Birmingham singer-songwriter Will Stewart is set to bring his solo debut album, “County Seat,” to Callaghan’s Irish Social Club in Mobile on Saturday, Aug. 25, at 7:30 p.m.
Stewart isn’t new to Mobile audiences. Before launching his solo career, he played in several bands, including Willie & the Giant, which performed at the 2015 SouthSounds Music Festival. But “County Seat” marks his first solo showing in the city, and it arrives as one of alt-country’s more talked-about recent debuts.
The album blends early Southern rock textures reminiscent of Athens, Georgia, with the more polished country sound associated with Nashville — a combination shaped by Stewart’s own path from Birmingham to Music City and back again.
Stewart moved to Nashville without a clear sense of what to expect, he said, but the city’s dense music community won him over quickly, even though he arrived largely unknown. “Everyone you would meet was connected to the industry or was a musician in some way,” Stewart said. “I immediately felt like part of a community, even though nobody knew who the hell I was at the time.”
He spent four years in Nashville, surrounded by veteran songwriters he described as intimidating at times, but ultimately formative. By his own account, the experience built his confidence and sharpened his songwriting before he decided to return home to Birmingham, drawn in part by a lower cost of living and a scene he called more manageable than Nashville or Los Angeles.
After releasing two EPs, Stewart began writing the material that became “County Seat,” which he has described as a “love letter to the South.” Much of the album draws on what he calls a “weird dichotomy” he noticed growing up in Montgomery — affluent neighborhoods sitting alongside impoverished ones, coexisting uneasily alongside racial and economic tension. Stewart said he hopes the songs contribute to a broader conversation about that divide, in the tradition of artists like Sturgill Simpson and Jason Isbell.
The album’s title track centers on an elderly man confronting loneliness, one of several character studies Stewart wrote by imagining the inner lives of people he observed growing up in the South. He said he intentionally leaves the resolution open-ended, letting listeners draw their own conclusions about where the songs land.
Following the Mobile stop, Stewart said he plans to return to the studio to begin work on a follow-up record with producer and engineer Mark Nevers, known for his work with Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Calexico and The Dexateens.
Tickets for the Aug. 25 show at Callaghan’s Irish Social Club, 916 Charleston St. in Mobile, are $8 at the door.