Fred Hunter's Alabama

When I sat down to chat with Colleen Duffley of Andiamo Lodge, I knew we were in for a special conversation. Colleen, with her vibrant energy and captivating stories, is the kind of person who thrives on adventure. And now the town of Mentone is a new chapter in her fascinating story.

Colleen discovered Mentone in an unconventional way — on a bicycle. Back in the early ’90s, she was training for the Olympic trials and would ride from Birmingham to Mentone. “We’d get a cold drink at the market and then ride back to Birmingham. The landscape here was so similar to the terrain in Barcelona, where I was preparing for the Olympics,” she recalls. That’s how Mentone first landed on her radar. As life circled back, it felt only natural to return to this magical place.

Fast forward a few years, and Colleen and her husband, Steve — better known to some as “Crabby Steve” from his restaurant on the Florida coast — were on another bike ride when they stumbled upon what would become Andiamo Lodge. “We were on our bikes, riding through town, and saw this dilapidated old lodge with a ‘for sale’ sign. I was still working as a commercial photographer, but during the pandemic, everything slowed down, and we just thought, ‘Why not?’” she shares with a grin.

That spontaneous decision turned into a beautiful project — an experiential retreat where guests come not just to rest but to create, learn, and connect with their surroundings. “We wanted Andiamo Lodge to be more than a place to sleep. We want people to leave with memories and new skills, whether it’s cooking with a James Beard chef or attending a writing workshop,” Colleen explains. The word “Andiamo” means “let’s go” in Italian, and it perfectly captures the spirit of her lodge: let’s go create, let’s go explore, let’s go experience.

Speaking of experiences, Andiamo Lodge is gearing up for some exciting fall events. Heather Webber, the talented author, will return to Mentone in early October for a dinner inspired by her latest book, A Certain Kind of Starlight. As if that’s not enough, Colleen has also convinced her long-time friend India Hicks, goddaughter to King Charles, to make a stop at Mentone during her book tour for Lady Pamela, a deeply personal account of her mother’s life as Queen Elizabeth’s lady-in-waiting. “India’s schedule is tight, and she’s only making a few stops, so we feel incredibly lucky to host her,” Colleen says with excitement.

Those attending these events can expect more than just a meet-and-greet. “It’s intimate,” Colleen emphasizes. “Our dinners are for 12 people, max. You get to sit down with these incredible individuals and ask them anything — how they got where they are, what inspires them. It’s like the best dinner party you’ve ever attended.”

With Andiamo Lodge, Colleen is curating a blend of creativity, culinary mastery, and personal connection, all tucked away in the mountains of Mentone. Her ability to bring in world-class talent while keeping the experience personal and deeply connected to Alabama is nothing short of remarkable. As we wrapped up, Colleen invited everyone to come see for themselves. “You can go to a hotel anywhere, but here, you’ll leave with stories, memories, and new friends.”

Andiamo — let’s go!

They say the mark of a great song is when you can remember exactly where you were and what you were doing the first time you heard it. That was my experience with the music of a group I’d end up listening to my entire life. Three on a String is made up of the nicest, funniest, most humble guys you’ll meet.

The 2023 Alabama Music Hall of Fame inductees have earned their way into rarified music circles. I visited with group member Bobby Horton at his home recently, where we talked about the bluegrass group and about his work in film.

“The group goes back to Chandler Mountain and Horse Pens 40,” Bobby says. “Jerry Ryan was a freshman basketball coach at Samford University. I was a junior at Samford, and Jerry had been a basketball coach where I went to high school. So, I’d known him. The PR director for Samford owned Horse Pens and approached Jerry about getting a banjo player,” Bobby remembers. “He said, ‘You reckon you two could come up and play for my folk festival?’ Jerry called me, and I said ‘sure, I’m free this weekend.’ We learned seven songs and went up there and played them twice. That was the very first gig for what was to become Three on a String. And we split the 15 bucks,” Bobby chuckles.

“A guy named George Pruitt owned Alabama Music, where I was working as a college student. He heard us that day and said, ‘You get a bass player and a guy who can sing high, and I think you might have something.’ We found John Vess at Samford, and then we started playing. That was 1971,” Bobby says.

The group was hired to play Vestavia Country Club near Bobby’s hometown of Birmingham on Friday nights, then worked their way into the Lowenbrau Haus, a college bar in Homewood. That’s where I heard them the first time. A nice crowd, packed shoulder to shoulder and enjoying the tunes.

“It was just a wonderful place,” Bobby says. “It’s where we learned how to get up there and stay a step ahead of the crowd. It taught us about timing and that kind of thing.”

