of course, coming from Fame, that was a lot of what we did.

We had songwriters because we had the publishing company again.

-I had dropped out of school for about four years because I was playing in all the bars thinking some record company guy was gonna come and slap a contract on the back of a Cadillac and make me a million dollars.

That did not happen, so I came back to school, met Janna, and she said, I think Walt needs to know about you.

-He was like, I think it scared him, you know.

He's like, are you certain?

Are you really?

He's so critical and probably to this day is still critical of his stuff, you know.

-Walking across the podium to get my diploma, I already had a publishing deal, which I had zero prospects of any kind of employment a year earlier.

I feel like I've got everybody fooled.

I feel like it's just smoke and mirrors, and I'm holding on for dear life, and I learned early on to try to capitalize on that.

It was before that-- the movie Ring of Fire -- but June makes a comment to Johnny about how, like, you keep talking about how you're not a good singer, you're not a good guitar player, you're not--she's like, you need to own what you are.

I'm paraphrasing.

I don't remember exactly how she said it, but I remember thinking, I totally did that.

I do a certain thing that I taught myself living out in the middle of nowhere, so I play different than other people, and I thought, I'm just going to lean into that.

I didn't know what the chords were.

I'd just figure them out.

I'd just know that's not the right note, and then I'd make a shape and then figure out that people have been doing it for hundreds of years.

There was a Bob Dylan interview.

He talks about impostor syndrome and how he thinks everybody's going to figure out that he's a fool at some point.

And it was really good to hear.

It's like, okay, if Bob Dylan feels that way, then it's okay for me to feel that.

-It's okay, yeah.

-I had played down in Athens at a high school.

The engineer talked to me after.

He was like, you know, you got something.

I'd like to introduce you to my friend.

And he introduced me to Rodney Hall over at Fame, which is Rick's son.

And so Rodney had me come in and sing on some of the tracks they already had.

And it was a huge moment for me.

I've never been in a real studio, you know, and especially that one.

-I've worked with Rodney Hall.

We've co-produced things together.

You know, we--we have a really great relationship, and, but Fame, Fame is primarily the studio that, if I'm gonna work out of the place over here, it would be Fame.

-But your family's ties, I mean, you're from this area.

-Yeah.

-Right?

-Well, you know, Sam was really a mentor to Rick.

I mean, and Rick said that-- Rick Hall-- and he really loved Sam, and Sam really loved him.

And, you know, I think that certainly bridged my relationship with Rodney.

And, I mean, we all grew up a little different than your average human being.

-So Sam Phillips was from here.

Sam Phillips found Elvis and Julie Lewis and Johnny Cash and a bunch of people-- Howlin' Wolf.

There's Armstead Chapel over there.

That's apparently where he first heard black music, and where basically rock and roll was born.

-That was a really big part of what influenced his sound and what he took with him.

-We've had this discussion already with some of other people in the studios-- like, what was going on inside the studio looked a good bit different than what was going on outside.

But it was, I think, the stuff going on inside the studio that probably helped in maybe some small way.

-Well, know, the respect of the black and white players and stuff that were playing together, I mean, there was really no, there was really no distance between-- the common denominator was music.

And in Memphis and here, and it was an integrated music situation, you know, and it changed the world.

I mean, absolutely changed the world.

-Well, music is-- it's so healing, you know.

It really is universal language that I think, it brings everybody-- it really does bring everybody together.

And, man, those guys, I mean, they were all just poor, man.

-[Josh] Yeah.

-You know?

And they had something to say, and they had somebody that would listen to them.

-You know, music was one of those things that kinda broke down the racial barriers.

And while, you know, there was a lot of unrest in a lot of other areas, in the music area they were all just making music together.

Rick Hall brought a lot of black artists into town because that's where the soul was.

-There was always about the music and about, if you could play, it didn't matter what color you were or anything else.

-Exactly.

It was kind of unifying, right?

-Yeah.

-It's like, it didn't matter.

-Yeah.

A 100%.

-Yeah.

-A 100%.

-Rick Hall says something that really stuck with me when I heard it.

He said, if somebody give you some money to cut a record, you damn sure better make it a hit.

-He was very tenacious and wouldn't take no for an answer.

And just, uh... yeah, I'll think he-- Without him, I'm not sure that it ever happens.

-Was it tense with you and Dad?

-Yeah.

-Because he was, like, probably a really driven guy and had his way of doing things.

-He was harder on us than he was-- and he was hard on people, but he was really hard on us.

-Nobody wants to ask me how hard Rick Hall was to work with.

No, I'm kidding.

I'm kidding.

I'm kidding.

When I interviewed, he told me, he said, if you can work for Rick Hall, you can work for anybody.

And it was true.

-It's amazing the kind of talent.

I mean, the high school that Jason Isbell came out of-- Chris Tompkins also came out of there--the Secret Sisters.

John Paul White was from Loretta High School, about fifteen minutes from where Jason Isbell and all of them went to high school.

-There was a group of us, you know, like the Shakes and Secret Sisters and Gary Nichols, who later was with The Steel Drivers.

There was a Jason Isbell-- I can't believe I listed him last.

He'll get it.

We all helped each other out.

We all opened for each other.

We all introduced each other to other people and rooted for each other.

Eventually there was another spike.

Muscle Shoals was relevant again.

-Everyone in the music industry knew about Muscle Shoals-- that had been a place in the past-- but, you know, the public at large had no idea, and for the most part still doesn't.

-There's not very many recording studios you can go into still these days where people can record analog or to tape, you know, and so walking into a place like Fame or coming to Memphis and going to St.

Phillips Recording, there is a feeling, like there's a presence-- like there's some musical DNA in the space that immediately inspires you.

And I've always said, you know, if you're a real artist, I think you go to places like this to find yourself, you know, not to be somebody else.

It might work and it might not, but you need to write every day.

Don't just sit and wait for inspiration.

-All right.

-[John Paul] You get to where you can call the muse on a daily basis.

You don't have to wait for it.

-Music is a healer, and it really is a universal language.

And even now, with all the divisiveness, that's one thing that people, you know, could kind of really get on board with and enjoy themselves with and let all that other stuff go--is music.

-The Shoals, of course, is home.

The Shoals, of course, is the place that I want to promote and let the whole world know what a great secret we have here.

An open secret.

-[Josh] If you were to fill in the blank-- Muscle Shoals is-- what is it to you?

-This Fame, specifically, is my home.

I mean, like I was telling you earlier, I've spent more time here than I've spent in any other building anywhere.

Probably the coolest place on the planet to me.

-I like to ask people to fill in the blank for me, so you're not exempt.

[chuckles] Muscle Shoals is... -[John Paul] For me, Muscle Shoals is lifeblood.

I wouldn't exist without it.

I wouldn't create to this day without it.

I could never leave here.

I feel like it'd be like Samson cutting off his hair.

It's like, there'd be a part of me that's come undone, and I wouldn't--and my roots are just so ingrained in the soul around here that I can't imagine what kind of person, what kind of creator I would be if I weren't here.

So it's everything to me.

-Love it.

It's a mic drop to me.

♪ I've got a good side ♪ ♪ I've got a bad side ♪ ♪ Side of crazy too ♪ ♪ I've got a good side ♪ ♪ I've got a bad side ♪ ♪ Side of crazy too♪ ♪ I've got a good side ♪ -[narrator's voice] Nestled in the heart of Appalachia, the University of Virginia's College at Wise is where students experience unique regional culture and the great outdoors.

UVA Wise, empowering students to learn and lead in their communities and the world.