Michelle Malone is a lifer. She's been a mainstay of American roots music for more than 30 years, building her community onstage and off, mixing roadhouse rock & roll with blues, folk, and country-soul. It's a sound that's taken the award-winning songwriter around the world, but it's inspired by Malone's home in the South, too. After more than a dozen studio albums, she continues flying a flag for Georgia — a state with its own ever-evolving sound — on Southern Comfort.
"I'm very much a southerner," says Malone, who co-produced the album with Paul Warner. “This whole record was written, recorded, and performed by southerners, and you can hear it. There's rock, country, and folk here. There's swagger. Southern Comfort isn't about booze; it's about a feeling, a family, a familiarity — all the things that make you feel warm and fuzzy. For me, that's Georgia.”
With contributions from Blackberry Smoke members Charlie Starr and Paul Jackson, The Georgia Satellites' Rick Richards, guitarist Doug Kees, and Americana icon Buddy Miller, Southern Comfort has a long guest list of southern all-stars. Michelle Malone is part of that universe, too. From her appearances on Drivin N Cryin's "Straight To Hell" and "Honeysuckle Blue" (both of which feature her vocals) to gigs alongside The Indigo Girls and Shawn Mullins, she's added her own spin to the area's soundtrack with songs like "I Choke On My Words." That hometown pride didn't stop her from also finding inspiration in places like Colorado and the Florida Keys, where she co-wrote nearly half of the album's songs with Dean Dillon.
The songwriting legend behind songs like "Tennessee Whiskey" and "Miami, My Amy," Dillon's partnership helped spark the most collaborative album of Malone's carer. "It's not just me on this record; it's a village," she says. Nowhere is that more apparent than on the title track, "Southern Comfort," a song that dates back to her early days with Drag The River. Signed to Arista Records by Clive Davis, the band released its major-label debut in 1990, matching Malone's songwriting with the electricity of a loose, loud rock band. Founding member Billy Pitts passed away in 2022, and Malone's new recording of the track is a tribute to the drummer, stacked high with Telecaster twang, slide guitar, and stomping groove.
"I wanted that song to feel like a party…like people in one room, having a good time together, just doing what they love to do," she says. The result is an all-hands-on-deck anthem — an appropriate start to an album that finds Malone at her best, whether she's taking stock past of past and present with the wistful, woozy "I Choke Up On My Words," cranking up the amplifiers for "Barbed Wire Kisses," or playing slide guitar solos on “Undercover Mother.”
"Southern Comfort brings me full circle in a lot of ways," she says. “From the beginning of my career, I've always had a foot in the southern-rock world and a foot in the folk world. This record really solidifies the stance and brings those sounds together.”
Malone dishes out southern comfort in different ways. "One Track Mind," one of several tracks featuring Charlie Starr on electric guitar, nods to Tom Petty's breezy rock & roll, while "Like Mother Like Daughter" makes room for fiddle, Stonesy stomp, and a country-fried chorus. On the the southern soul song "Wine and Regret," Malone sings about loss, pain, and the ghosts who walk among us. She also kicks up plenty of dust with "Like Mother Like Daughter," a song written at Dean Dillon's house but built for dancehalls, dive bars, and roadhouses. This is music inspired by a particular area, but it's also a sound for everywhere. A sound for everyone, too. Malone gives her songs a sense of place while still making them sound universal, and that talent — not the guest appearances, but the sharp edge of the songwriting itself — is perhaps the most comforting thing about her latest record.
Photo: Jolie Loren Rizzi
