[gentle bluegrass music] [Billy Bob] The South is made for writers.

[Adia] I think the things that unify people in the South are the same things that unify all people.

[David] Drawing a singular image of our people, that's where things get difficult or rather impossible.

[gentle music] Spend enough time here, but keep your eyes and ears open and your mouth closed and you may come to know this place.

[gentle music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [gentle piano music] - They're a little bit more bitter than store bought, but they also don't cost you nothing.

[laughs] We're surrounded in 'em.

I don't know where that dog ran off to.

[gentle piano music] Charlie!

[David laughs] [whistles] Charlie.

Hey.

- Join me in giving a welcome to author, David Joy.

[audience applauds] - And so I was gonna read a little bit from this essay and it was called "One Place Misunderstood," which is a reference to that Eudora Welty line that one place understood helps us understand all places better.

When I sit down to begin a story, the canvas isn't blank in that there is already a place.

There are already mountains and streams and buildings and roads, so that when a character finally arises, that character claws himself from the ground, that place for me is Jackson County, North Carolina.

♪ I got green and I got blues ♪ ♪ And every day there's a little less difference ♪ ♪ Between the two ♪ [David] Jackson County, North Carolina is not the coal fields of Kentucky or West Virginia.

Coal isn't destroying our mountaintops.

Ours are threatened by unrestricted land development.

There are millionaires hitting golf balls on Tom Fazzio designed golf courses just over ridge line from people surviving off of mayonnaise sandwiches.

[soft country music] I can give you a singular image of Jackson County's landscape.

Drawing a singular image of our people, that's where things get difficult or rather impossible.

There are hardworking people and there are deadbeats.

There are God-fearing people and godless.

All of this is true.

All of this is within Jackson County.

Come here and I will show it to you.

[water flows] Got it.

[laughs] [water flows] So, that fish right there... genetically has been here since the last ice age.

They actually differ on a subspecies level from all other brook trout.

I mean, it's very much a Southern Appalachian thing.

[water flows] Look at that little baby, old ring neck snake.

See him?

That's a ring neck.

They won't hurt nothin'.

So, like a deer, typically, he, he rubs a cedar tree.

It's like you see that cedar just through there, right there, typically, so when I'm walking through the woods, that's what I'm looking for because a deer should have hit that.

But he didn't hit it.

He hit this tree.

This is birch.

It's wild to me that he, that close to a cedar tree, he should've hit the cedar tree, so it's one of them things where you can always think you know what's going on, but not exactly.

[gentle music] I think what I want people to recognize about the South is that it is a very, very complex place.

It's full of a whole lot of beauty.

It's full of a whole lot of bad things, as well.

And it's all of those things and I don't wanna lose a bit of it.

You know, as a writer, I... all I see is gray.

You know, that's the, most people only wanna see black and white and I don't care for it at all.

All I see is gray and to me, that's about the prettiest color I know.

♪ These are things I wish my mother would've told me ♪ ♪ All I ever really wanted was her story ♪ [Harper Lee] I think we are a region of storytellers naturally.

Quite a thing if you've never gone or if you've never known a southern small town.

The people there are not worldly-wise in any way.

But they tell you a story every time you see one.

[audience applauding] - People ask me why I always sing about the South and by people, I mean my mother.

She's like, "Another song about the South, Adia?"

But being a southerner's a strange thing.

You ponder about it, you gnaw on it, but you never can quite get to the heart of the South.

And I remember Eudora Welty, she said that "The thing about a southern writer that makes a good southern writer is you can see the most mundane things and see the extraordinary in the every day," and that's what I tried to do with this next song.

I looked at the South around me, I looked at the kudzu and the red clay and I decided to write a eulogy using nature around me.

[audience applauding] [music "My Oh My"] ♪ ♪ ♪ It was a long road that led you ♪ ♪ It was a darkness that fed you ♪ ♪ Sister, I can't see you no more ♪ ♪ Under the clouds we found you ♪ ♪ Cuttin' through the ground like kudzu ♪ ♪ Sister, I can't see you no more ♪ [blowing] That's right, calm down my love.

What I do when I come home from tour, one of the first things I do is I make, you know, a dish that reminds me of family.

Me and my sister, Hanifa, were always watching, you know, the women in our family cook.

