Local Band, Red Clay Strays, Featured In Rolling Stone
News Staff • February 20, 2024
Red Clay Strays Get Attention In National Tour
If you follow live music along the gulf coast then you have probably heard of the Red Clay Strays. If you haven't you may want to tune in to their raid rise around the country. The Red Clay Strays have played local out honkey tonks like the Flora-Bama or the Halstead in Fairhope. Now they are selling out shows around the nation that include Ashville N.C., Red Rocks C.O., and even the beloved Ryman Auditorium in Nashville.
Brandon Coleman (lead vocals/guitar), Drew Nix (vocals/electric guitar/harmonica), Zach Rishel (electric guitar), Andrew Bishop (bass), and John Hall (drums), have become so popular that the iconic Rolling Stone Magazine published a profile article about the band stating:
In Garrett Woodward's article he details how the Red Clay Strays are "Bringing Fire and Brimstone to Country Music."
IN THE DEPTHS of the River Arts District in Asheville, North Carolina, a large tour bus is parked outside the tiny Grey Eagle where the Red Clay Strays are set to play a sold-out show that evening. The band’s coach is so tall that it all but obscures the venue behind it from street view — a visual metaphor for the Mobile, Alabama, group’s rapidly upward trajectory.
That was in October 2023. Fast forward to now, and the Red Clay Strays have just been forced to move their next Asheville concert, slated for April 28, from the 1,050-capacity Orange Peel to the outdoor stage Rabbit Rabbit, cap. 4,200. That too sold out.
Guitarist Drew Nix is nonplussed. “All I see are small goals we’re trying to achieve from here to wherever we’re trying to get to,” he tells Rolling Stone. “It’s never, ‘make it big.’” Despite Nix’s protestation, that’s exactly where the band finds itself.
Bursting out of the red dirt clay of their home state that gives the Red Clay Strays their name, the band is the musical manifestation of the push and pull between salvation and redemption. Their sound is Delta blues, gritty honky-tonk, and Sun Records rockabilly, shot through with a palpable darkness — call the result “gothic country.” Lead singer Brandon Coleman’s fire and brimstone vocals tie it all together, and hint at the undercurrent of faith that runs through the band.
“God has come through in many different ways. I had faith that he would, but I didn’t know if he would,” Coleman says through piercing eyes. “Boom, this happened. Boom, that happened. It didn’t happen overnight, obviously. We’ve been doing it for years.”
The Red Clay Strays emerged from the ashes of a cover band in Mobile in 2016. That initial group featured Coleman with Andrew Bishop on bass. Nix did the booking. In the fallout, the trio regrouped, bringing in drummer John Hall and guitarist Zach Rishel.
“We’d start out playing anywhere that would take us, play people’s parties, playing covers and sprinkling originals in — more and more people kept listening and kept coming back to shows,” says Coleman.
In conversation — over whiskey as it happens on this night at the Grey Eagle — the members aren’t shy about talking about the shared spirituality that binds the band. Onstage, however, they let the songs, written primarily by Nix and Coleman’s brother Matthew, an unofficial member of the Strays, do the communicating.
Go back to “Moment of Truth.” “If I can’t be righteous/If I can’t see temptation through/I will face my judgment in the moment of truth,” Coleman sings.
“It’s just soul,” Bishop says. “[A lot of] soul singers are coming out of Alabama. There’s a lot of blues influence in Alabama, as well. It’s one of the most religious Christian states. There’s a lot of gospel and that’s where Brandon came up from — he was born with it.”
Those roots are what make Coleman such a powerful vessel for delivering Nix’s lyrics, which are often rife with turmoil.
You can read the full article on Rolling Stone or catch the Red Clay Strays during their current tour.
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