Mobile Bay Music Writers Round Up 2011’s Best Local Tracks at OK Bicycle Shop

Some of the Gulf Coast’s most plugged-in music writers and bookers gathered at the OK Bicycle Shop on Dauphin Street on November 28, 2011, for the Mobile Bay Music Writers Roundtable — a recorded session hashing out the year’s best songs from area bands. The conversation, part debate and part listening party, aimed to take the pulse of a local scene that had spent 2011 producing some of its strongest work in years.

The panel included Press-Register music writer Lawrence Specker, Lagniappe’s Steve Centanni, Dan Merker and Ryan Chavez of Fishbowl Records and HUKA Entertainment, Clayton Roberts and Tarver Shelton of jamsplus, Luke Buckley of the Press-Register and The Suzies, 92ZEW’s Emily Hayes, and Kris Skoda. Between them, the participants covered the newspapers, the alt-weekly, the radio stations, the record labels and the booking companies that shape what Mobile audiences hear — and, in several cases, they were working musicians themselves.

The setting was as much a part of the story as the discussion. The OK Bicycle Shop, an eclectic bar and music venue on Dauphin Street in the heart of downtown Mobile’s entertainment district, has built a reputation for booking original local and touring acts, making it a fitting room for a conversation about the year in Gulf Coast music. (The table, one note insisted, was rectangular.)

The track list they settled on

The resulting podcast rounded up a dozen cuts that defined Mobile Bay music in 2011: El Cantador’s “Empty Cars (Alternate Version),” Underhill Family Orchestra’s “O Spirit, Bring Me Home,” Grayson Capps’ “Yes You Are,” Ryan Balthrop’s “Way Down Low,” Garrett Thornton’s “Salt of the Earth,” Fargo’s “Canals,” Ugli Stick’s live take on “Started Out Right,” The Handsome Scoundrels’ “Rave On,” Johnny No’s “Tall Grass Rag,” Kurt Wielkens Band’s “My Only Friend” and Edward Appleby’s “The Colony.”

The list reads like a map of the coastal scene’s many districts. Some entries came from bands that were selling out rooms on Dauphin Street; others came from singer-songwriters working in studios across the bay; a few came from acts whose reputations had already spread well beyond Alabama. Getting a room full of critics and industry figures to agree on even a dozen songs required the kind of spirited back-and-forth that only a live roundtable can produce.

Listeners could stream or download the full podcast through SoundCloud and vote for their favorite track online, with follow-up roundtables planned to pick the best of Alabama and the best of the Southeast. The online vote gave the public a seat at the table, and the planned expansions promised to widen the lens from Mobile Bay to the whole state and region.

A snapshot of a strong year

The lineup read as a snapshot of a strong year for the scene — from Fairhope’s El Cantador and the orchestral folk of Underhill Family Orchestra to Capps’ Gulf Coast songwriting and Ugli Stick’s funk-rock staples.

El Cantador, the Fairhope indie rock band, had been building momentum with a psychedelic-tinged sound that earned them attention well beyond the Eastern Shore. “Empty Cars” in its alternate version showcased the band’s knack for atmosphere and hooks, and the group was widely seen as one of the area’s most likely breakout acts.

Underhill Family Orchestra brought something different to the table: a sprawling, orchestral folk sound built around family-style harmonies and horns. “O Spirit, Bring Me Home” captured the communal, revival-meeting energy that made the band a favorite at festivals along the Gulf Coast.

Grayson Capps needs little introduction to fans of Gulf Coast songwriting. The Pensacola-raised, Fairhope-associated songwriter has spent decades chronicling life along the coastal South, and “Yes You Are” found him in fine form, delivering the kind of gritty, soulful Americana that has made him a fixture of the scene.

Ugli Stick, meanwhile, represented the Mobile institutions. The band’s funk-rock sound and relentless live schedule have made them one of the Gulf Coast’s most reliable draws, and a live take on “Started Out Right” captured the band in its natural habitat — on stage, in front of a hometown crowd.

