LOCAL MUSIC STAPLE Jim Reed has done what many might think is impossible—gathering over 200 Savannah artists on one digital compilation. It's all to benefit Hurricane Helene relief efforts in Western North Carolina, and MARSHES TO MOUNTAINS: Savannah, GA Helps Rebuild Western NC Through Song is a true labor of love.
Following a discounted pre-order, the collection was released in full on December 24. There are nearly two dozen songs available to listen to exclusively for The Savannahian subscribers, which you can check out below.
201 artists in total (including yours truly) contributed to this massive collection, which not only serves to help those impacted by Helene, but also as an unprecedented document of Savannah music history. There are artists represented that aren't active anymore, and some who are no longer with us. There are rare, unreleased songs and artists represented across countless genres.
MARSHES TO MOUNTAINS is an unquestionable feat, and Reed has a lot to say about it. To celebrate the release, we asked him about the songs, the process of putting it together, and much more.
For those unaware, how the storm in North Carolina impact you personally?
I’ve lived exclusively in or near downtown Savannah since 1986, but for the past year or so, my wife and I have been spending the majority of our time in Western N.C. in a very small, very rural community about a two hour drive from Asheville and a 30 minute drive from Boone. We were very aware of the threat that Hurricane Helene posed to both Savannah and ―oddly enough― the community of Creston, where our cabin is. And we took that threat seriously.
She was already up there, and I left Savannah for N.C. at 2 p.m. on Sept. 27th, just as the city was beginning to really feel the storm. By the time I arrived that night, it was getting pretty rough in our holler (which is about 3,600 feet in elevation), and later that night we lost power.
Before sunrise, things took a turn for perhaps the worst that we had feared might occur. There were seven confirmed tornadoes in our immediate vicinity ― one of which passed just a few feet from our house, felling hundreds of massive trees, ripping down power lines and blocking or flat-out destroying many roads and bridges in our winding mountain neighborhood.
Not long thereafter, a flash flood quickly turned the tiny creek that runs though our yard into a small river that raged for a couple of hours and entered the first floor of our cabin. We and our cats were forced to climb up into what is essentially an attic and ride out the storm there, not knowing if the building would withstand the water and remain in place.
Thankfully it did, but in all honesty, it was quite a terrifying experience that in many respects must have been quite similar to what folks in New Orleans dealt with during Hurricane Katrina.
In fact, while the national media has not properly covered the death, destruction and devastation caused in Western N.C. by Helene, it’s probably fair to say that while the death count is lower, it’s essentially another Katrina situation.
However, instead of taking place in a fairly flat and densely populated urban locale, the treacherous mountain terrain and remote locations of many of the homes and businesses which were affected up there made it arguably much more difficult to physically reach the victims and offer assistance, shelter and medical help.
In the end, our home and property was damaged in very small ways compared to the folks around us. Just a few hundred feet from our front porch, our nearest neighbor had his roof crushed by several hundred-foot- high pine trees which slid down a mountain and landed directly on top of his teenage son’s bedroom.
We went without power, phone service and internet for a little over two weeks, and were essentially confined to our property for most of that time, due to the fact that most of the very few roads which lead to our neighborhood were either blocked by debris, or had partially vanished and slid off the side of the mountains.
When this idea first came to be, what did you think you’d be able to pull off in terms of the number of contributions?
When you have no power, phone or internet, and you are essentially cut off from any sort of town, sitting and thinking becomes the order of the day. I became fixated on wanting to do something to make a positive difference in the lives of the folks in our immediate vicinity who had lost most if not everything in this terrifying, landscape-altering natural disaster.
But I had no funds of my own to contribute to the recovery effort (which is conservatively estimated to cost many billions of dollars over the next several years). It occurred to me at some point that I did have personal relationships with scores of Savannah-area musicians, vocalists and songwriters, which I’d built up and maintained since the late 1980s.