It seemed like one of the times where they were free to talk amongst themselves and just, they seemed a little less burdened in the kitchen and, you know, eating was one of the ways that we were able to feel pleasure and like creativity is one of the only few ways us southern women were able to express themselves was in the kitchen.

So, it's not just, just cooking for me, it's just, it's more spiritual than that.

[grunts] All right.

This is my study, my library.

I've got more books than shelf.

We were so isolated growing up, like we didn't have a lot of social relations outside of the church, so I guess reading was a way for me to figure out like what was going on out there, like I really liked World War II and the Titanic when I was in elementary school.

I love Eudora Welty, I love Flannery O'Connor, Toni Morrison, Rue Lombart, Jacque Lacan, I love Primo Levi.

I like writers that allow me to look and see the world below the surface.

I look for people that allow me to kind of tilt the world on its side a little bit.

I remember when I was writing a southern gothic, because I couldn't leave the house much, you know, except to go to work at Amazon, I remember just looking at these pictures.

It's Eudora Welty's photographs.

She traveled all around, taking pictures in the middle of the Jim Crow South, the Mississippi of all places, you know.

It doesn't feel like they're objectified, it feels like she's capturing their subjectivity.

This picture's called "Wild Flowers."

I wrote a song during the pandemic, "Wild Flower Blues" just about all the different, you know, people that I've been in my life.

I've been a hillbilly, I've been a southern belle, I've been a town drunk, laying in the county jail and just, you know, the multiplicity of being.

Yeah, look at this.

I think I probably stared at this picture for like six hours one day.

Yeah.

She gets top shelf.

I think the reason like there's so many great writers that come out of the South, it's kind of like what William Faulkner said that, you know, the southerner feels a compulsion to explain, to explain through story their experience.

We're great orators, as well, and I think it's because we have these unresolved questions about our identity, even when it comes to being an American.

I think a lot of southerners, they don't truly feel like a regular American.

I became a writer as soon as I learned to write my name.

I liked that power that it gave me.

I liked that it gave me the ability to identify myself and realizing that I could use the guitar as a way to tell my stories.

I just fell in love with that.

- But, you know, "Magnolia Blues," I think there's sample of this viola in the chorus that's just me literally going like- [pitch goes down] - I hear that and my mind goes to like the heat and the humidity that we're all feeling right now and like I think back to like my childhood and seeing like the kudzu and like the drape of the South and like the decay of old buildings that I grew up with and that's what I wanted to call out to in an artful way.

[plays "Magnolia Blues"] All right.

♪ ♪ ♪ I follow you into the blue ♪ ♪ And north into the cold ♪ ♪ You led me off my land ♪ ♪ You led me far from home ♪ ♪ And I tried to be the kind of girl ♪ ♪ Who never needed ♪ ♪ You gave me all your light ♪ ♪ And I got nothing to show for it ♪ ♪ I'm going back South ♪ ♪ To Carolina ♪ ♪ I'm gonna plant myself ♪ ♪ Under a magnolia ♪ ♪ Going let that dirt ♪ ♪ Do its work ♪ ♪ I'm gonna plant myself ♪ ♪ Under a magnolia ♪ ♪ A magnolia ♪ ♪ A magnolia ♪ ♪ A magnolia ♪ ♪ A magnolia ♪ ♪ I may leave and buy a move ♪ ♪ I need my feet alone ♪ ♪ I didn't have a dime to ride the blinds ♪ ♪ To lead me back to home ♪ ♪ And I asked the conductor, "Sir, now, ♪ ♪ Won't you let me ride" ♪ ♪ He said, "Baby girl, this ain't my world ♪ ♪ That train ain't none of mine" ♪ ♪ I'm going back South ♪ ♪ Down to Carolina ♪ ♪ I'm gonna plant myself ♪ ♪ Under a magnolia ♪ ♪ I'm gonna let that dirt ♪ ♪ Do its work ♪ ♪ Gonna plant myself ♪ ♪ Under a magnolia ♪ ♪ A magnolia ♪ ♪ A magnolia ♪ ♪ A magnolia ♪ ♪ A magnolia ♪ ♪ ♪ Yeah, so that's a song about my magnolia tree.

