SEC Network’s ‘True South’ returns to Alabama
“TrueSouth,” the SEC Network’s Emmy Award-winning Southern food and culture series, returns to Alabama for a new episode set in the Walker County seat of Jasper, the one-time epicenter of the state’s coal industry.
The Jasper episode debuts at 7 p.m. this Tuesday, Oct. 22, on the SEC Network and streams on ESPN+ and Hulu.
Now in its seventh season, “TrueSouth” is hosted by Southern food and culture writer John T. Edge, who tells AL.com that the upcoming show is “one of our strongest.”
The episode centers around two father-son stories – that of Alabama novelist and Arley native Caleb Johnson and his coal-mining father, Ronnie Johnson, and that of Jasper native Justice Evans, who grew up in and now runs the welding shop owned by his father, Howard Evans.
They, in turn, introduced Edge to the two restaurants — both tucked inside gas stations/convenience stores — which anchor the show.
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“Caleb and his father led us to one of the two restaurants that are at the core of the show, and that’s Brown’s Grocery on the edge of Jasper,” Edge says in an interview with AL.com. “They open at four in the morning. They bake biscuits for hardworking people. And that was the kind of place where Caleb’s father, Ronnie Johnson, would meet his colleagues to carpool to work, and they’d pick up biscuits.
“And then I met Justice Evans, who runs Evans Welding on the other edge of Jasper, and it’s another father-son story,” Edge adds. “His father started this welding company, and much of their business used to be repair work on coal trucks. Justice, now, is the primary person there. His father’s somewhat retired.
“And (Justice) told me that, yeah, he loves Brown’s but where he takes his family is Bayou Fresh Seafood, which, like Brown’s, is in a gas station there in Jasper.”
Alabama novelist and Arley native Caleb Johnson is pictured here with his father, Ronnie Johnson, who worked in the coal mines for 36 years. Caleb Johnson is the guide for the Jasper episode of the SEC Network’s “TrueSouth.”(Photo courtesy of Bluefoot Entertainment; used with permission)
‘Accepting its past and changing its future’
Nikki Quillen runs the kitchen at Brown’s Grocery, and Janice Zhu and Jianjun Zhu own Bayou Fresh Seafood.
Their respective restaurants illustrate the changing cultural and economic dynamics of places like Jasper, Edge says.
“When you step into a place where there was a primary industry that drove most of the economy, and then you show up in the years after that industry has declined or moved on, you watch people trying to make a future, and you watch them, in some ways, begin to experiment, take different kinds of chances, figure out what comes next,” he says.
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“You see humans do what humans do best, which is absorbing change and being creative in their response. And I got to see that in Jasper, with a new generation stepping into the story of that place and accepting its past and changing its future.
“The two restaurants illustrate that: Brown’s, which made its money feeding miners, and now the sushi place that feeds the grandchildren of miners.”
Jianjun Zhu prepares sushi rolls at Bayou Fresh Seafood, which is one of two restaurants featured on the Jasper episode of the SEC Network’s “True South.”(Photo courtesy of Bluefoot Entertainment; used with permission)
‘Gonna keep coming back to Alabama’
The Jasper episode is the fourth time “TrueSouth” has visited Alabama, going back six years ago to when the series kicked off in 2018 with a show about the influence of Greek immigrants on the food and culture of Birmingham.
Subsequently, “TrueSouth” explored the Mobile Bay area during Season Four in 2021, and visited the Black Belt for Season Six last year.
“We’re gonna keep coming back to AlabSixama because you don’t exhaust stories in a place you know well and where people know you well,” Edge says. “You find more and more because you’re able to go deeper.”
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Birmingham musician Lee Bains III — a longtime friend of Caleb Johnson who collaborated with Edge and the “TrueSouth” crew on the music for that first Birmingham episode in 2018 — returns to play his songs and talk on camera in the new episode.
“It’s a beautiful loop back,” Edge says. “The very first music you ever hear in a ‘TrueSouth’ episode is Lee Bains, . . . and now we’re back with Lee again.
“But this is certainly the most expansive collaboration we’ve done with Lee,” Edge adds. “Lee’s onscreen here singing. And Lee and Caleb are old buddies, so it all feels very intimate.”
The Birmingham creative studio Matey designed the commemorative poster for the Jasper episode of the SEC Network’s “True South.”(Image courtesy of Matey; used with permission from John T. Edge)
‘Kind of a Pandora’s box’
The Birmingham creative firm Matey designed the Jasper episode’s commemorative poster, which is inspired by a Gravy podcast that Caleb Johnson recorded for the Southern Foodways Alliance, titled “Leftovers in a Coal Miner’s Lunchbox,” in 2016.
“The way I first heard (Ronnie) Johnson’s story was through that Gravy episode,” Edge says. “Caleb did a great job of using that lunchbox as kind of a Pandora’s box.
“Caleb is asking his father about what he carried down in the mines to eat to work the night shift, and in asking those simple questions, he gets to the bigger questions about what work is like down there, and what you sacrificed for our family by way of that work. So that lunchbox is kind of a totem of the show.
“We have, since the beginning of the show, collaborated with artists and designers to do those posters,” Edge continues. “That’s the second time we have worked with Matey there in Birmingham. We made a beautiful one last year for the Black Belt.
“(We are) really proud of those posters. They’re their own little art objects, and they’re a way for us to collaborate with an artist or designer we admire.”
John T. Edge says he is forever grateful for the opporunity to host a show like “True South.” JohnTEdge.com
‘Dumbfounded that I get to do this’
It is not lost on Edge how fortunate he is that he gets to dig into stories like those of the relationships between Caleb and Ronnie Johnson and Justice and Howard Evans, and that he has a platform like the SEC Network through which to share them.
“There is a deep and profound and vulnerable father-son story embedded here, and there are really two of them,” he says. “There is Caleb and his father, and then there’s Justice and his father.
“We go deeper with Caleb and his father, but you know, that idea of what to carry forward and what to leave behind, how to honor your parents as you’re moving through your own life — those are big questions we humans ask each other, and we, for 30 minutes on the SEC Network, get to ask those questions this Tuesday.
“I’m really proud of what we get to do, and just amazed that we get to do this, that (SEC commissioner) Greg Sankey and (SEC deputy commissioner/COO) Charlie Hussey at the SEC Network believe in this show, that our colleagues at ESPN greenlit this show, that Wright Thompson hired me to host this thing, that Tim Horgan directs this thing and sources our music.
“I’m just dumbfounded that I get to do this. I really am. I’m not being falsely humble. This is just incredible. I’m so thankful.”
In addition to the Jasper show, previous episodes of Season Seven of “True South” have featured Oklahoma City; Austin, Texas; Little Rock, Ark.; and Lexington and Parsons, Tenn. The next episode will spotlight Spartanburg and Abbeville, S.C., followed by a behind-the-scenes season finale.
For more about “TrueSouth,” and to see a preview of the upcoming Jasper, Ala., episode, go here.