Annual Songwriter Keynote

ASK 2020: Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers - Monday, March 2, 2020

We're thrilled to announce the third installment of the Annual Songwriter Keynote — Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers live at the University of South Alabama on Monday, March 2, 2020! This special event, which will be held in the Laidlaw Performing Arts Center (Mainstage Theatre), will feature a musical performance by Patterson Hood, a short presentation on roots music by Peter Cooper from the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, and a roundtable discussion that will include critically acclaimed singer-songwriter Will Johnson. Doors open at 7:00 p.m., and the show begins at 7:30 p.m. All attendees will receive a complimentary copy of IMC Volume One. This event will be free and available tickets will be distributed on a first-come-first-served basis at the door on the evening of the show.

PATTERSON HOOD: An Alabama native whose father co-founded Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, Patterson Hood has spent the last several decades fronting the incomparable Drive-By Truckers. The band's much-anticipated twelfth studio album, The Unraveling, is out January 31st on ATO Records. While Rolling Stone calls DBT "the boldest, baddest Southern band in the land," it is Hood's incisive critical faculties that help make the music relevant. The Los Angeles Review of Books deems Hood "one of the sharpest observers of Southern culture and society." American Songwriter agrees, calling him "the truest voice of the modern South currently making records." "No Southern musical act over the last two decades," writes The Bitter Southerner, "has done so much to challenge and change the way their fans see themselves and their home."

PETER COOPER: Currently a writer and editor for the Country Music Hall of Fame, Peter Cooper is a man who defies easy categorization. A long-time music journalist for The Tennessean, a Grammy-nominated producer, a critically acclaimed songwriter and musician, a Senior Lecturer in Music History and Literature at Vanderbilt's Blair School of Music, and the author of Johnny's Cash and Charley's Pride: Lasting Legends and Untold Adventures in Country Music (2017) — it's no wonder that Nashville Arts & Entertainment Magazine named Cooper one of Nashville's "10 Most Interesting People." "Peter Cooper looks at the world with an artist's eye and a human heart and soul," writes Kris Kristofferson. "His songs are the work of an original, creative imagination, alive with humor and heartbreak and irony and intelligence, with truth and beauty in the details."

WILL JOHNSON: Austin-based Will Johnson was the long-time leader of Patterson Hood's favorite band, the legendary indierock outfit Centro-matic. The group released a dozen albums before calling it quits in 2014, prompting Jason Isbell to close Something More than Free (2015) with the Centro-matic tribute "To a Band That I Loved." "Will Johnson is one of my favorite songwriters on Earth," Isbell writes. While his band has certainly been missed, Johnson has found a host of other outlets for his creative energies. Among his many endeavors, Johnson has played drums for Monsters of Folk, has filled in on guitar for Drive-By Truckers, and has collaborated with Jay Farrar, Jim James, and Anders Parker to record the unpublished work of Woody Guthrie — all this while releasing a half-dozen brilliant solo albums of his own (including Wire Mountain in 2019) and developing a burgeoning reputation for his folk art. A long-time IMC favorite, Johnson is the only musician to appear on IMC Volume One twice: as a solo artist with "Alabama Crusade" and as part of the duo Marie/Lepanto, performing the Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster tune "Tenkiller."

ASK 2020 is co-sponsored by the Alabama Humanities Foundation, the 91¶ÌÊÓƵ Department of English, the Stokes Center for Creative Writing, the 91¶ÌÊÓƵ Department of Theatre and Dance, the 91¶ÌÊÓƵ College of Arts and Sciences, and the Independent Music Collective. PHOTO CREDIT: Andy Tennille.

ASK 2019: Josh Ritter - Thursday, March 7, 2019

We're excited to announce that our Annual Songwriter Keynote will feature Josh Ritter, live at the University of South Alabama on Thursday, March 7, 2019. This special event, which will be held in the Laidlaw Performing Arts Center (Mainstage Theatre), will feature a musical performance, a reading, and an interactive Q&A. Doors open at 7:00 p.m., and the show begins at 7:30 p.m. Admission is free and available tickets will be distributed on a first-come-first-served basis at the door on the evening of the show. 

ASK 2019 is co-sponsored by the 91¶ÌÊÓƵ Department of English, the Stokes Center for Creative Writing, the 91¶ÌÊÓƵ Department of Theatre and Dance, the 91¶ÌÊÓƵ College of Arts and Sciences, the Independent Music Collective, and the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi. PHOTO CREDIT: Laura Wilson.

ASK 2018: John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats - Monday, February 26, 2018

The Stokes Center for Creative Writing and the Independent Music Collective present John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats at 91¶ÌÊÓƵ's Dramatic Arts Mainstage Theatre in the Laidlaw Performing Arts Center on Monday, February 26, 2018. The two-act event will feature a musical performance, a reading, and a short interview conducted by the Stokes Center's new writer-in-residence Adam Prince. Doors open at 7:00 p.m., and the show begins at 7:30 p.m. Admission is free and available tickets will be distributed on a first-come-first-served basis at the door on the evening of the show. 

ASK 2018 is co-sponsored by the Independent Music Collective, the Stokes Center for Creative Writing, the 91¶ÌÊÓƵ College of Arts & Sciences, the 91¶ÌÊÓƵ Department of English, and the 91¶ÌÊÓƵ Department of Theatre and Dance. PHOTO CREDIT: Jeremy M. Lange.