[music "That's What I Like About the South"] ♪ Won't you come with me to Alabamy ♪ ♪ Let's go see my dear old Mammy ♪ ♪ She's fryin' eggs and boiling hammy ♪ ♪ That's what I like about the South ♪ ♪ Now there can't be no mistakey ♪ ♪ Where those nerves are never shaky ♪ ♪ Ought to taste her layer cakey ♪ ♪ That's what I like about the South ♪ ♪ Yeah, she's got baked ribs and candied yams ♪ ♪ Those sugar-cured Virginia hams ♪ ♪ Basement full of those berry jams ♪ ♪ That's what I like about the South ♪ ♪ Hot cornbread and black-eyed peas ♪ ♪ You can eat as much as you please ♪ ♪ 'Cause it's never out of season ♪ ♪ That's what I like about the South ♪ ♪ Ah, don't take one, take two ♪ ♪ There's dark brown and chocolate, too ♪ - Yeah, so that's the house up on the hill there and then the studio's down, down here.

So, years ago, I knew Johnny Cash very well.

I kind of came up around those guys.

They were all mentors to me, that whole sort of highwaymen bunch, you know, Kristofferson, Waylon and Willie and we actually opened for Willie on a couple of tours and I knew Cash pretty well.

I never got over being nervous around Cash.

He was from Arkansas, you know, Dyess, Arkansas.

And he and I did a duet together, we never put it out, but it was one of his songs.

Can you cuss on this or no?

- Sure.

- Okay.

- So, we went over to this studio over in Encino and he said, "Well, you got any ideas, son?"

I said, "Yeah, I was thinking maybe I'll sing that first verse and bridge and then you do the recitation and then we'll do a solo and then I'll come back into the next verse."

And he goes, "Yeah, I might have an idea or two myself, son.

After all, I wrote the [bleep] thing."

You know [laughs].

You know, it's like he was God to me, so okay, yeah.

So, he wrote this story, "Billy Bob, you'd be a good man to ride the river with.

I'm looking forward to coming to your house for one of those great country breakfasts, Billy Bob," which was like complete horse [bleep] because he knew that I was like allergic to everything.

And then he signs it, Johnny Cash, Johnny Cash, John Cash.

And I asked him, I said, "John, how come you signed it three times."

And he said, "Son, if you ever go broke, just cut that thing in thirds and you'll be all right."

[laughs] Isn't that great?

Well, the South is made for writers, you know.

I mean, it's like the air is heavier in the South.

When you think about it, other than the Revolution, the only major war we ever had in this country was largely fought in the South, you know.

And so, you can feel the ghosts there, you know.

♪ So, take the blame ♪ ♪ Then cough it up and spit out the shame ♪ That's not bad.

♪ A different kind of flame ♪ ♪ To help me back into my name ♪ Would it fit into.

♪ Grace came back into my side ♪ ♪ Been so long since I felt all right ♪ ♪ Didn't feel I had to hide ♪ ♪ And grace came back home last night ♪ ♪ The monster in me died ♪ ♪ Hard to believe I won the fight ♪ ♪ But you came back to my side ♪ - That's pretty much it.

- Yeah.

- We didn't have a- - There's no bridge or anything.

- There's no bridge or middle eight or anything in it, so it's just verses and choruses.

Yeah, so, all right.

Of course, we still have our pop song to finish first.

- Yeah, I'll just have to play.

- Now, see, here's two books, I mean, you know, I mean, just to talk about books.

Obviously, this is genius.

"A Confederacy of Dunces."

My mom got me the hardcover of this, but, you know, it's like you can't, they were trying to make a movie out of it at one point.

At one point they even talked to me about it.

I said, "You can't do it.

It's never gonna work."

So, this is John Fergus Ryan from Arkansas.

This is southern farce.

You know, there's the pig on the spit right there, you know.

The waitress comes up and she says, "Menus."

Ricksy Leaptrot and he says, "I don't need a menu," said Ricksy Leaptrot.

"Honey, I'm red-eyed and nervous and I got the hungry shakes."

Okay, now here's what made me laugh till I cried and nearly peed myself.

Here's what Ricksy Leaptrot orders.

"Bring me your regular catfish dinner and a plate of chili beans, a fried peach pie, a glass of sugared tea, a pint of sweet milk, some fresh pickled greens, buckwheats and baby links and a Swiss on rye and for dessert, bring me six or eight Dixie cups," six or eight, in the South they never say seven or eight, it's always six or eight, "Bring me six or eight Dixie cups, them kind where the movie star's picture on the inside of the top."

And then the waitress says, "That'd be some good eatin' all right."

