Lucinda Williams’ “World’s Gone Wrong” came out yesterday and, boy, is the sentiment more true than ever now. It’s an amazing album and she’s never lost a step all these years.

This is part of a project I've had in the back of my mind for a while, but am finally getting around to doing. It was fun looking up the history of pizza and which restaurants across Alabama were the first to serve it.

Bruce Hornsby will be coming to Birmingham this spring to promote his forthcoming album, "Indigo Park." This marks the second album that the eclectic pianist has used Edward Hopper's work for cover art.

At 95, attorney Fred Gray said that without Claudette Colvin, he and others may not have had the courage to get the wheels in motion to start the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 if it hadn't been for her.

“Faring thee well now Let your life proceed by its own designs Nothing to tell now Let the words be yours, I'm done with mine” RIP, Bob Weir.

Meant to get to this sooner, but here's some of my favorite stories I did in 2025. Starting with my favorite: a piece on The New Yorker where I spoke with people like Calvin Trillin, Renata Adler, Jia Tolentino and others on their stories about Alabama. www.cbs42.com/digital-excl...

Grandaddy would've been 95 today. I'm sure he'd have a lot to say about everything going on in the world today. My column on Holt McDowell, Jr. that ran on the 60th anniversary of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.

The real "Marty Supreme" is based on Marty Reisman, a world-renowned table tennis champion who, oddly enough, has a connection to Alabama.

Kudos to @warondumb.bsky.social for including the Paul Finebaum target on display at Sam's Super Sandwiches in Homewood. Glad DC hasn't washed the Bama off Kyle yet.

Christina Chambers and I came up in the news business roughly at the same time. First met her in 2012 when I was at the Opelika-Auburn News and she was at WLTZ in Columbus. So sad to lose one of our own like this.

Everything you want to know and, frankly, probably not know about Drive-By Truckers, Jason Isbell and "Decoration Day."

Doug Jones is running for governor of Alabama and I got to use "basso buffo" in a story.

More than anything, I was a little too satisfied with the Carl Carmer reference I wedged into the lede. Besides that, it was great for Michelin to recognize so many Alabama restaurants. www.cbs42.com/news/d...

With "WTF with Marc Maron" coming to an end, I looked at some guests with distinct Alabama connections who were part of the nearly 1,700 episodes the seminal podcast aired over the last 16 years. www.cbs42.com/news/t...

I was fortunate enough to spend a little time talking with Mark Kerr, whose life and struggles in the UFC are part of the new movie, "The Smashing Machine," starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. www.cbs42.com/news/local/m...

My conversation with John T. Edge on his new memoir, “House of Smoke,” as well as all things Southern and food.

Matt Labash, celebrated by many as one of the best magazine writers in America and author of "Slack Tide" on Substack, spoke to me about going down to New Orleans to cover the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I've been a fan of his work a long time and felt honored to hear his perspective.

In 2018, the late Ozzy Osbourne went to Alabama and, well, did what he does best: was his charming, mumbling self.

New haircut, who dis?

My piece on Brother Jude Johnston, a monk at St. Bernard Abbey in Cullman, Alabama whose artwork was itself a kind of spiritual meditation. Johnston, who died last week at the age of 92, served St. Bernard for over 70 years.

Really sad to hear about Rubin E. Grant’s death. He was a longtime sports writer for the Birmingham Post-Herald who never gave up the ghost, contributing to Over the Mountain Journal and other outlets. Sad to see that generation of journalists go.

This weekend, an estate sale will be held at the longtime home of one of Birmingham's most esteemed family dynasties. Everything inside this sprawling six-room house will be up for grabs.

I hope that I make it home by Wednesday And this Magic City let's me go

A new $499 smartphone from the Trump Organization could possibly be made in Alabama, but experts say that with most phones being manufactured in China, and the billions of dollars it would take to build that industry in the US, it would be a long way off.

NYT's Rick Rojas on Buc-ee's, which is quickly becoming its own religious movement across the South, second only to the Southern Baptist Convention. It reminds me of Alan Blinder's portrait of Waffle House back in 2018.

Happy Father’s Day to my dad, Chuck. Here he is in front of his favorite store in Savannah, Georgia.

