To Be or Not to BB

from The LocaL, January 2025

Bear O'Brian

Maverick Alt-Country Genius BB Palmer Embraces His Inner-Wu Tang For 2025

By Frank Etheridge

Growing up on the western side of Mobile Bay, BB Palmer says his dad had (at least) one piece of advice on repeat.

”My pops always told me: ‘Don’t half-ass anything you truly enjoy doing,’ the 37-year-old cosmic-country troubadour recalls.

The fact BB Palmer learned this vital life lesson, and learned it well, is a wonderful thing for fans of philosophical workingman’s poetry - delivered with twang and groove for psychedelic space wranglers; which, is to say, genre-bending, mind-melding music as indescribable as his.

Talking to us in December from Atlanta — where he’s busy recording his third studio EP at the Green House, a stellar studio for like-minded, blues-based Deep South artists and hospitable home to Palmer’s professed pro-blunt creative process — Palmer is fresh off a fall tour and soon headed to celebrate Christmas at his 89-year-old Nana’s house in a tiny-town in western Alabama, where he lives the few months of the year he’s not on the road.

“Shows were good, sold some merch, spread the good word,” Palmer says to sum up the “exhausting but fun” run. Playing solo with an acoustic guitar, as opposed to an amped-up five-piece band like in years past.

“They love folks from Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia,” Palmer explains of audiences he found in Michigan, Illinois and Nebraska. “They look at us as more authentic, the torch bearers for a tradition that dates back to Jimmy Rogers, Hank Williams, the Carter Family.”

Familiar to Chattahoochee Valley audiences from his many years based out of Opelika, where he moved after dropping out of Auburn University to pursue music fulltime, BB Palmer says, as a niche artist, “It’s been hard finding audiences. It’s tough to put people on to what I’m doing if they’re used to standard Zach Bryan country, as well as the people who can’t get past the twang and the accent to listen to the lyrics.

But the more I go out there to play my music, the more I find people who [say], ‘Oh man, this is cool. This is something for me in the spirit of country music.’ And that’s why I like country music — it’s a simple way to deliver deep, spiritual lyrics.”

His music’s progression, from two-stepping, goodtime tunes on his Lee’s County Finest debut in 2019 to the high-minded outlaw Buddhist ponderings of sacred geometry informing the 2022 follow-up Krishna Country Gold, is both pleasing and apparent. An even deeper existential dive is what inspired BB Palmer to create a concept he calls “Wu Tang meets Waylon, kung-fu country” for the summer 2025 drop, Alabama Samurai.

“Right now I’m big into lyricism, and what I’m trying to do with this album is bring that ferociousness found in hip-hop lyrics and bring it into country music,” he explains. “I’m deep in love with the sharp lyricism of the MCs in Wu-Tang. The sword is a symbol for the tongue and I took that mindset of chopping people’s heads off, letting heads roll, to make this record. I’m not rapping or nothing; it’s still me, I’m still singing.

I’m taking that BB Palmer foundation and dropping that samurai mindset in.” Pop-chart efforts to blend hip-hop and country “end up sounding pretty corny,” he admits, but melding the two seemingly far-apart styles isn’t too much of a stretch for a kid who grew up on classic ‘90s hip hop and as one of the few white faces in nearly all-Black school districts. “All traditional American music forms are rooted in the blues and beyond that to spirituals and hymns,” says Palmer. “Hip hop is an updated version of all that. And, you know, Hank Williams, who birthed modern country music, he learned music from a black bluesman.”

An all-star roster of musicians have come to the Green House to record Alabama Samurai, including Sturgill Simpson’s monster guitarist Laur Joamets and Jordan Gilliam from Young Jeezy’s band. Palmer is aware that his formula is unusual, even absurd – but it’s nothing more than him staying true to his muse.

“I make the music I want to make,” he says, “Which isn’t necessarily the popular, familiar route that’s going to blow you up as an artist. I like to think that if you stick to your moral code, it will pay off for you. It’s already paid me well in terms of my soul’s point of view, and I hope financial success will come — Lord, please let it come — from the fruits of my labor. I’m just doing what I do as a creator, a songwriter, an artist or whatever and I’ll just let everything else fall into place.”