Ricksy Leaptrot says, "Bring it, everything."

"You serious?"

"I'm serious."

She says, "Well, that's too bad 'cause we don't handle the fourth part of all that.

All we got's a little old plate lunch, a meat and three vegetables."

And Ricksy Leaptrot says, "That's what I was afraid of."

[laughs] I mean, how great is that.

Oh, it just makes me laugh.

There's me and Connie and Bella when Bella was just a little baby.

[Connie] You want me to hold him?

[Billy Bob] Yeah.

[dog yelps] He weighs about 3,000 pounds.

- For an actual walk, it becomes an issue because he, the next day he's terribly sore.

So.

[Billy Bob] He's really arthritic.

[Connie] He wants to be in the stroller.

- So, when we pass people when we're on a walk, you know, every time we pass people and they look at the dog in the stroller, we're like arthritis.

[Connie] Yeah, every time.

- Not a spoiled dog, arthritis.

You want to roll him?

- Another thing that we always have to explain is he was attacked when he was young, him and his sister.

And so he's become not trusting of other dogs and he always barks.

- See, this is where we come to walk.

During the drought, it was dry and now we've had it rain and so the creek's back up a little bit.

So, the ducks have a place to float.

[Connie] Yeah, there's a bunch of ducks.

- The rain really helped this creek because this is the center of life here.

It's pretty muddy around here.

- Yeah.

- Come on, Charlie.

[Connie] There's a better view over here.

[Cameraman] Does this remind you of your Arkansas upbringing?

- Oh, absolutely, only there's no water moccasins in it.

[laughs] - Yeah, just the occasional rattlesnake.

- Yeah.

You smell something, Charlie?

Other animals have invaded your creek?

[laughs] [sentimental music] The smell of sawdust always make me nostalgic.

I worked at a sawmill when I was young in Arkansas in Malvern, Hot Springs County Lumber Company.

[Cameraman] What do you miss the most about the South?

- Well...

I mean, there were friends there that I miss, but it was really the pinewoods, you know.

Come on, Charles.

[gentle music] ♪ ♪ - "Foreday in the Morning."

My mother grew morning glories that spilled onto the walkway toward her porch because she was a woman with land who showed as much by giving it color.

She told me I could have whatever I worked for.

That means she was an American.

But she'd say it was because she believed in God.

I'm ashamed of America and confounded by God.

I thank God for my citizenship in spite of the timer set on my life to write these words.

I love my mother.

I love Black women who plant flowers as sheepish as their sons.

By the time the blooms unfurl themselves for a few hours of light, the women who tend them are already at work.

Blue, I'll never know who started the lie that we are lazy, but I'd love to wake that [bleep] up at foreday in the morning, toss him in a truck and drive him under God past every bus stop in America to see all those Black folk waiting to go work for whatever they want.

A house?

A boy to keep the lawn cut?

Some color in the yard?

My God, we leave things green.

[gentle music] That's so beautiful.

There is light in the darkness.

I think the South is like, it's like my air.

It's what I breathe.

It's who I am.

So, and I think it has everything to do with what I see and what I choose to see and how I see things.

And I think it has everything to do with what I'm willing to put down when I'm writing.

And what I'm afraid to say, you know, which is what I have to be willing to put down.

- Father, mother God, when I look in the mirror sometimes, I have to question who am I?

What am I here for?

What is my purpose?

But when I tune in and be still and know that God is all there is, I know exactly who I am.

- I had all kinds of issues with self-loathing and mistreatment of myself and I just got better over time.

I had, you know, I made a decision to live and I'm glad I made it.

I wouldn't be alive if I wasn't a poet.

If I weren't a poet, I wouldn't be alive.

I, uh...

I think writing made me have to, I mean, writing put me in a position where I had to tell the truth.

But you have to be able to understand that writing in and of itself is a spiritual practice, which means the spirit will move, which means at any given moment, you might end up having to say something that you did not expect to say.

That's actually when you know you're writing well.

I think, you know what I mean, and I think my poems were, I wanted to be a poet, I knew I had some talent at it, but they weren't going to be any good because I kept trying to play dodge.

You know, anything that was queer would come down and I'd jump away from it and so then the poems would never be full.

When you write a poem, y'all have ideas.

I think it's a bad idea to have ideas, but you're welcome to it.

Y'all also have scenes.

I don't think that's a great thing to have, but y'all are welcome to it.

