The Emmy Award-winning TrueSouth Presented by YellaWood is slated for its ninth season to debut on Tuesday, Sept. 15, at 8 p.m. ET on SEC Network.
The TrueSouth crew will travel to four states throughout the season – making pit stops in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia and Louisiana – telling stories inspired by the beliefs and hard work of crawfish cooks and duck hunters, lumpia cooks and t-shirt makers.
Season 9’s episodes will air biweekly on SEC Network, with all new episodes on demand on SEC Network+ and the ESPN App immediately upon airing.
Local music drives each TrueSouth episode. This season, Chère Élise out of Lafayette, Louisiana, plays modern Cajun at a roadside bar. In “The Shoals of Alabama,” session musicians lay down tracks at FAME Recording Studios, where Aretha Franklin recorded “Do Right Woman” and Sun Drop Sound, home base for musician John Paul White and others. In Atlanta, the Buford Highway Orchestra Project is featured, which teaches public school students to play violins and cellos and dream big.
Episode 1 – The Shoals, Ala. – Tuesday, Sept. 15 – 8 p.m.
Season 9 kicks off in the Shoals, a cluster of towns in north Alabama, defined by their relationship to the Tennessee River: Florence, Tuscumbia, Sheffield and Muscle Shoals. Native people said that river sang. That’s one of the stories locals tell about how the Shoals became the music recording capital of the US. Power generated by Wilson Dam, which now spans that river, drove the rise of tee-shirt manufacturing in the Shoals. Trowbridge’s Ice Cream and Sandwich Shop, founded in 1918, the same year construction on that dam began, is Florence’s flagship. Over in Sheffield, at George’s Steak Pit, Elaine Goodlowe has stood tall by that hickory-fueled pit for more than 40 years. In the Shoals, those story threads knit people and places together.
Episode 2 – Arkansas Flyway– Tuesday, Sept. 29 – 8 p.m.
Prairie County, Arkansas, home to the small towns of Hazen and DeValls Bluff, is one of our nation’s duck hunting capitals. Greenbriar Lodge, a storied duck camp there, sets a standard for habitat conversation and hospitality. Hospitality is also the work of Stanley Young and his wife Becky, the first couple of Hazen. Along with their children, they run Murry’s Restaurant, famous for fried catfish and bread pudding with whiskey sauce. Down the road, Big K Catfish Barn, set in a big metal shed on a working farm, welcomes hundreds of customers each Saturday night during their December to March season. In DeValls Bluff, the legacy of sliced pork sandwiches and big welcomes endures at Craig’s Bar-B-Q, founded in 1947 by brothers Lawrence Craig and Leslie Craig.
Episode 3 – Buford Highway, Atlanta – Tuesday, Oct. 13 – 8 p.m.
Havana Sandwich Shop, the Cuban restaurant opened by Benedit family in 1976, was arguably the first international restaurant on Buford Highway, the now seven-lane stretch of suburban road that runs north out of Atlanta. Other immigrants from across the world followed. By the later years of the 20th century, Buford Highway became the preferred on ramp for immigrants to the South who want to start and grow businesses. Today restaurants like Kamayan, a Filipino spot in Asian Plaza owned by Mia “Amormia” Orino and Carolo Gan, and Gula, a family-owned Indonesia sweet café across the street in Pinetree Plaza, showcase the results of their belief in what American has long promised.
Episode 4 – Rayne, La. – Tuesday, Nov. 3 – 8 p.m.
The drive to Hawk’s Crawfish follows gravel roads, past flooded rice fields that double as crawfish ponds. Each winter and spring, farmers pilot flat-bottomed boats across those ponds, harvesting crawfish, bound for places like Hawk’s, a tin-roofed roadhouse founded in 1983 by the Arcenaux family. In sight of I-10, Jett’s Crawfish Drive-Thru, doing business in a small metal building alongside a gas station, tells a more modern story of how crawfish, once caught and boiled by locals and served at family gatherings, became an everyday indulgence, purchased by the bag or bucket while idling in your car. A conversation with Kurt Venable of Venable Fabrication, one of the region’s best crawfish boat builders, brings into focus how both tradition and innovation course through southwestern Louisiana
Episode 5 – Behind-the-scenes – Tuesday, Nov. 17 – 8 p.m.
The behind-the-scenes episode, a viewer favorite, returns. This time Wright Thompson and John T. Edge focus on the music, books, clothing, art and people that inspire TrueSouth. Billy Reid, whose clothing Edge often wears on screen, makes a cameo, along with Will Trapp, a principal in Single Lock Records, the Alabama label that has produced music for the show since season one. Joe York, who previously worked with Edge on Southern Foodways Alliance films, talks about how re-telling stories gives depth to narratives. Listen close and you’ll hear a preview of season ten, which our crew is already scouting.
About TrueSouth
TrueSouth is an Emmy Award-winning limited series on Southern food and culture, airing biweekly on SEC Network. Four-time James Beard Award winner John T. Edge writes and hosts the show, which is executive produced by four-time New York Times best-selling author, ESPN senior writer Wright Thompson, and produced by Bluefoot Entertainment.
The series, now in its ninth season, revolves around two food stories told from one place, which TrueSouth sets in conversation to make larger points about Southern beliefs and identities. This season’s featured places are the Shoals, Alabama, Arkansas Flyway, Buford Highway in Atlanta, Rayne, Louisiana, and a special behind-the-scenes finale to finish out Season 9. Seasons 1-8 of TrueSouth are available in their entirety on the ESPN App.
Music plays an integral role in TrueSouth’s storytelling via on-screen performances and on-screen credits. The TrueSouth playlist on Spotify shares the full soundtrack and score of every season of TrueSouth.
SECSports.com/truesouth is a resource for all things TrueSouth – including photos, maps, music and information for each stop.
About SEC Network
The Southeastern Conference and ESPN launched SEC Network on August 14, 2014. The network televises hundreds of games across the SEC’s 21 sports annually. Programming includes in-depth analysis and storytelling in studio shows such as SEC Nation, Marty & McGee, Read & React and Rally Cap, daily news and information with The Paul Finebaum Show and SEC Now, original content such as the Emmy Award-winning TrueSouth, SEC Storied and SEC Inside, and more. Hundreds of additional live events are available for streaming exclusively on SEC Network’s digital companion, SEC Network+, via the ESPN App and SECNetwork.com. Follow SEC Network on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and Twitter/X.