SEC Network's “TrueSouth” returns to Alabama in the latest episode

“TrueSouth,” the SEC Network's Emmy Award-winning Southern food and culture series, returns to Alabama for a new episode set in the Walker County seat of Jasper, once the epicenter of the state's coal industry.

The Jasper episode premieres this Tuesday, October 22nd at 7pm on the SEC Network and will be streamed on ESPN+ and Hulu.

“TrueSouth,” now in its seventh season, is hosted by Southern food and culture writer John T. Edge, who tells AL.com that the upcoming show is “one of our strongest.”

The episode revolves around two father-son stories – that of Alabama writer Caleb Johnson and his coal mining father, Ronnie Johnson, and that of Jasper native Judge Evans, who grew up in his welding shop Today father, Howard Evans, directs.

They, in turn, introduced Edge to the two restaurants – both hidden in gas stations and convenience stores, respectively – that form the centerpiece of the show.

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“Caleb and his dad took us to one of the two restaurants that are the focus of the show, and that's Brown's Grocery on the edge of Jasper,” Edge said in an interview with AL.com. “They open at four in the morning. They bake cookies for hardworking people. And this was the kind of place where Caleb's father, Ronnie Johnson, met his co-workers, carpooled to work, and they picked up cookies.

“And then I met Justice Evans, who runs Evans Welding on the other side of Jasper, and it’s another father-son story,” Edge adds. “His father started this welding company, and a lot of their business used to be coal truck repair work. Justice is the most important person there now. His father is somewhat retired.

“And (Justice) told me that while he loves Brown's, where he takes his family is Bayou Fresh Seafood, which, like Brown's, is at a gas station there in Jasper.”

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'Accepting your past and changing your future.

Nikki Quillen runs the kitchen at Brown's Grocery and Janice Zhu and Jianjun Zhu own Bayou Fresh Seafood.

Their respective restaurants illustrate the changing cultural and economic dynamics of places like Jasper, Edge says.

“If you go into a place where there was a primary industry that drove most of the economy, and then emerge in the years after that industry's decline or advancement, you watch people trying to create a future and you watch them.” “In a way, we start experimenting, taking different risks and figuring out what’s next,” he says.

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“You see people doing what humans do best, which is absorbing change and responding to it creatively. And that's what I saw in Jasper, where a new generation is immersed in the history of this place, accepting its past and changing its future.

“The two restaurants illustrate this: Brown's, which made its money feeding miners, and now the sushi restaurant, which feeds the miners' grandchildren.”

“I will always come back to Alabama”

The Jasper episode is the fifth TrueSouth episode to introduce Alabama. It goes back to six years ago, when the series launched in 2018 with a show about the influence of Greek immigrants on Birmingham's food and culture.

“TrueSouth” then explored the Mobile Bay area during its fourth season in 2021 and visited the Black Belt for its sixth season last year. Edge also featured the 14th Street Grill in Phenix City in a season three episode centered around Fort Benning (now Fort Moore) in Columbus. Ga.

“We will keep coming back to Alabama because you don’t exhaust stories in a place that you know well and where people know you well,” Edge says. “You always find more because you can go deeper.”

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Birmingham musician Lee Bains III – a long-time friend of Caleb Johnson who collaborated with Edge and the TrueSouth crew on the music for the first Birmingham episode in 2018 – returns to perform his songs in the new episode play and speak in front of the camera.

“It’s a beautiful way back,” says Edge. “The very first music you ever hear on a 'TrueSouth' episode is Lee Bains. . . and now we're back to Lee.

“But this is certainly the most extensive collaboration we’ve ever done with Lee,” Edge adds. “Lee is seen here singing. And Lee and Caleb are old friends, so it all feels very intimate.”

“A kind of Pandora’s box”

Birmingham creative firm Matey designed the Jasper episode commemorative poster, which is inspired by a Gravy podcast called “Leftovers in a Coal Miner's Lunchbox” that Caleb Johnson recorded for the Southern Foodways Alliance in 2016.

“I first heard (Ronnie) Johnson’s story on that Gravy episode,” Edge says. “Caleb did a great job of using the lunchbox as a kind of Pandora’s box.

“Caleb asks his father what he took into the mines to eat to work the night shift, and by asking those simple questions he gets to the bigger questions of what the work is like down there and what you are for sacrificed our family through this work. So this lunchbox is kind of a totem of the show.

“Since the beginning of the exhibition, we have been working with artists and designers to create these posters,” Edge continues. “This is the second time we’ve worked with Matey there in Birmingham. . . .

“(We are) really proud of these posters. They are their own little art objects and offer us the opportunity to collaborate with an artist or designer we admire.”

Matey also designed the poster for the 2021 Mobile Bay episode of “TrueSouth.”

“I’m amazed that I get to do this.”

It's not lost on Edge how fortunate he is to be immersed in stories like the ones about the relationships between Caleb and Ronnie Johnson and Justice and Howard Evans, and to have a platform like the SEC Network through which to share them.

“There's a deep, deep, vulnerable father-son story embedded here, and there are actually two of them,” he says. “There’s Caleb and his dad, and then there’s Justice and his dad.

“We go deeper into Caleb and his father, but you know, the idea of ​​what to take with you and what to leave behind, how to honor your parents as you go through your own life – those are big questions that we People ask each other, and we can ask those questions for 30 minutes this Tuesday on the SEC Network.

“I'm really proud of what we get to do and just amazed that we get to do this, that (SEC Commissioner) Greg Sankey and (Deputy SEC Commissioner/COO) Charlie Hussey of the SEC Network believe in this show , this.” Our colleagues at ESPN gave the green light to this show, that Wright Thompson hired me to host this thing, that Tim Horgan directed this thing and sourced our music.

“I'm just speechless that I get to do this. That's really me. I'm not being falsely modest. This is simply incredible. I’m so grateful.”

In addition to the Jasper show, previous episodes of TrueSouth Season 7 featured Oklahoma City; Austin, Texas; Little Rock, Arkansas; and Lexington and Parsons, Tennessee. The next episode will focus on Spartanburg and Abbeville, SC, followed by a behind-the-scenes season finale.

To learn more about TrueSouth and preview the upcoming episode of Jasper, Alabama, go here.