Beauty, Decaying
A director took a show that wasn't his and decided to go big. What he found in the bloodiest musical ever written was a sermon about the god each of us is tempted to serve — ourselves.
Arts
Poetry, Music & Theater
Northeast Alabama has always made things worth hearing. This is where Southern Legends publishes poems, songs, and stories from the stage — local voices and regional artists from across the Appalachian foothills.
Contribute Your Work
Southern Legends publishes original poetry, song lyrics, and theater pieces from Alabama writers and performers. No payment yet — but your work reaches a real regional audience.
Submit Your WorkPoetry →
Poems from NE Alabama and the foothills.
Music →
Songs, lyrics, and musicians from the region.
Theater →
Stage work, scripts, and performance notes.
Arts Stories
The View from the Boat
Jean Ellison is a classically trained soprano, co-founder of The Music Box, licensed caterer, jazz vocalist, and cookbook author. She is building a hot pink empire in Anniston. She is building it with the specific knowledge of what it feels like when the walls start to move.
The Jacksonville Opera Theatre
The Jacksonville Opera Theatre staged full opera productions at JSU from the late 1990s through the 2000s — Hansel and Gretel, The Mikado, Pirates of Penzance, Sweeney Todd. A lot of people who went through those productions carry them still.
Matt Headley
Matt Headley is the editor of Southern Legends and the founding pastor of Ecclesia Community. He grew up in and out of Alabama, came back, and has been writing about the people here ever since.
Rhiannon Giddens Is Returning What Was Stolen
The banjo is a West African instrument. Square dance is not a white tradition. The Appalachian folk canon that Nashville built a genre around was assembled from Black and Indigenous sources and then attributed elsewhere. Giddens is doing the archaeological work of giving it back.
What Sinners and Jason Isbell Know About Alabama That Alabama Won't Admit
Ryan Coogler's film and Jason Isbell's catalog are doing the same thing: telling the truth about the South's beauty and its violence without letting either one cancel the other out.
The View from the Boat
Jean Ellison is the kind of entrepreneur who makes people in Calhoun County wonder how she does it. She does it because she knows what the floor feels like.