The people behind the picks

The roundtable drew its weight from the panel’s deep ties to the scene. Lawrence Specker, who has covered Mobile Bay music for the Press-Register for years, brought a journalist’s catalog of the year’s shows and releases. Steve Centanni and his colleagues at Lagniappe, Mobile’s alt-weekly, added the perspective of the bars, clubs and neighborhood venues that anchor the scene week to week.

Ryan Chavez’s presence linked the discussion to two engines of the regional music economy: Fishbowl Records, the label side, and HUKA Entertainment, the concert promotion company whose bookings bring national touring acts through the Gulf Coast. Clayton Roberts and Tarver Shelton of jamsplus added the digital-broadcast angle, helping document and stream the region’s live music to audiences far beyond the venues where it happens.

Luke Buckley straddled the worlds of media and music as both a Press-Register contributor and a member of The Suzies, while 92ZEW’s Emily Hayes represented the independent radio station that has long championed local artists on its airwaves. Kris Skoda rounded out a panel that reflected how interconnected Mobile’s music community really is.

Bringing that many perspectives into one room almost guaranteed disagreement, and that was the point. A roundtable works because each participant arrives with a different mental map of the year — the shows they saw, the demos that landed on their desks, the songs their audiences requested — and the friction between those maps is what separates a memorable list from a safe one.

Dauphin Street and the Mobile music economy

Any conversation about Mobile Bay music in 2011 inevitably circles back to Dauphin Street. The downtown corridor has long served as the city’s entertainment spine, lined with bars, restaurants and music rooms that host original bands nearly every night of the week. Venues like the OK Bicycle Shop give local songwriters and bands a stage, and the foot traffic generated by the street’s nightlife gives those acts an audience that spills over from block to block.

The health of that corridor matters to musicians across the region. Mobile sits within easy driving distance of Pensacola, Fairhope, Foley and New Orleans, and its venues function as a waypoint for touring artists moving along the Gulf Coast. When local writers, radio programmers and promoters gather to take stock of the scene, they are also taking stock of an ecosystem — labels, promoters, radio, press and venues — that either supports original music or lets it fade.

The roundtable format itself was part of a broader shift in how local music reached listeners. Podcasting and streaming platforms like SoundCloud had, by 2011, made it possible for a panel discussion recorded in a downtown bar to reach an audience around the world. For a regional scene, that meant a band from Fairhope or Bayou La Batre could find listeners far from the Gulf Coast without ever signing to a major label.

The interactive element — letting listeners vote for their favorite track — reflected the same democratizing impulse. Rather than a top-down list handed down by critics, the roundtable’s picks became the starting point for a community conversation, with fans weighing in online and follow-up editions planned to broaden the geography to all of Alabama and the wider Southeast.

What the picks said about 2011

Look closely at the track list and a picture of the year emerges. The presence of a live recording — Ugli Stick’s “Started Out Right” — acknowledged that the Gulf Coast scene lives on its stages as much as in its studios. The inclusion of veteran songwriters alongside younger bands captured a scene where generations share bills rather than compete for them.

The genre spread mattered too. Indie rock, orchestral folk, Americana, funk-rock, country blues and singer-songwriter material all found places on the list, a reminder that “Mobile Bay music” is not a single sound but a Gulf Coast tradition of blending styles — swampy, soulful, salt-air flavored, and resistant to easy categorization.

For the musicians whose songs made the cut, the roundtable offered something every local act needs: attention. A spot on a curated list backed by the region’s most influential writers, stations and promoters can translate into bigger crowds, better bookings and, for the lucky few, the kind of outside interest that turns a local favorite into a regional act. Several of the honored songs had already been circulating for months among the people in the room, which made the consensus picks feel less like discoveries than confirmations of what regulars at the city’s venues had been hearing all year.

As the panel wrapped its session at the OK Bicycle Shop, the sense in the room was that 2011 had been a year worth arguing about — and that the best way to settle the argument was to press record, let the tracks play, and let the listeners have the final vote.