CBS Sunday Morning did a piece on an age-old arcane tradition called “worm grunting,” where people use the vibrations of rubbing a stake to draw worms out of the ground. In Geneva, Alabama, it’s called “worm fiddling” and there’s a whole competition around it at the county fair.

A grand jury is asking that e-cigarettes not be sold to inmates at the Walker County Jail anymore. Despite generating an estimated $20,000 per month for the Walker County Sheriff's Office, they've caused a few problems over the years.

Michael Anderson, whose lifelong attention to both detail and aesthetic lent themselves well to careers as a florist, a decorator and, most notably, a photographer who became a common sight along the streets of Birmingham over the years, died last week. He was 74.

Alireza Doroudi, a student from Iran who was studying mechanical engineering at the University of Alabama before being detained by ICE on March 25, left the United States Sunday, according to his attorney.

“He drove all over Texas, goading, questioning, preaching, writing ‘red hot’ stories and smash-mouth editorials, trying to sell Texas Observer subscriptions ... and hoping to awaken the masses to how shoddily they were being served by most of their alleged representatives.”

Bob Carlton is retiring today. I love his work, from a profile on Terry Saban to a series on a man dying from AIDS. However, his piece on Bright Star’s snapper throats belongs up there with Calvin Trillin’s history of the Buffalo chicken wing. Stellar.

Jason Hamric, a multi-hyphenate creative who ran Substrate Radio for over a decade and was a champion of the Birmingham art scene, has died. He was 53.

It’s amazing that in my lifetime, Birmingham had not one but two alt-weeklies: Birmingham Weekly and Black & White. I miss them both and would pitch in the revive them both in a heartbeat.

In a special appearance on Fox News where host Will Cain initially mispronounced his name, Sen. Tommy Tuberville announced he was running for governor of Alabama.

My profile of Jerry Williams Jr., aka Swamp Dogg, an outsider artist whose music has been described as “a post-apocalyptic take on the Muscle Shoals sound.” His new documentary, “Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted,” is playing this weekend at Sidewalk.

It didn't matter if he won, if he lived, or if he'd run. They changed the way his job was done. Labor costs were high. That new machine was cheap as hell and only John would work as well. So they left him laying where he fell, the day John Henry died. -Drive-By Truckers

To celebrate Sun Ra Day, I compiled a list of 10 of my favorite performances by the singular jazz artist, who would've turned 111 today. Excited for the Sun Ra Festival kick off in Birmingham this weekend.

To me, Bob Carlton is the best feature writer in Alabama whose masterful pieces on food and culture have been a major influence on me and my own work. On May 30, he will retire from AL(dot)com after 45 years in Birmingham journalism.

Scott Adams, who parlayed his success as the creator of the long-running comic strip "Dilbert" into a second chapter as a controversial political commentator, has announced he has prostate cancer and would likely be "checking out" sometime this summer.

Biting column by @brianlyman.bsky.social on the University of Alabama, Alireza Doroudi and future international students who come to the Capstone.

As the Trump administration aims to gut federal funding for NPR and PBS, people from Alabama involved in public media, from WBHM to APTV, met in Washington, D.C. to convince lawmakers about the crucial component they serve in the community.

Morning started with a cold call by the courtroom sketch artist who covered the Menendez Brothers case. How's yours going?

Studio by the Tracks, a nonprofit art group that has celebrated the autism community in Alabama since 1989, is asking the community for help after losing over $50,000 in grants due to the Trump administration's cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts.

pathetic that writers now toil under the precarious sword of their/our electronic devices malfunctioning, unlike writers of previous generations who could rely upon the relative crudity of typewriters, for instance, to secure their work in three dimensions--"typed copy."

Mark Warren was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for a piece in Esquire about Smiths Station Mayor "Bubba" Copeland, who killed himself after he was outed by a conservative news outlet for his secret online life.

With the new trailer out for the upcoming “The Smashing Machine” starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, I did a piece on Mark Kerr and how his journey to the top of the UFC began in Birmingham, Alabama in 1997.

Brooklyn 7:47 A.M.

Hard to believe it’s been 14 years since the tornado tore through Tuscaloosa.