I’ve played various roles in the Savannah music scene over the decades: I’ve been a recording and performing musician in a number of rock, soul and Americana groups; I’ve interviewed and written extensively about local musical artists for the “original” (and well-regarded) Connect Savannah alt-weekly, the Savannah Morning News, Do Savannah, South Magazine and other publications; and I’ve independently promoted high-profile concert events in that market, like the big Salute to the Traveling Wilburys at Victory North last Thanksgiving.
My ties to this community run deep, and I had long wanted to produce as comprehensive a compilation as possible of musical artists with a long history with (or strong connection to) Savannah.
Once I had the realization that I could merge that idea with my desire to help publicize and ameliorate the current plight of Western N.C., I suspected I would be able to find a number of talented folks who would appreciate the cause and wish to take part in such an undertaking.
The plan was always to make this a digital- only release, so as to not waste money on manufacturing physical media like CDs or vinyl LPs ― thus allowing more of the funds raised to go where they were needed.
My initial goal was to try and curate a downloadable and streamable album that would contain around 40 tracks by 40 different acts in a variety of genres, that could be sold for around $10.
I would have been happy with that. I’m thrilled to say that the final result of this effort is far, far greater than that, and has significantly more historic and monetary value.
I’ve produced compilations before so I know that there’s always the chance you get more contributions than you had in mind, because you’ll always try to plan for more than you need. But did you have any idea going in that you’d end up with the sheer number of songs you’ve compiled?
No, not at first. It happened organically, but around the time I’d received verbal commitments from about 50 or 60 different artists that I admired, it fueled both my imagination and my ambition. I allowed myself to reimagine the album as something much greater in scope than I had previously. I decided to see if I could gather 120 tracks, from as wide a range of performers and eras as possible.
For a while, that became the goal. When I hit 120, I knew I had to keep going. The next benchmark was 160. When I passed that, I aimed for 180.
I honestly didn’t think it could get past 180, but I was wrong! Currently, there are 201 different songs by 201 different artists, and my feeling is that track list will continue to grow, even after the official release date.
Because there’s so many songs on here, it does feel like a bit of a historical document in a way; a very clear representation of what Savannah offers and has offered musically. It’s never been done before in this way, so it feels really special. At what point in the process did you realize you had something like this on your hands?
Well, the truth is that this entire project has only been in the works for about eight weeks. It was put together at warp speed, so that we could have it out by Christmas.
So, there are several dozen more artists I was hoping to showcase that I simply was not able to reach in time to have their work included.
There were also a few handfuls of well-known artists who refused to take part, for whatever reason. If I’m being candid, that was profoundly confusing and extremely disappointing to me.
I just don’t get what exactly about this particular project anyone would find unappealing. Especially enough so that they’d not want to be associated with it.
But the fact that there are already over 200 unusual, interesting, notable acts who enthusiastically signed on to be a part of such an ambitious charitable effort just makes it all the more obvious who’s missing, you know?
Ideally, over the next few weeks I can finally touch base with some of the artists I have yet to speak with, and most or all of them want to come onboard.
Plus, there will always be an opening for additional acts and tracks that fit the specific criteria for inclusion, and I have a sneaking suspicion that once more musicians, vocalists and songwriters hear of this fundraising album they’ll want to be featured alongside these other impressive artists and reach out to me themselves.
The best part about this collection is that since it’s a digital release and we’re not pressing physical product, there is absolutely no limit in terms of how long it can be. We don’t have to worry about running out of space, as you would on a cassette, CD or vinyl record.
At present, the compilation is the length of 13 full CDs or 23 vinyl LPs. It’s 16 hours long. I can continue to add artists and songs to this every month or so if high quality submissions keep arriving, and everyone who’s already purchased the album at any point will just automatically receive access to all these additional bonus songs for free! Their album will just keep getting longer and longer and longer…
In this way, MARSHES TO MOUNTAINS can become something even more unusual and valuable: a living, breathing, evolving document of the entire recorded history of the Greater Savannah Area music scene. I’d love for it to ultimately dip back into the golden age of jazz, as well as feature more groups from the 1960s and 1970s ― while continuing to add contemporary artists as they appear and mature.