I like to start with language.

You will never write the poem you intend to write because poems are always after your subconscious or your unconscious mind.

Does that make sense?

Poems always want what's back here.

I wanna write a nice poem about a tree that is only about a tree.

I would love that for my life, I really would.

It's like the goal.

I never end up with a nice poem without a tree.

I write about trees, people end up hanging from trees.

Your poems are going to want something deeper from you that includes a life for that poem that you did not plan.

Poems do not care what's up here.

They want what you don't know you know.

Adrian Rich, she says that.

And usually that thing sitting there is that thing you did not want to talk about.

That's just a gorgeous, look at that.

Don't you want that in your life?

[Cameraman] Who is that?

- That's me, that's Jericho Brown.

At the time he's Trey, which is what everybody at home, everybody in my family calls me Trey.

I like this picture.

Ultimately my Blackness and the way that I see myself as a Black man and the way I understand Black people around me has to do with the way we had church when I was growing up and the way church brought culture to me.

I went to a church where, along with the 23rd Psalms, you could see young people reciting Maya Angelou or Nikki Giovanni, you know, "Ego Tripping" by Nikki Giovanni or "Still I Rise a Phenomenal Woman" by Maya Angelou.

That was happening in the church.

- Up from a past rooted in pain, I rise.

A Black ocean leaping and wide, welling and swelling and baring in the tide leaving behind nights of terror and fear, I rise, into a daybreak miraculously clear, I rise, bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave.

I am the hope and the dream of the slave and so [claps] wow.

[audience laughing] There I go.

[audience applauding] [gentle music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [David] Story is rooted in landscape and story is the means through which people and places achieve immortality.

I think you spend enough time in the woods and like all of your memory becomes attached to the place and especially once you get generations back, all of the, you know, the places carry story and then, every time you walk it, it's like your whole life's encapsulated by a landscape.

- Let me walk down there around that, I'll go right about where the snag is down there and sit.

I'd get right over here where you can see a little bit back this way, too.

Ain't no tellin' what'll cross right here.

- Look at that buck, look at that buck.

You see him?

Man, that's a good little deer.

- Yeah, if David had had his bow with us, we could be eatin' some tenderloin.

- I think Raymond and I value a whole lot of the same things.

I used to joke that you could blindfold me and dump me off about anywhere in Jackson County and I could find my way around.

But you could dump him off anywhere in about three counties over here and he'd find his way around and he knows this place in a way that, to be quite honest, very few people will ever know again.

- 1972 when we come up here.

- So, Raymond's been here pretty much all his life, but most of his family was all from the coast of North Carolina.

- But I will say, now, I married a girl from here.

Her family's been here many years and she took the flatland out of me.

[David laughing] I'm not gonna say how she did it, but it was good.

[David laughs] [David] Raymond closed his eyes and let the sound come through and bury itself someplace deep that for a long time nothing else had been able to touch.

He was grieving the loss of a place and a people.

It was hard enough to bury the bodies of those you loved, but it was another sadness altogether to witness the death of a culture.

He found it difficult to imagine what would become of this place, harder still to witness what it was already becoming.

Before the outside began to press in, the communities were breaking apart and the people were leaving.

When the timber was gone and the mountains were left as naked as the moon, families packed up and headed west to places like Oregon and Washington where the trees had yet to be touched.

Jump forward 60 years and it was the same old story when the paper mill shut down, when the old plastics plant at the South end of the county left, the very fabric that once defined the mountains fragmented and was replaced with outsiders who built second and third homes on the ridge lines and drove the property value so high that what few locals were left couldn't afford to pay the taxes on their land.

It wasn't just a matter of economics, it wasn't the drugs, it was an abandonment of values.

The very nature of things demanded that there would come a moment in history when hopefulness would equate to naivety, when the situation would have become too dire for saving.

Raymond knew this and it was that final thought that had left his heart in ruins.

- Yeah, there's a lot of history in some of these old guns and that's mostly what I do is work on hunting guns.

And now the thing that you see, like a dad coming by and buying his son his first gun to maybe go on a rabbit hunt or squirrel hunt, you know, that's pretty much a thing of the past, you know.

- How do we fix it?

What do we do in regards to the loss of culture?

The mountain culture that you love, what do you see happening to that?

- I don't know if they's enough people gonna be left to continue on with it, I don't know.

