Over speakerphone, Randy Owen lets out a big laugh before telling me the story about chert rocks. We’re talking about “Mountain Music,” country-music band Alabama’s foot-stomping 1982 hit. The song’s lyrics include the wonderfully chicken-fried couplet, “Playin’ baseball with chert rocks, usin’ sawmill slabs for bats.”

Owen, the band’s lead singer/rhythm guitarist, recalls, “Well, ‘Mountain Music’ had just become a number-one single, and the album was number-one and sold a few million copies, and we were in New York City at RCA [Records, Alabama’s longtime record label] headquarters. The president [of the label] said, ‘What’s this deal about chert rocks. There’s no such a word as chert rock.’”

Owen was befuddled at this accusation and replied “Oh yeah” there was indeed such a word. The label exec countered by asking, “Where do chert rocks come from?” To which Owen dryly replied, “From the chert.”

The suits in the room all laughed and snickered at Owen, whose accent to this day sounds as country as kudzu. And for the record, chert’s a sedimentary rock ancient civilizations used to make tools and weapons, and in more recent times it’s used in construction and road surfacing. Flint, a more widely recognized term, is a type of chert.

The record label exec had an employee fetch “a dictionary, which was about eight inches thick,” Owen recalls. “And he had them look up C-H-I-R-T. I told him, ‘If you look up C-H-E-R-T, you’ll find it,’ so they did. Two weeks later, he was fired.”

Forty-two years later, Owen and his cousin Teddy Gentry, Alabama’s bassist and harmony vocalist, remain true to their unfussy roots. Last year, Alabama, the biggest selling and likely greatest country-music band ever, rebooted June Jam, the band’s iconic all-day country music concert held in their hometown, Fort Payne. The first June Jam held since 1997 drew a sold-out crowd of around 11,000.

Saturday, June Jam returns to Dekalb Country VFW Fairgrounds for its 2024 edition, with Alabama, as always, headlining. The lineup also features former “American Idol” winner Taylor Hicks, as well as country acts Old Dominion, Shenandoah, Montgomery Gentry, Exile, John Berry, Malpass Brothers and The Castellows. Tickets are $49 to $250 (plus applicable fees) via ticketmaster.com.

In advance of this year’s June Jam, Owen and Gentry called in for a joint phone interview. Edited excerpts below.

Randy and Teddy, what’s a vivid memory from the 2023 June Jam, which was the first one in a long time?

Randy Owen: For me, it was just I said my prayers for a beautiful day, and it was a beautiful day. The weather was beautiful and that was about all we needed.

Teddy Gentry: Well, just walking out on the stage in front of our hometown crowd. You know, like you said, it had had 20-something years since we’d done the Jam, and to know the memories of the Jams past, it was just so good to do it again. And knowing that we were again able to raise some money for local charities, which was our original intention of doing the Jam start with.

June Jam has raised more than $20 million for charities over the years. Was there something you experienced or saw that made you want to give back in this big way once your fame and success was rising?

Gentry: You know, the very first Jam that we played was actually promoted by a rogue promoter that wound up leaving town and I don’t think the acts even got paid. We got hooked up [with that promoter] down in Florida. They were supposed to take us bass fishing or something I think as part of the deal. But the promoter actually skipped out and it [the debut June Jam, held in 1982] was supposed to raise money for the high school there and that didn’t happen.

So, me, Randy and Jeff [Cook, late Alabama multi-instrumentalist/harmony vocalist] got together and said, well, next year we’ll put on the show ourselves, and we’ll make sure that the money goes to local charities. And that’s what we did. It just felt good to do it and be able to give them some back to the community. That was for all of us what our intentions were.

Owen: A special one to me was when we were able to give scholarships to deserving students, and a lot of cases kids who really couldn’t afford to go to college, but the scholarship would help them get to college and get them started.

Teddy, who mentioned Jeff, who’s a country music legend and people love his music and playing so much. Last year was the first June Jam since he passed. Is there a moment onstage these days with Alabama where you feel Jeff’s presence the most?

Gentry: Jeff’s guitar work and fiddle-playing and his harmony singing was always there, so it takes about three people to reproduce what Jeff left behind. Every song, Jeff was a part of, and you miss him. But all we try to do now is make the music go forward with some of the greatest musicians in the world, that make the music fun for me and Randy to get out there and play with these guys and girls because they’re so talented. And I think Alabama live, I think we’re as good, if not better than we’ve ever been.