As their popularity grew, Three on a String outgrew the Lowenbrau. And Bobby faced the dilemma of which path to take in life: stick with his secure job at an insurance company or keep traveling with the group and taking advantage of the opportunities coming their way. Doing both was starting to impact his family life.

“I realized I was never home and my first son had been born. I wanted him to know he had a daddy,” he recalls. “I went to see my grandpa and told him I needed help with a decision.

Bobby’s started by telling his grandfather about the security he had with the insurance company. “What security?” his grandfather asked. “You don’t have security there. The only security there is, is how much you know how to do, how hard you’re willing to work, and how well you know the Lord. Now start over — which one do you like best?”

“He asked if I could support my family in music and I told him I thought I could,” Bobby recalls. “We had a business plan, we had a market, and all the guys were in it for the right reasons.

“And my grandpa said, ‘You’ve made your decision.’ I just had to hear him say that.”

Bobby gave notice at his job and never looked back. His gratitude for the blessings of his music has never waned. Three on a String, in various iterations, has continued to entertain audiences for five decades.

“We’re of course like family. When somebody asks how we’ve stayed together so long, I tell them we get separate rooms for starters,” Bobby laughs. “But seriously, I work with some of the greatest people. They’ve got a work ethic, and we all want to go the same direction.”

Bobby and I segued into his solo career, a reflection of his ambition and a fascinating tie to his love of history.

“I didn’t want to be dependent on somebody else for everything. You know, all the eggs in my basket,” he says. “I was able to combine the love of history that I’ve had my whole life with music. Every adult male in my life is a World War II guy, and they all had a story, and they’re my heroes. I realized that history is made by common folks playing the card that’s dealt them, and they’re usually in a whirlwind. It’s not of their making, but they made the best of it. I got into history when I was a kid, and then the Civil War centennial hit when I was 9, and I got sucked into that. I realized from World War II veterans that these were just guys doing what they had to do. So, I had that love. And then, of course, I love music. I've been playing my music my whole life, and I had some plans that went bust, but all this wonderful stuff fell in my lap. I know from whence all blessings flow, you know.”

Bobby’s story reminds me of the saying, “Life is what happens while you’re making plans.” Although his path was somewhat intentional.

“I started recording Civil War-era music,” Bobby says. “Mr. Edison’s recording machine changed everything musically in t...

I was honored to have Alabama Speaker of the House Nathaniel Ledbetter on the podcast recently. He has a big title and tremendous responsibility across the entire state, but just a few minutes into our conversation, one thing became clear — this is a man who remembers where he came from and who has a deep love and respect for people from all walks of life.

In this episode, you'll hear him talk about his humble upbringing on Sand Mountain in Northeast Alabama. How a love of sports led to his being elected to the Rainsville City Council at the age of 23. How his career path pivoted from education to engineering with a job opportunity at Sand Mountain Electric Cooperative. And how he was elected to the state House of Representatives only to become the first freshman chosen by his peers as Majority Leader.

While Ledbetter still represents House District 24, which encompasses much of DeKalb County, his role as Speaker of the House carries him all over Alabama. Our conversation will open your eyes to the many great things happening in our state. Number one in America in commercial airline construction? Number one in America in exporting automobiles? In the top five in shipbuilding? Take a listen, share it with your friends, and you'll come away as proud as I did of this wonderful place we call home.

Writer Charles McNair Lives High in the Andes, but His Roots are in South Alabama

My conversation with Charles McNair felt a little like a family reunion as we connected many dots in our common roots. It was fascinating to learn how a boy from South Alabama wrote his way to being a Pulitzer-prize nominee, continues to write, and now resides a bit south of the Wiregrass in Bogota, Colombia.

Of course he found a very imaginative way to explain that his home state is always with him. Ask him if he’s from Alabama, and the proof is on his knee.

“At this very moment, if I weren’t modest, I’d pull up my left pant leg and show you my knee,” McNair said. “I might be the only person in the world with a banjo on my knee — because I come from Alabama. The day I turned 40, I walked down to the tattoo parlor near my home and got a little banjo tattoo.”

We had a great time talking about all the things we have in common, but when you’re interviewing a talented storyteller with an interesting past, it’s best to let them do the talking.

“Frasier-Ellis Hospital was a two-story house they called a hospital, and my mama delivered me in a room being observed by a team of medical students,” McNair said. “I’m told that when I was presented to the world, they all stood up and applauded. That may have been the defining moment that shaped my personality, I don’t know.”