A lot of the young people have to leave here to have a better lifestyle or to afford to buy a house.

You know, that happened years ago.

That's the reason a lot of people had to sell old home places or did sell them and then the kids couldn't afford to keep them to start with.

- I think that's hard for a lot of, a lot of people from the outside to understand the finality of that displacement.

- Maybe not even another generation will remember a lot of what took place here.

It's just gonna all be gone, you know.

- Yeah.

- It will be.

- Eventually, all of the local people will either be displaced by going to find jobs or they'll be priced out and they won't be able to stay here and I think that it's an inevitability, that its culture and this place will be gone.

- They tried to take our land at one time a few years ago.

It was this lady from Florida, this white lady from Florida, she kept on coming to see my grandfather and she thought he was gonna be an old stupid Black man, didn't know what he as doing, but my grandfather was very quick wit.

She kept coming to see him and one time she told him, she said, "You know," said, "I can just see myself sitting back on my porch drinking some coffee."

And my grandfather looked at her and said, "Well, you know what, you see further than I can."

[all laugh] And that was it, she was gone.

[laughing] It ain't happening.

- How much property was it when you were growing up?

- Fifty-four acres.

- Okay.

- Yeah, it was a lot of land.

- The Caseys came out of slavery and acquired, I think it was almost 200 acres.

Um... [David] How much of that land do you think is left?

- I can tell you exactly how much, 'cause you're looking at the owner.

[David] Yeah, how much?

- Four acres.

It hits a nerve for me, so I have to keep a very collective mind about it.

Grandfather built his own house.

He built that himself by hand and when the men passed away and that was taken advantage of not having the education to read all these documents.

Unfortunately, Caucasians came and said, "I'll buy this acre from you" but survey 10.

Things of that sorts happened over this course from the 50s, the 60s, the 70s and then so now we're here.

- See, that's just like we lost the Allen property that way.

It was taken, I mean, bit by bit and I don't know, I think that it could have been saved, but I don't know, I don't know, but we lost that land.

- Us, my first cousins, none of them are here.

I'm the only one here, the only existence here.

- We're still standing regardless of the trials and tribulations that we went through.

We weren't broken.

We're still here.

[David] People are losing their place and losing their culture at an unfathomable pace.

I write about places and they disappear before the book comes out.

This place is changing and it's changing fast.

In the end, there won't be anything left.

[music "My Oh My"] ♪ It was a long road that led you ♪ ♪ It was a darkness that fed you ♪ ♪ Sister, I can't see you no more ♪ ♪ Under the clouds we found you ♪ ♪ Cuttin' through the ground like kudzu ♪ ♪ Sister, I can't see you no more ♪ - My mom and dad, my Uncle Mason and I've actually only got like four other family members coming, so I think I could use just the whole row.

- Here?

- Yes.

- This is my nephew, Luca.

Today, we are getting married, not he and I 'cause that's not legal.

But for our ceremony, we want to plant a magnolia and then at the end, have all the guests come and take a shovel full of dirt, place it on top of the magnolia.

The magnolia is one of my muses.

I grew up in South Carolina underneath magnolias with all my little girlfriends, just being at one with nature and being in relation with it and I think a lot about the magnolia, the symbolism of it in the South, the moonlights and magnolias and when I was writing a southern gothic, one of the things I wanted to do was reclaim the magnolia for my people and use it as a symbol of Black liberation.

I got your lunch ready inside, come on.

[cat mews] All right, let me grab these.

[cat mews] [Adia mews] - Meow, meow, come on, we gotta eat.

[music "Deep Water Blues" by Adia Victoria] ♪ They say a Black woman got steel for a spine ♪ ♪ She'll carry your weight ♪ ♪ She'll carry it fine ♪ ♪ She'll think of you 'fore she'll think of herself ♪ ♪ She don't mind not being on the mind ♪ ♪ Of nobody else ♪ ♪ But I don't want to rescue you ♪ ♪ From the deep water washing over my neighbors ♪ ♪ And deep water I won't be your savior ♪ ♪ Won't give you my life to keep you alive ♪ ♪ You're gonna learn to swim or you will die tonight ♪ ♪ And deep water ♪ ♪ Deep water ♪ - If someone could go turn that off, that'd be great.

[all laughing] - All right, Mason and Adia, face each other.

Mason repeat after me.

I, Mason.

- I, Mason.