The trick will be finding and sourcing high quality recordings and getting permission from the estates of artists who are no longer with us to feature them in this way. The need for hurricane relief in Western N.C. will be ongoing for many, many years, so there’s no reason this album can’t continue to be discovered and continue to raise funds for this cause in perpetuity.
Was there a song, or were there songs, that you acquired for this that felt absolutely critical to include, like you couldn’t achieve the full vision without?
I would say there were a few artists that I felt were absolutely essential to include, some of which I wasn’t sure would either be willing or able to contribute a track. Luckily, in almost every case they were.
The first that comes to mind is a quartet called And Sometimes Why?, which was quite popular in the city for a few years in the very early 1990s. They weren’t necessarily a “hair metal” band, but they wrote and played catchy, pop-oriented hard rock/metal, and they all had long, lustrous hair (so make of that what you will).
Their frontman/vocalist Craig Johansen is likely recognizable to most folks who’ve followed the local rock music scene since that time, as he’s since played guitar and sang in a handful of high-profile bands (such as The 8- Tracks, The Magic Rocks, Monkey Man, The Myth, Splitfinger and Hot Pink Interior), and also appeared as a featured member of many of the high-profile local artist “tribute shows” of the past couple decades (The White Stripes, Tom Petty, Cheap Trick, Pixies, Neil Young, Traveling Wilburys).
And Sometimes Why? recorded a studio album back about 30 years ago that I’d been lucky enough to hear right around that time, but for reasons which are unclear to me, it was never released in any form. The band broke up soon thereafter and those recordings remained unheard ever since.
Every few years myself and several other fans of the band would mention to the guys in the group that we sure wished they’d release that material, if only for old times’ sake. The answer was always a polite but firm no.
In 2020, when I formed my micro-label Fake Fangs Records (FakeFangs.com), they were one of the first acts I approached about possibly licensing and releasing their music, as I felt they were a solid, killer bar band that played a key role in developing the local music scene.
Again, the answer was “Thanks, but not interested.” So, they were once again one of my first invitations when I conceived of this hurricane relief benefit.
I figured after all this time I knew what their answer would be, so when I texted Craig, I said, “Honestly, if there was EVER a time for one of And Sometimes Why?’s studio tracks to surface, this is it.”
Two days later he texted me back to say he’d been in touch with all of his former bandmembers and everyone had agreed to let me use one track from that unreleased record.
I was ecstatic, because it just seemed like a forgone conclusion that no one would ever get to hear any of that stuff. There were three other acts that I was desperate to be able to include: City of Lindas, Kristina Train and Jack Sherman.
City of Lindas was a band I played drums in from 1988 through the mid-1990s that developed a sizable local following and toured a bit regionally. It was an art-rock group that was not the first quirky, original alternative act in the city, but in many respects, it was perhaps the first such group that began to routinely draw capacity, paying crowds and that eventually attracted the attention of some record industry folks who felt (or hoped) the Lindas had the potential to be a national/international act.
We released our first album independently in 1989 on cassette (as CDs were still considered something of a big, expensive flex for a DIY band at that time), and that’s since become something of a collectible cult album.
I lost my own tape at some point and had to buy a used copy of my own album on eBay about 15 years ago for close to $100!
When it came time to make our second album, we did so in fits and starts over a two year period in two state-of-the-art studios with two seasoned, extremely talented producers at the helm.
Unfortunately, the rights to those recordings wound up in a convoluted sort of legal limbo, and the Lindas were prevented from releasing any of that material ever since. The band went on an indefinite hiatus in 1994, with a lot of fans having heard that we had completed a fairly glitzy-sounding new album which they were never allowed to hear.
As with Craig’s old band, I felt it would just seem odd for an overview of the local independent music scene to exist which did not feature a track from City of Lindas.
So, hoping against hope, I approached the person who’d essentially been preventing any material from those sessions to be shared publicly in any way and asked for permission to use just one song from that “lost album” on this compilation, stressing the fact that it was for charity, and that everyone involved was donating their recordings and waiving their publishing royalties.
