One local band has been getting attention in the past year. The Red Clay Strays have been recognized by Billboard Magazine, started a national tour and now have been the featured act on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. The coastal Alabama group has been on a rising trajectory since the days at the Flora-Bama, Halstead in Fairhope and other local outlets.

Brandon Coleman (lead vocals/guitar), Drew Nix (vocals/electric guitar/harmonica), Zach Rishel (electric guitar), Andrew Bishop (bass), and John Hall (drums), have become so popular that the iconic Rolling Stone Magazine published a profile article about the band stating:

"The Mobile, Alabama, band has built a "must-see" reputation on the viral hit "Wondering Why" and a foreboding sense of cool"

In Garrett Woodward's article he details how the Red Clay Strays are "Bringing Fire and Brimstone to Country Music."

IN THE DEPTHS of the River Arts District in Asheville, North Carolina, a large tour bus is parked outside the tiny Grey Eagle where the Red Clay Strays are set to play a sold-out show that evening. The band’s coach is so tall that it all but obscures the venue behind it from street view — a visual metaphor for the Mobile, Alabama, group’s rapidly upward trajectory.

Guitarist Drew Nix is nonplussed. “All I see are small goals we’re trying to achieve from here to wherever we’re trying to get to,” he tells Rolling Stone. “It’s never, ‘make it big.’” Despite Nix’s protestation, that’s exactly where the band finds itself.

Bursting out of the red dirt clay of their home state that gives the Red Clay Strays their name, the band is the musical manifestation of the push and pull between salvation and redemption. Their sound is Delta blues, gritty honky-tonk, and Sun Records rockabilly, shot through with a palpable darkness — call the result “gothic country.” Lead singer Brandon Coleman’s fire and brimstone vocals tie it all together, and hint at the undercurrent of faith that runs through the band.

“God has come through in many different ways. I had faith that he would, but I didn’t know if he would,” Coleman says through piercing eyes. “Boom, this happened. Boom, that happened. It didn’t happen overnight, obviously. We’ve been doing it for years.”

The Red Clay Strays emerged from the ashes of a cover band in Mobile in 2016. That initial group featured Coleman with Andrew Bishop on bass. Nix did the booking. In the fallout, the trio regrouped, bringing in drummer John Hall and guitarist Zach Rishel.

“We’d start out playing anywhere that would take us, play people’s parties, playing covers and sprinkling originals in — more and more people kept listening and kept coming back to shows,” says Coleman. Now they are featured on their FIRST national television appearance.