March 23, 2025

Dear Readers, 

I write these letters long before our issues land in your mailbox. In the magazine-making business, we work ahead. So today, like some kind of amateur astrologer, I’m writing to you in the future. Soon, we’ll send this beauty to the printer and in a few weeks it will arrive in our warehouse, we’ll pop some Champagne, and joyfully joyfully begin mailing it to all of you. I have no way of knowing what will be happening in the world when you receive it. But I’m certain there will still be massive upheaval. We’ll still be making daily calls to our representatives. And we’ll still be leaning on one another for support. We knew it would be bad, but what’s happening to our country (and the world) is now a five-alarm fire. The Bitter Southerner is in this fight for the long haul. We’re grateful for your support.

OK, you know what else we’re grateful for? MUSIC.

My partners and I are music nerds. The soundtrack of our lives is a regular topic of conversation. We aren’t reciting Jack Black’s monologues from “High Fidelity” verbatim … but almost. Our cover star, renowned actor Michael Shannon, loves music like we love music and is currently the lead singer in a cover band touring and performing R.E.M.’s Fables of the Reconstruction. The night we were wrapping this issue, Shannon and his bandmate Jason Narducy — along with us and 500 other fans — were stunned when Michael Stipe, Bill Berry, Mike Mills, and Peter Buck joined them onstage at The 40 Watt Club in Athens, Georgia. For years, the members of R.E.M. have claimed we’d never see them on stage all together again. But on February 27, 2025, there they were performing “Pretty Persuasion” from Reckoning, and we all literally floated to the ceiling with joy. It made global news the next day. 

To take The-Bitter-Southerner-lives-and-breathes-music thing even further, we photographed Michael Shannon at the once infamous and now gloriously renovated Hotel Chelsea in New York City. The rock ’n’ roll ghosts there were with us. Famed photographer Landon Nordeman shot Michael Shannon on Dylan’s balcony and at Warhol’s table in El Quijote. The images? They’re electric. And Nic Brown, our writer who’s also a drummer, wrote his music-loving heart out. This summer, Shannon and Narducy take their tour across America and Europe. We believe our cover story will make you smile. Enjoy.

There’s so much good stuff in this issue. Imani Perry’s touching “Letter From Home,” stories on mothering through climate collapse in Western North Carolina, fried fish and family affairs on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, legendary Chef Frank Brigtsen of New Orleans, a burial ground’s tragic secrets in Chattanooga, a trek from Eufaula, Alabama, to Eufaula, Oklahoma, and again National Book Award winner Perry shares a chapter from her latest release, Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People.  

Loud and quiet. Dark and light. Horror and joy. Because all of it can exist at the same time, good storytelling explores these dichotomies. As we head into these sure to be crazy-making next four years, in the magazine and in real life, we’re going to do our best to get that mix right. Glad we’re in this together.

All the love,
Kyle

Kyle Tibbs Jones
Co-Founder,
Editorial & Communications Director

Painting by Heather Sundquist Hall

“Take Good Care of Each Other”, Gouache on paper, 9 by 9 inches, 2020