To my great relief and amazement, they agreed to that arrangement, at which point I reached out to my old bandmates far and wide and together we settled on a specific track we felt folks who recall the band from its heyday would remember fondly and which we as musicians were also proud of.
It’s a very weird thing to have made a piece of art and then be actively prevented from sharing it with anyone for 30 years.
People still mention that band to me regularly, and I hope everyone who enjoyed the group back then will get a big kick out of hearing what would have been our “next move” at that time.
As far as Kristina Train goes, she’s a vocalist, violinist and songwriter who was born in NYC but spent her teenage years in Savannah. She left in the early 2000s when she signed a deal with the legendary and prestigious jazz and soul label Blue Note, and since then she’s performed all over the world, both as a headliner and alongside such iconic artists as Herbie Hancock, Chris Isaak, Al Green, Tony Bennett and others. She’s played the Royal Albert Hall, you know?
So, around 20 or 25 years ago, my dear friend Kevin Rose (who helped immensely on this project by adding some light audio mastering to the entire compilation at his award-winning Elevated Basement Studio) put together a crazy recording session with some serious heavyweight studio musicians and engineers he’s compadres with, as a fun little experiment.
They took a song he wrote, which we had been playing from time to time as an encore in our proto-punk band Superhorse, and recast it as a brooding, sultry R&B kind of groove. Kevin produced it and shared engineering duties on it with a New York cat named Fletcher, who’s something of an enigmatic legend in the world of high-end audio recording. Kristina provided the vocals, Kevin played guitar, local bassist par excellence Phil McDonald served as one half of a killer rhythm section that also included famed studio drummer Mike Levesque (David Bowie, Natalie Imbruglia, Letters To Cleo), and Richmond Hill’s own Jason Anderson played organ.
César Sogbe mixed the thing, and he’s won 11 Latin Grammys. I heard it 20- something years ago when it had just been finished and thought it was incredibly baddass.
Again, it’s never been heard by anyone outside of maybe a few handfuls of people. It’s just been sitting quietly in a box ever since. I think there may have been some issues with releasing it due to the fact that around that time, Kristina signed her first big record deal, and this hard-rocking track did not fit into the type of music she was creating and presenting on her own.
But that track had stuck with me all this time. I was able to get in touch with Kristina, and when she learned of MARSHES TO MOUNTAINS I am honored to say she enthusiastically gave me permission to include that recording on the album. She’s all about it, and I believe will be hyping the record to her international fanbase, which is just wonderful of her.
Kevin then dug through his archives, found the finished recording, and it’s now track number 12 on the album. I can’t wait for people to hear this one. It sounds incredibly fresh and contemporary and is one of the most radio-friendly cuts on the whole album.
Jack Sherman was one of my closest friends. An almost preternaturally gifted guitarist, he’s best-known for writing and playing the guitar parts on the first red Hot Chili Peppers album, and touring with the band in their tumultuous early days. But he was also a journeyman studio and road guitarist who lived in Austin, Tx. And Los Angeles, Ca., and played on hundreds of diverse albums and movie and TV soundtracks.
He moved to Savannah to get away from the grind and ugliness of the Hollywood music biz but would occasionally gig around the area with a variety of blues, rock, funk and jazz fusion combos or contribute guitar parts to sessions by regional songwriters.
However, through his entire life, he never once released a record under his own name. I was lucky enough to have heard a strange and compelling recording he’d made a few years before his sudden and untimely death in 2020, which he played me almost immediately after it had been cut.
We had discussed releasing it as a single on my Fake Fangs Records label, but he passed away before that plan could come to fruition. Jack’s son Robin loved the idea of including it on this collection of Savannah-based artists, and so this will be another exclusive: the first-ever record by “Jack Sherman & The Sherman Family” (Robin and his mom appear on the song as well).
This tune will probably surprise and confound many who knew Jack as a jaw-dropping guitarist, but have never heard him sing, nor have much of an idea about his unique perspective on the world.
