Sept. 29 Kruise for St. Jude ends with Flora-Bama party

Sept. 29 Kruise for St. Jude ends with Flora-Bama party
Ashley McBride & David Lee Murphy perform following ride from Spanish Fort

The Flora-Bama will host the post party for the 17th Annual 95KSJ Kruise for St. Jude, which starts at 11 a.m. on Sept. 29 at the Eastern Shore Center in Spanish Fort. Proceeds benefit St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in its efforts to advance treatments for and prevention of catastrophic children’s diseases. Kickstands go up at 1 p.m. for the ride to the coast. The ride is $30 and $15 for each additional passenger with a free t-shirt to the first 300 riders. Register on 95ksj.com.
Post Kruise festivities include concert featuring Ashley McBryde and David Lee Murphy will begin around 3 p.m. on the Flora-Bama’s Tent Stage. The concert is free to riders and open to the public. The Flora-Bama is located at the Alabama-Florida State Line at the Gulf of Mexico. For more Kruise info, visit 95ksj.iheart.com.
David Lee Murphy
Million-selling singer-songwriter David Lee Murphy had no plans to make a new record until a country superstar made them for him. “I’ve been friends and written songs with Kenny (Chesney) for years,” Murphy said. “I sent him some songs for one of his albums a couple of years ago, and he called me up. He goes, ‘Man, you need to be making a record. I could produce it with Buddy Cannon, and I think people would love it.’ It’s hard to say no to Kenny Chesney when he comes up with an idea like that.”
Murphy, whose songs “Dust on the Bottle and “Party Crowd” continue to be staples at country radio, could have easily filled the album with hits he’s written for Chesney (“’Til It’s Gone,” “Living in Fast Forward,” “Live a Little”), Jason Aldean (“Big Green Tractor,” “The Only Way I Know How”), Thompson Square (GRAMMY-nominated “Are You Gonna Kiss Me Or Not”), Jake Owen (“Anywhere With You”), or Blake Shelton (“The More I Drink”). But, Chesney had other ideas.
“Kenny was really influential in the songs that we picked,” said Murphy. “We wanted to make the kind of album that you would listen to if you were camping or out on a lake, fishing. Or sitting anywhere, just having a good time.”
Titled No Zip Code, the album yielded a hit single and duet with Chesney, “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright.”
Murphy developed his musical style as a teenager in Southern Illinois. He studied the sounds of such “outlaw” country musicians as Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. He was also deeply influenced by southern rock bands such as Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Allman Brothers and Z.Z. Top. He arrived in Nashville determined to fuse those influences into his own recording style. But when every label in town turned him down, he turned to writing songs for others and playing the honky-tonks of Middle Tennessee with his band.
“I was on the ‘ten-year songwriting program,’” he comments wryly. “Those were the starving artist years. When I first came to Nashville, I didn’t realize that they didn’t have 20-year-old country singers. You had to be 40. You had to have some scars and some wrinkles and a little bit of age. You had to have some smoke and diesel dust on you.
“So I concentrated on my songwriting. I wanted to get better as a writer, so I could record my own songs. In the meantime, I had a little band called The Blue Tick Hounds. We played all the little clubs and dives, just wherever we could get a gig. We were an edgy little four-piece band who played loud and hard. We didn’t fit right in the groove at that time, to where we were commercial enough to get a record deal.’’
Gradually, a diverse range of artists from Reba McEntire to Dobie Gray began recording his tunes. GRAMMY-winning producer and MCA Nashville President Tony Brown heard Murphy’s recording of a song called “Just Once” and put it on the soundtrack of the 1994 rodeo movie 8 Seconds.
Ashley McBryde
In 2016, McBryde dropped an eight-song EP, Jalopies & Expensive Guitars, that helped build a buzz about her music, and country star Eric Church began singing her praises, describing her as a “whiskey-drinkin’ badass” and joining her on-stage to duet on her song “Bible and a .44.” After Church gave McBryde his endorsement, more and more people began to take notice, and she finally broke through with the single “A Little Dive Bar in Dahlonega,” which found an appreciative audience on streaming services and led to her making her first appearance on the Grand Ol’ Opry. A year later, she returned with her debut full-length album, Girl Going Nowhere.