- Take you Adia.

- Take you Adia.

- To be my wife.

- To be my wife.

- To have and to hold.

- To have and to hold.

- From this day forward.

- From this day forward.

- For better or for worse.

- For better or for worse.

- For richer or for poorer.

- For richer or for poorer.

- In sickness and in health.

- In sickness and in health.

- With this ring.

- With this ring.

- I seal my promise.

- I seal my promise.

- To be your faithful.

- To be your faithful.

- And loving wife.

- And loving wife.

- So, now I pronounce you husband and wife.

Mason, you may kiss your wife.

♪ Deep water washing over my neighbor ♪ [audience cheers] [Adia] I don't think that our marriage is just two people.

This marriage is a combination of countless people that have gotten us to this moment.

♪ Deep water ♪ [Adia] I think that things unify people in the South are the same things that unify all people.

The strength that we have together is so much greater than the strength that we have individually.

♪ Deep water ♪ ♪ Deep water ♪ [train whistle blows] [music "When I Hear Trains"] ♪ When I hear trains ♪ ♪ I see a brigman on boxcar against the sky ♪ ♪ A silhouette smilin' in the lantern light ♪ ♪ And I'm young again ♪ ♪ When I hear trains ♪ ♪ It's like an Arkansas storm in this heart of mine ♪ ♪ Forgotten days just start to fly ♪ ♪ And I'm remembering ♪ ♪ When I hear trains ♪ - When I hear trains, I'd got back in time to that summer day and you were laughing in your wild child way.

I did write a song about my father called "When I Hear Trains."

He as a freight train conductor and I remember my dad waving to me from the top of a boxcar with the morning sun coming up behind him and that's one of the most singular images of my life and I loved being a trainman's daughter.

I was proud of it.

[gentle music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - We'll play it.

Sustain pedal.

[playing keyboard] Yeah, play it.

Play anything you want.

- Well- - It's a toy box for everybody.

[playing keyboard] [laughing] Isn't that awesome?

- I never played classical stuff on it.

- No, it sounds amazing on it.

- Yeah, it's incredible.

[guitar plays] - These are all the people that I'm privileged to write with and just great friends in Nashville and they're all a thousand times more accomplished than me, but for some reason they let me write with them, so I'm pretty happy about that.

♪ When I hear trains ♪ ♪ I see a brigman on a boxcar against the sky ♪ ♪ Silhouette smilin' in the lantern light ♪ ♪ And I'm young again ♪ ♪ When I hear trains ♪ ♪ It's like an Arkansas storm in this heart of mine ♪ ♪ Forgotten days start to fly ♪ ♪ And I'm remembering ♪ ♪ When I hear trains ♪ ♪ Time stands still ♪ ♪ Ooh ♪ ♪ They say a locomotive whistle is a lonesome sound ♪ ♪ Like a ghost of a heartbreak hanging around ♪ ♪ But not to me ♪ ♪ Ooh ♪ ♪ I was never too far from a railroad track ♪ ♪ Like a rusty river tying up my past ♪ ♪ I hear that engine calling me back home ♪ ♪ That's where I go ♪ ♪ When I hear trains ♪ ♪ Some people say it's an overnight world ♪ ♪ Things have changed ♪ ♪ But they're still there ♪ ♪ In the shadow of the interstate ♪ ♪ So I find my way ♪ ♪ I find my way ♪ [music "When I Hear Trains"] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Ooh ♪ ♪ They say a locomotive whistle is a lonesome sound ♪ ♪ Like a ghost of a heartbreak hangin' around ♪ ♪ But not to me ♪ ♪ Ooh ♪ ♪ I was never too far from a railroad track ♪ ♪ Like a rusty river tying up my past ♪ ♪ I hear that engine calling me back home ♪ ♪ That's where I go ♪ ♪ When I hear trains ♪ - Oh, my God, I love that.

[all clap] There's a real sense of longing- - Yeah, it really is.

- In that song.

- Yeah.

- Which feels to me southern.

- Yeah.

- That song is about your childhood, which is southern.

I mean, you were a southern girl, you grew up in the South and, you know, this stuff, being nostalgic about your youth is very strong in this town, we all do that.

- And it's kind of crazy to do what I did, which is start something so late in life and honestly my first write here was a total disaster and I went back to the hotel room where Ted was and just absolutely cried my eyes out and said- - I wanted to say, "How'd it go?"