I think in some ways it’s one of the most sincere, honest and open expressions of creativity on the entire 200-plus track album, and it brings me great joy to have his delightfully off-kilter personality shine through in this way. I only wish he were still here with us to see his fanbase’s reaction.
What songs do you feel are most indicative of the vibe of Savannah, if any?
That’s a tough one. There are so many wildly diverse types of music and songs on this compilation. If anything, that sheer oddball variety is what’s indicative of Savannah’s vibe.
Or at least what used to be Savannah’s vibe.
The city has changed so much in the past 20 years that in many respects (to me, at least) the mood and tone of Savannah is almost unrecognizable. But it’s important to remember that a large part of what has always made the Savannah music scene special and different from a lot of other scenes in similarly sized cities, is its lack of guile.
For the most part, musical artists and songwriters in Savannah are rarely trying to “make it,” whatever that even means these days. They’re doing it to prove a point, or exorcise something, or provide some sort of alternative noise they don’t feel is already being heard around these parts.
That DIY spirit is dripping off this album. You can hear it in the ska-infused, Car Stalling-esque punk freneticism of a band like SNOUT!? (which was around briefly in the very early 1990s) and in the retro, new-wave DEVO-ish dance-rock manifestos of a group like Pink Peugeot, which have already released a few records on their own in the past few years. They are exclusively premiering the first song off their upcoming record on MARSHES TO MOUNTAINS.
I would also point to track number 162, “Wander and Dream, ” by Courtney Gains and Wal Peche. Courtney is a veteran film, TV and video game actor who’s recognizable and well-known in many genre fan communities.
He relocated to Savannah from Los Angeles a few years ago, and is now devoting a good bit of his energy to being a gigging and recording singer-songwriter and bandleader, which is something he did for decades out in California. Wal is a talented, professional guitarist and recording engineer who’s now based in Atlanta, but who has collaborated for a couple of years now with Courtney.
That cut is another exclusive to the compilation, it’s a previously unreleased track that no one’s heard before which I think may surprise people who only know Courtney from his scene-stealing roles in movies like the original Children of the Corn, Memphis Belle or Sweet Home Alabama.
When someone listens to this compilation in its entirety, what’s one thing you hope they come away from the experience thinking?
I hope listeners realize that Savannah, Ga. is more than an over-hyped vacation destination or “the place where you can drink booze in the streets.” It’s a moody, quirky, crepuscular hotbed of lost opportunities, mixed- metaphors and cattywampus dreams.
It’s not a theme park or a reality TV show. It’s a fucked-up Southern Gothic town where darkness continually meets light and where light usually prevails. It’s not a sandbox for the wealthy and haughty, no matter how many of them move there to live large and no matter how much sand they throw in the faces of everyone else who’s been there for the long haul.
It's also a city filled with caring and compassionate people, most of whom are struggling to get by. As Savannahians, we were all lucky to avoid the death and devastation Hurricane Helene delivered to Western N.C.
Whether we want to admit that out loud, it’s the truth and everyone who’s paying attention knows it. That could easily have been the Hostess City, and one day soon, it just may be.
Now’s a chance to spend $40 to help a lot of people who desperately need help. What does $40 buy in Savannah these days? It’ll get you three Spicy Chicken Combo Meals at Wendy’s (if you upsize them). It’ll get you a large peperoni pizza and three draft beers at Vinnie’s. Which is a great option. But that’ll be gone in an hour.
At SAVhelpsWNC.com, $40 will get you the peace that only comes from knowing you’ve directly helped a stranger in need. And, if you’re too tough of a character to appreciate that on its own merits, it’ll also get you 13 full CDs’ worth of unpredictable, excellent-quality, rare and previously unreleased music from this area going all the way back to 1966.
I hope everyone who reads this article heads to that site to sample 12 tracks from the album and purchases a copy for themselves. Or at least shares the link with some of their friends who might. Thanks, everybody.
MARSHES TO MOUNTAINS: Savannah, GA Helps Rebuild Western NC Through Song is available exclusively on Bandcamp.