That was 1954 in Dothan, and McNair would spend the next several years absorbing everything the natural world had to offer in the Wiregrass region of Alabama. “I was a large red woodland animal for my first, I’d say 16, 17 years,” he said. “I lived in those woods. We built forts. We had wars. We waded the creeks and watched out for snakes, ran from yellow jackets, and hid by the railroad track when the hobos came down the line. These were mythically terrifying figures. They were like Stephen King characters to us.

“And every night when I went to sleep all those years, I heard a train passing by on those tracks behind the house — that mournful whistle, the midnight train whining low,” he continued. “All that infused me with memories and things to write about. All my novels have been nature focused. The presence of the woods and nature played a tremendous role in all the books I've written.”

McNair has published three acclaimed novels: “Land O’ Goshen” (St. Martin’s Press, 1994), “Pickett’s Charge” (Livingston Press, 2013), and “The Epicureans” (Tune & Fairweather, 2024). He is also the author of “Play It Again, Sam: The Notable Life of Sam Massell, Atlanta’s First Minority Mayor” (Mercer University Press, 2017).

Growing up during the struggles and tensions of the Civil Rights era left a particular wound that McNair carried until a couple of years ago at a reunion of the Dothan High School class of 1972, the first integrated class at the school to graduate together.

“A dear friend, a Black man named Shaq Thompson, and I resolved to solve a problem that had existed since we’d graduated,” McNair explained. “In the 10th grade, they closed Carver, the Black school, and all of those students came over to Dothan. There had been a lingering resentment — the hurt feelings of having your culture and your history sort of ignored. Shaq and I brought back together the Black classmates and the white classmates for a 50th reunion. And I felt a healing.

“I also made peace with Dothan,” McNair added. “When I left at age 18, I could not wait to shake the dust off. It was too conservative. It was too constraining. And I went off to college and came back many years later and started to make my peace with Dothan and who I’d been and how it had been. My mother went into a decline around 2016, and I flew from Colombia every six weeks to stay a week with her. During that two-year period, I really started making peace with 50 years of anxiety and of disappointment in Dothan. I now am looking at a piece of property to buy there. I have come back. I’ve made new friends. The city’s different ... I’m different.”

I’ve heard it said that no matter how far you go, you have to write about where you came from. McNair attests to that. The growing-up years are inescapable.

“I couldn’t agree more. It’s always about Alabama and family and those friends and that life for me,” he said. “That’s the core. That’s where everything else comes from.

McNair attended the University of Alabama for seven years and “when I left, I was still a sophomore,” he said. “I was in and out because of work and when I was in, I only took writing classes. I didn’t get credit for the writing classes that I repeated, but I still took them because that’s all I wanted to be, ever.”

The arc of McNair’s career is rich with experiences. He’s taught English to Saudi Arabian students. He’s worked in the newspaper business. He’s worked in corporate America, writing for BellSouth Corp. But he continued his personal w...

Singer/songwriter Grace Pettis talks about her new album "Down To The Letter" with Fred Hunter.
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Grace's music is described as a little bit of folk, a little bit of country/Americana, and a whole lot of soul.

Grace is the winner of many of the nation’s most prestigious songwriting contests, grants, and residencies, including NPR’s Mountain Stage NewSong Contest, the Buddy Holly Educational Foundation, and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico. Grace’s songs have been recorded by other esteemed artists, including Sara Hickman and Ruthie Foster, with 3 co-writes on Foster's latest, Grammy-nominated album, Healing Time (2024).

Grace was an official showcasing artist at SXSW and Folk Alliance International this year (2024). She has independently released three acclaimed records and signed with MPress Records in 2020. Her debut album on MPress, Working Woman (2021), was produced by lauded singer-songwriter Mary Bragg, mixed by 2x Grammy® award winner Shani Gandhi (Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical), and featured an all-female/non-binary band and creative credits. Guest contributions came from Indigo Girls, Ruthie Foster, Dar Williams, and other luminaries.

Grace Pettis' much-anticipated sophomore MPress Records release, Down To The Letter, captures the Nashville-based (formerly Austin-based) singer-songwriter at the peak of her songwriting powers. Chronicling the end of a marriage and the reclamation of self after betrayal, codependency, and loss with heartbreaking detail, the lyrics deftly toe the line between personal pain and universal catharsis.

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Produced by Mary Bragg (Natalie Price), mixed by Jon Estes (Robyn Hitchcock, Dolly Parton), and mastered by John McLaggan (Parachute Mastering), the album showcases Pettis' rich voice, perhaps one of the most dynamic and agile of her generation.