[all laugh] - Um, but I woke up the next morning and I will not say all the expletives that I said, but I was, "I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it," you know.

I don't care what it takes and then I think my third write was with you and that was when, wow, and I think my fourth write was with you and I never felt anything but welcomed.

I only sing one song that I've written really because it's a love song I wrote for Ted.

I think I wrote it about 11 years ago and I realized that if, if I got to choose, I would choose him for a hundred more lifetimes, so this song is based on that I would do it all over again.

So.

♪ If I go to heaven ♪ ♪ And if there is cafe there called Love ♪ ♪ I will order a divine refreshment ♪ ♪ And chat the angel waiter up ♪ ♪ If he is not too rushed ♪ ♪ He will ask me for some form of ID ♪ ♪ And note the faraway look in my eyes ♪ ♪ He will hand me a menu of men ♪ ♪ And then he'll take my order for next time ♪ ♪ I choose you ♪ ♪ I choose you ♪ ♪ No one else could possibly do ♪ ♪ I choose you ♪ ♪ I choose you ♪ ♪ You're wise when I'm mean and kind when I'm blue ♪ ♪ I chose you ♪ ♪ I choose you ♪ ♪ Garcon, if you please a glass of wine ♪ ♪ And as for a man ♪ ♪ If heaven's where I am ♪ ♪ Can't I order him again next time ♪ ♪ I study the well-worn menu ♪ ♪ Of every man except the ones who went down south ♪ ♪ Gandhi is good, but skinny ♪ ♪ I'm too insecure for Elvis ♪ ♪ With that luscious lovely mouth ♪ ♪ Chad Baker is a heartbreaker ♪ ♪ But his trumpet comes first I'm told ♪ ♪ Shakespeare's too far back in time ♪ ♪ He'd drive me crazy with the rhymes ♪ ♪ Einstein is a darling ♪ ♪ But he always looks so old ♪ ♪ So I choose you ♪ ♪ I choose you ♪ ♪ No one else past or present would possibly do ♪ ♪ I choose you ♪ ♪ I choose you ♪ ♪ You're wise when I'm mean ♪ ♪ And kind when I'm blue ♪ ♪ I choose you ♪ ♪ I choose you ♪ ♪ Be an angel, another glass of wine ♪ ♪ And as for a man ♪ ♪ If heaven's where I am ♪ ♪ Can't I order him again next time ♪ ♪ When I have to cry ♪ ♪ 'Cause of how this world is ♪ ♪ It's your perfect shoulder I cry on ♪ ♪ So I choose you ♪ ♪ I choose you ♪ ♪ It's the only thing I want to do ♪ ♪ Tell me where's the dotted line ♪ ♪ I wanna sign up for all time ♪ ♪ When it comes to love ♪ ♪ Hey, are you listening up above ♪ ♪ When it comes to love ♪ ♪ I just choose you ♪ ♪ ♪ [all applauding] [marching band plays] [Film narrator] If you look at a town as simply arithmetic, 4,000 inhabitants isn't many.

But all the lives in even a small town are too many to set down in a novel, so a writer overlays one life with another until they become a meaning.

Many meanings.

Here in Oxford Lafayette County, Mississippi, we have a citizen who refers to himself as a farmer, a farmer who also writes.

This is William Faulkner, one of the greatest American writers of fiction today.

- You know, somebody like William Faulkner, he was very important to me as a writer writing about the South and making life in the South feel as epic as it is.

The life of the South is an epic life and I love that because I feel that way.

[gentle music] - I believe that writing is about the journey and the ultimate beauty in writing is something that makes you expand as a soul or a person.

- When I sit down to begin a story, the canvas isn't blank because there is already a setting.

There are mountains, streams, buildings and roads, so that when a character finally arises, that character claws himself from the ground.

Spend enough time here, keep your eyes and ears open and your mouth closed and you may come to know this place.

[gentle music] most effective methods is, write a song for my wife and then sing it to her.

And if she likes it, everybody else is gonna like it too.

- When we talk about the South and Southern experiences, our stories deserve to be heard.

- But you know, there's something about hearing a melody that just connects you to your whole life.

- I remember my grandma telling me, "When I left Vietnam to come here, I was escaping.

So the only thing I have to give you is stories."

"Southern Storytellers" is available with PBS Passport and on Amazon Prime Video.

[gentle music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