Southall

Name: Southall
Start: 2025-10-16T20:00:00-05:00
Location: 1006 Van Buren Avenue Oxford MS 38655

Schedule

Thu, 16 Oct, 2025 at 08:00 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

1006 Van Buren Avenue Oxford MS 38655 | Oxford, MS

Artist/Venue Presale Thursday 5/15 at 10AM (passcode required)
Public/General tickets on sale Friday 5/16 at 10AM

Doors 7pm | Support 8pm | Southall 9pm
_____________________________________
* 18+, minor allows entry if accompanied by a parent or guardian
* A $5 underage fee will be collected at the door from anyone under 21. Cash only
* No refunds or re-entry allowed

Read Southall can sure turn a phrase. “This record is the gasoline for the love machine,” he say of his band’s new album, the exhilarating and self-titled Southall. The proud Oklahoma workingman isn’t exaggerating. The record sparks and burns with 11 crank-it-up songs that expertly combine country, rock & roll, and the dust and grit of the band’s native Red Dirt scene.
But there are also glimpses of hard rock and metal, along with easygoing back-porch vibes, the result of a drastic change in the way the group formerly known as the Read Southall Band now makes music: Every member of Southall brings lyrics, melodies, and even full songs to the table.
“It’s the colors of different people with different influences making music,” Southall says. “I’ve always been confident in the talents and abilities of the guys onstage with me, and I want our fans to see and hear that too. That’s why we changed our name to Southall.”
Produced by Eddie Spear (Zach Bryan’s American Heartbreak) and recorded at Leon Russell’s iconic Church Studio in Tulsa, Southall manifests the true band album that singer Read Southall first envisioned when he released his debut, Six String Sorrow, in 2015. That was a mostly acoustic record, but Southall, the band’s fourth album, roars with raw and loud collaborative power. Reid Barber, the group’s resident metalhead, hammers his drums. Bassist Jeremee Knipp provides a brooding low end. Keys player Braxton Curliss adds both tasteful accents and off-the- rails barroom piano. And guitarists John Tyler Perry and Ryan Wellman wring wild sounds from their instruments. All of it is tied together by Southall’s scrappy, yearning voice.
First single “Scared Money” is a slice of Rolling Stones country-rock straight off of Sticky Fingers. Opening with a stabbing guitar lick and written by Barber, it’s an acknowledgment of hard work and a dogged determination to pay the bills. “That was inspired by my father, who always told me it’s not about figuring out what you want to do, it’s about figuring out what you don’t want to do,” Barber says. “It was written as a country song, but when we got in the studio it turned into more of a Stonesy jam.”
“Reid wrote ‘Scared Money,’ but the lyrics are me to a T: I walked out of class, straight to the patch, because no one ever paid me to read,” says Southall, who dropped out of school to get a job. “I feel like that’s an Oklahoman mindset, in the sense that people down here get to work.
They get up every morning and do things they don’t want to do to make money and try to get ahead in this crazy life. And it doesn’t matter if you’re going to school, working in the oil patch, or farming. It's all work.”
“Out Alive,” meanwhile, taps into Southall’s harder and more experimental sound and is about the fear of saying, or posting, the wrong thing in today’s quick-to-crucify society, and instead saying nothing at all — “That’s hardly a better option,” says Barber, who wrote it. “Out Alive” is a monster and features a squawky guitar solo reminiscent of Jack White or Rage Against theMachine’s Tom Morello played by Wellman using a pen as a slide. “It sounds like air-raid sirens,” raves Southall.