An American Aquarium/SUSTO top of the ticket for Bragg Jam embraces the belief in a better South
Story by Candice Dyer
Bragg Jam revolves around full-circle moments.
This year’s headliners, alt-country sensations American Aquarium and SUSTO, both have played the annual music festival before, back when they were a little lower on the marquee. So Bragg Jam – in its 26th year with more than 40 bands in seven venues – will feel like an appealing echo of the past that nevertheless breaks new ground with some sprightly, innovative music-making.
“That’s the idea,” says the festival’s current board president, Olivia Walter. “We get young, up-and-coming acts when they’re new, and then a few years later we bring them back, when they have a bigger profile and are touring globally. A couple of examples are Jason Isbell and Zac Brown, and now these guys. That allows festivalgoers to say, ‘I saw this band way back when, before they made it big.’ You get a real sense of how these artists grow and evolve from this perspective.”
All in all, it’s an approach that creates a feeling of continuity for the performers and the crowd – a vibe of “old home week” that nourishes and reaffirms the artists’ deep Southern roots.
“I know some bands choose Athens and Atlanta on their touring circuits, but we’ve always been more partial to Macon,” says Justin Obsorne, frontman of SUSTO, who played “at the bottom of the list of bands” in 2015. “Our song ‘Hyperbolic Jesus’ gives Macon a shout-out and shows that we have always held this place in high regard, and it’s a very special feeling to be back here.”
SUSTO, which takes its name from the Spanish word meaning “an intense fear understood as a condition of the soul,” has recorded at Capricorn Sound Studios, and bandmates make it a point to visit the Ocmulgee Mounds when they’re here. “It’s such a place of healing and creative energy,” Osborne says. “We try to do everything we can to soak up the magic.”
Both bands – progressive in their politickin’ and nostalgic in their kudzu-and-magnolia imagery – say Macon’s character as a miasmically Southern place that is overcoming segregation to forge new genres of music suits their particular sensibility just fine.
“There’s the Old South and the New South,” says BJ Barham, founder of American Aquarium. “There are a lot of people fighting to keep the South the way it was, but the progress is there. There’s a lot broke that we need to fix. We need to identify problems, acknowledge them, atone for them. Does it make me love the region any less? Absolutely not. There is also much to take pride in. You can be proud of a place and ashamed of it at the same time.”
Barham is a seventh-generation North Carolinian from the small town of Reidsville (as he puts it, “Listen to me talk – no one ever mistakes me for someone from Boston or Long Island”). On track to become a lawyer, he was a scholarship student majoring in history and political science at North Carolina State when music intervened, and he got a record deal. With his rock band that occasionally weeps pedal steel, he has emerged as one of the more outspoken voices in the indie scene, tackling subjects as controversial as abortion (“Babies Having Babies”) while extolling the Proustian pleasures of a tomato sandwich made with Duke’s mayonnaise (“Cherokee Purples”).
“Music has given me the means to travel the world and live anywhere I’d like, and I choose to live within 90 minutes of where I was born,” says Barham, who is based in Raleigh. “People can complain all they want about how backwards the South is, but the only way we’ll see any change is to take it upon ourselves. For me, that means raising my daughter so that she’ll never witness the closed-mindedness and blatant disrespect for certain people that I often saw at her age. Because if you really love something, then you want to see it grow, and that’s how I feel about the South.”
Don’t rely on easy assumptions, though, he cautions. “I love having conversations with someone in Boston or Chicago who assumes I’m inbred and full of hate,” Barham says. “I like to let them know that we’re not all homophobic, that some of us have read a book or two. I like to see their face when they figure that out.”
Osborne believes part of his mission as a musician is to make his community a better place. He hails from Puddin’ Swamp, South Carolina – there is officially no “g” at the end of “Puddin’ – and he attended The Citadel, so he naturally ponders his indelible provenance.
“My Southern identity is baked into my music,” he says. “My worldview is not always in line with the folks closest to me, so I’m at odds with certain things, but at the end of the day, it’s my South. I like to push the boundaries as only someone who is truly comfortable with his heritage can. I try to lyrically address the cultural restrictions and biases I’ve seen in my life and use my music to get my opinions into the mix. And, yes, I’ve ruffled some feathers.”
What’s the answer to the regional shortcomings, to the social divisions that persist despite everything? Handily enough, the benighted region has some built-in tools to heal itself. “Music and food,” Barham says. “Nobody else can touch us on music and food, and those are two of the greatest social unifiers there are.”
So, more music, more connection. “As an artist we have a responsibility to bring people of all backgrounds together,” Osborne says. “I don’t take that lightly. The country is so polarized right now, and the South represents one of those poles. What will address these problems – what will get us over this us-versus-them mentality – is to come together to celebrate and commiserate. To communicate on a deep level. It’s only then that we realize we have more in common than our differences might suggest.”
Bragg Jam – “where 2,000 strangers quickly become family,” in the words of Walter — is the ideal place for such reflections. If you don’t know the origin story, it started in 1999. Macon singer/songwriter Brax Bragg had just recorded a CD with his new band The Buckleys, and they were scheduled to tour. But before hitting the highway with his band, Brax took his younger brother Tate, an accomplished classical guitarist, on a cross-country road trip. While traveling through Texas on July 3, the brothers were tragically killed in a car accident.
Back in Macon, friends reeling at the loss organized an impromptu jam session at The Rookery. It since has grown into a rite of summer and a tuneful, nonprofit extravaganza. This March, a bench was dedicated to the Bragg family on Coleman Hill in honor of their contributions to the city’s music.
“I had just moved to Macon from Nashville and was worried that I would have a problem making friends,” Walter says. “But I walked into the first venue of my first Bragg Jam and made my best friends for life. We have married couples who met at Bragg Jam, and now another generation of ‘Bragg Jam babies’ who attend the shows. It’s a place where you can go and find your people. It’s magical.”
The bandleaders both agree. “Macon is a place that gets its hooks into you,” Barham says, “and Bragg Jam is a place of communion where we all can connect, we all can find middle ground there, no matter where we’re from.”