From low to high: Georgia musicians promote hurricane relief in WNC
Sunny sea-level Savannah, Georgia, is known for a lot of things — historic colonial beauty, low country cuisine and a wide-open bar culture that benefits from/endures one of the nation’s few open container laws — but it also has a rich musical legacy that locals are now using to help victims of Hurricane Helene in Western North Carolina.
“As someone who has been involved in its local music community for decades, I felt the ‘hidden history’ of Savannah’s music scene was long overdue for some sort of reappraisal that might result in wider recognition,” Jim Reed, owner of FakeFangs Records. “This massive compilation album to raise much-needed funds for hurricane relief efforts in Western North Carolina seemed the perfect way to accomplish two worthwhile goals at once, which both held great personal relevance to me.”
For some time now, Reed’s been known around Savannah as “the guy” when it comes to local music. He’s not only produced high-profile concerts in the region and performed with many of the city’s legendary musicians, he’s also written extensively about them in the formerly well-regarded alt weekly Connect Savannah as well as Savannah’s daily, the Savannah Morning News.
While the Great Smoky Mountains are hundreds of miles away from Savannah’s silty, salty marshes — and nearly a mile above them — Reed is an important North Carolina connection. He and his wife own a cabin in tiny Creston, where she was just before Helene hit. Reed left Savannah to join her and arrived the night before the storm, just as things started to go sideways.
According to an interview in the Savannahian, the Reeds weathered several tornadoes perilously close to their Ashe County cabin, tearing down power lines and hundred-foot pines. A small creek on the property soon became a raging river, washing out bridges, entering their cabin and forcing them to retreat into the attic, uncertain if they’d be swept away as others across the region were.
Trapped there for two weeks without power, Reed’s thoughts soon turned to how he could help others. That’s when he came up with the idea for a sprawling digital-only benefit album that also inadvertently serves as a unique encyclopedia of Savannah’s diverse, sometimes quirky music scene over the past 30 years.
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“Despite its relatively small size, Savannah is home to a handful of institutions of higher learning, including a large branch of Georgia Southern University, as well as Savannah State University, which is an HBCU. So there’s a decent amount of diversity there as far as young people go,” Reed told The Smoky Mountain News Jan. 3. “But then you have the Savannah College of Art & Design, which is the largest private art school in the country. It draws ambitious, creative students from all over the country and the world. They bring with them their own popular culture, and collectively, the result is a much more eclectic hotbed of music than you’d be likely to find in any other city of its size on the east coast — and especially in the Deep South.”
Reed set to work acquiring the rights to tracks performed by Savannah artists, some from as long ago as 1966 and many of which have remained unreleased until now. Those that had been released were often sold in limited runs on now-archaic formats and remain incredibly rare collectibles.
While he’d initially hoped to gather around 40 tracks, positive response from local artists pushed that to 60, then 120, then 180, finally ending with 201 songs from 201 different artists in just eight weeks. And, Reed says he’s not done.
Jim Reed. Donated photo
Among the tracks included are an eclectic smorgasbord of offerings from the likes of renowned blues guitarslinger Eric Culberson, sludge metal band Black Tusk, Americana/ rock outfit The Trainwrecks, Reed’s own late 1980s art-rock troupe City of Lindas, female-fronted hard rockers Cusses, poppy Wormsloew and dozens of others that showcase the incredible variety of musicians who have called Savannah home over the years.
A few of the performers on the compilation went on to play with well-known groups as the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Widespread Panic, Television, the Richie Havens Duo, Bloodkin, Perpetual Groove, John Hiatt Band and Drive-by Truckers.
Other performers on the expansive collection are no longer with us. In February 2023 Savannah lost one of the most inimitable rock frontmen anywhere, Keith Kozel of legendary ensembles Superhorse and GAM.
“Keith was a force of nature. He was his own zip code,” said Rob Oldham, a longtime Savannah resident, writer, musician and local music connoisseur. Oldham, who records under the name Alpinista, contributed a track of his own to the album, the psychedelic Brit-pop influenced “Eye see,” recorded in 2006.
Oldham also shared a close professional and personal relationship with Todd Terrell Lynch, a versatile, prolific, well-traveled songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who called Savannah home for the last 20 years of his life. Known simply as “TTL,” Lynch was reclusive and his performances were rare, but he completed more than a dozen albums before he passed away in 2022. An unreleased version of his “Durango Motel” graces the collection.
“He never really got the notoriety he deserved, and I would hope that with every listen and with every opportunity his music has to creep out into the world, it’s another opportunity for people to find out more about him and hopefully encourage more of his music to come out,” Oldham said. “TTL just adored Jim Reed — they’re both Ph.D.-level Bob Dylan fans — so I’m sure he would’ve been honored by any ask from Jim. TTL had a big heart and he would have given this project a huge thumbs up.”
Reed isn’t the only connection between the Hostess City and the Land of Sky. Several performers also have enduring connections to Western North Carolina, including Matt Eckstine, formerly a member of regional touring band The Accomplices.
Originally from the Cleveland area, Eckstine has been a working musician in the low country for 20 years, but made a number of appearances in places like Brevard, Hot Springs and Marshall — including opening for Jim Lauderdale — as a member of regional touring band The Accomplices. The compilation includes an Accomplices song called “Mountain Buzz,” written in and about Black Mountain in 2014.
“It was a great place to come to meet musicians and play and tap into that whole Appalachian thing,” Ekstine said. “At the time, it was just an honor to be playing there, bringing it from somewhere else. I made a lot of great relationships with people up there, and seeing them posting about everything they lost [during the hurricane], it was nice to be able to do something to hopefully help, with music.”
In addition to Reed’s efforts, the compilation would not have been possible without the generous support of several of the town’s cultural institutions — The Original Pinkie Masters Bar, Sentient Bean Coffeehouse, Savannah Rocks!, Lone Wolf Lounge, The Savannahian, Michelle Riley PR and Kevin F. Rose of Elevated Basement Studio.
All proceeds from the collection will be donated to BeLoved Asheville, Ashe County Recovery & Restoration, the Creston VFD, Sunny Morning WNC Relief Fund, Friends of Ashe County Animal Shelter, Lansing Recovery and the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina.
“Marshes to mountains: Savannah, GA Helps Rebuild Western NC Through Song” is available exclusively on Bandcamp. Check out some free preview tracks and then order yours today by visiting savhelpswnc.com.