But Jeff will never be replaced. He’s always that part of Alabama that was there from the start. We stayed together for too long and sang too many songs together for it to ever be the same. But Jeff, he wanted the music to go on, and that’s what we’re doing.

Speaking of that music, something I always fond interesting about Alabama is I know rock and roll fans who Alabama’s the only country band they love. Why do you think your band’s appeal extends beyond country fans?

Owen: We got a second and third generation coming on now. We were in Iowa and Illinois this past weekend and, I’ll never forget, I was looking up in the stands, on the left side way up was little girl like she’s seven or eight years old and she was dancing to every song when I walked over that side of the stage. And it was so much fun to see that.

Everybody there in that audience was younger than me and Teddy, and quite a bit younger. And it’s really refreshing to see that grandma and grandpa handed down their musical tastes to their grandkids, and those grandkids come into the show to see Alabama play live.

Gentry: To me, our live performance is what really separates Alabama from a lot of artists. We brought the energy and drive that the young people felt and were into. It was more of a rock treatment of country music, you know, as far as the big sound system, big light system, full staging, video. You try to be current. At the time Alabama’s approach to live was we wanted to put on a show and make it an event, and we still do.

Alabama had that amazing run of 21 straight number-one country singles. A number-one single is an always a big deal, but was there one of them that had a really huge impact on the band and accelerated your fame?

Owen: I don’t think it was a number-one song, but the song “My Home’s In Alabama” [which peaked at number 17 on the country chart] is what got us noticed in the music world and set us up for the next string a number-one singles.

Gentry: It was so different for its time. It was kind of in between Southern rock and country, you know? It was uniquely Alabama, I’ll put it that way. [Laughs]

I love band origin stories. Back in the day, [before changing the name to Alabama, when the band] was called Wildcountry, what’s the most valuable lesson you learned from being the house band at that band The Bowery over in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina?

Owen: There’s no substitute for hard work, for being absolutely determined and also there’s no substitute for God-given talent. We were just very blessed. When me, Teddy and Jeff got together that Sunday afternoon in ‘69, it was obvious that vocally it was just kind of a magical thing. I still get goosebumps thinking about how we sounded.

Gentry: The hours of having to entertain, not just sing a song but having to learn how to entertain the crowd. How to connect with the crowd. How to make tips. How to make a dollar tip, you know? It makes you a better musician because we had to play every type of music from country to rock and roll, Southern rock, gospel bluegrass. you name it. We’d give it a shot if you had the money. [Laughs] It made you try other different types of music and expand your musical knowledge, I guess you’d say.

Owen: We played everything but disco. Jeff had this saying too, “If you want to hear disco, just disco somewhere else.” Jeff was notorious for statements that got us in trouble sometimes. [Laughs]

Do you think you two and Jeff being cousins and not siblings helped you guys avoid the conflicts that we hear about so often from bands centered around members who are brothers?

Owen: I think that had a little bit to do with it, but I think it was basically we were from the same area, and we talk alike and our accents, if you will, are pretty much the same. And so the harmonies and stuff were different than they would have been I think if there had been one guy from a whole different part of the United States trying to sing with us.

Gentry: Yeah, I remember the first time Randy and I started exchanging chords on the guitar was when The Beatles were breaking. We were big Beatles fans, and I would gladly race across the cotton field if we had time [from work], to learn a new Beatles record. But it was all a learning process. And let me give credit to [former Alabama drummer] Mark Herndon, too. When we crossed over and started being on the road, Mark was kind of the renegade rocker of the bunch, and a lot of the young people were attracted to our live sound, which he was very much a part of.

Owen: To go along with that, we played the Grand Ole Opry one time back in ‘80 or ‘81. And as Teddy was walking out these two old ladies said, “I kind of liked that little band that played,” and the other one said, “I tell you what, that little girl could beat the fire out of them drums.” [Laughs]

Gentry: We’ve definitely been blessed live-wise. As many years as we’ve been doing this and still be able to go out and this past weekend we played, I think, a couple of our best shows. I mean, I think we kicked their butt, as we say. [Laughs]

We always tell people, in our game of music we always win, and even our worst show we’re always a winner. But some shows are better than others. Sometimes you hear better than others, sometimes your throat is not as good as it was … I had a sore throat all day on Sunday, and told Randy before the show, “I don’t know whether I can sing or not.” I have a cup of coffee and get the adrenaline flowing and get out there and we have a good show. But we still love it and take pride in it as much as ever.