Mostly Harmless

Brad Evans

Stories Was everything and Everything was Stories -Harry Crews Brad Evans Interviews Folks from All Walks of Life. bradevans11.substack.com

Episodes

  1. Jun 8

    A Conversation with Matthew Morgan

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit bradevans11.substack.com Matthew Morgan has been a lot of things to a lot of people, and none of those things have ever been easy to explain to somebody who wasn’t already standing close enough to see. You could call him a skater. Same goes for fixie rider, vintage dealer, urban explorer, whatever word you want to reach for when you’re trying to pin a man down like a butterfly …

    A Conversation with Matthew Morgan

  2. Jun 1

    A Conversation with Jon Jackson

    Some people arrive in your life as a name first. For years, Jon Jackson existed in my world purely as a recommendation — handed to me like a gift whenever I needed something no ordinary person could provide. When my butterfly-chasing brain convinced me, briefly and gloriously, that I might take up falconry, someone said call Jon Jackson. Need an heirloom pig? Jon’s your guy. Old growth okra seeds from Africa? Same answer. I started to wonder if he might genuinely be the most interesting man in the world. Then I learned the rest of it. Jon Jackson is a decorated combat veteran — a U.S. Army Airborne Ranger who served six tours overseas. When he came home as a hundred percent disabled vet, he said nothing spoke to him — except growing food. So he built something. Comfort Farms sits just outside Milledgeville, Georgia — a therapeutic and training agricultural facility named in honor of his fallen Ranger brother, Captain Kyle Comfort, killed in action in 2010. A lover of culture, history, ancestry, and good food, Jon will tell you, “I love to understand how all of our cultures collide through food.” The man saved himself by putting his hands in the dirt, and then turned around and started saving everyone else. Last week, a bottle of whiskey between us, surrounded by a few good friends, I finally got to sit with the man behind the myth. His soul was exactly what I’d hoped for — bright, wide open, and generous in the way that only truly rooted people can be. I left that night feeling genuinely honored. You’re going to understand why. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bradevans11.substack.com/subscribe

    A Conversation with Jon Jackson

  3. May 25

    The Teddy Bear Tapes: Episode 1 Preview

    These are the first 7 minutes of Episode 1 of The Teddy Bear Tapes. For the first time, you’re hearing Ed Flowers in his own words — pulled from cassette tapes he recorded himself and handed over to me near the end of his life. This is just the beginning of the story. If you want to experience the full episode, subscribe to the Substack now. Episode 1 drops Friday, June 5th. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bradevans11.substack.com/subscribe

    The Teddy Bear Tapes: Episode 1 Preview

  4. May 18

    A Conversation with Paul Hornsby

    Paul Hornsby helped build the sound of Southern Rock before anybody even had a name for it. Long before Capricorn Records turned Macon into sacred ground for rock and roll, Paul was a kid in Alabama watching his father play fiddle, learning guitar and organ in Tuscaloosa R&B bands, and crossing paths with names that would become legends. He played alongside Eddie Hinton, Duane Allman, and Gregg Allman in a band called Hourglass — a group one manager called “the next Rolling Stones” before the record business managed to completely misunderstand them. When Duane asked Paul to join what would become the Allman Brothers Band, Paul said no. Instead, he stayed in Macon and went to work at a little studio called Capricorn Records. Paul produced The Marshall Tucker Band’s debut album and helped give the world “Can’t You See.” He produced Charlie Daniels classics like “The South’s Gonna Do It Again” and “Long Haired Country Boy.” Gold records, platinum records, wild stories, studio sessions, road gigs with Dr. John — and somewhere in the middle of all of it, Southern Rock was born. But this conversation isn’t just about music history. It’s about the people who built it. I’ve known Paul a long time. He’s one of the kindest men I’ve ever met, and somehow he still talks about all of this like he was just lucky to be standing nearby while history happened around him. Sitting in Muscadine Studios with him — surrounded by old photos, cigarette burns in the furniture, and a piano Gregg Allman sold him for 250 bucks decades ago — you can feel the ghosts of all those years sitting in the room with you. Paul Hornsby was there for all of it. And he’s still here to tell the story. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bradevans11.substack.com/subscribe

    A Conversation with Paul Hornsby

  5. May 11

    A Coversation with Bibb County Sherriff David Davis

    Sheriff David Davis has been keeping order in Bibb County while most of us were still draggin on our mamas titty. He started at the sheriff’s office in December of 1979, went to Central High right here in Macon, and has been re-elected to a fourth term as sheriff. That’s not a career. That’s a life’s work inside one place, which is either the mark of a man who found exactly where he belonged or a man who understood something about loyalty to a community that most people don’t. Macon is his town. He grew up in it, policed it, watched it change, watched it struggle, and is still here making the argument that it’s worth fighting for. He’ll tell you about a third of the people in his jail have some type of mental health or substance abuse issue, and that if he could let a thousand people out of that jail legally and safely, he’d open the doors today. That’s not what you expect to hear from a sheriff. That’s what you hear from someone who’s been close enough to the problem long enough to stop being simple about it. This is the Mostly Harmless podcast. We talk to people about their lives. Sheriff David Davis has had one worth talking about. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bradevans11.substack.com/subscribe

  6. May 4

    A Conversation with Bibb County Coroner Leon Jones

    Leon Jones has seen what most people never will. As the Coroner of Bibb County, Georgia, Jones is the man called when someone takes their last breath under circumstances that demand answers. He investigates deaths, works alongside law enforcement, and delivers hard truths to families at the worst moments of their lives — all while carrying the weight of a community’s trust. It’s a job that lives in the shadows of public service, rarely understood and often overlooked. But for Leon Jones, it’s a calling. In this interview, Jones opens up about what the work really looks like, the cases that stay with you, and why the role of coroner matters more than most people realize. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bradevans11.substack.com/subscribe

  7. Apr 26

    A Conversation with Guy Fried

    There are people in this world who live like the rules were written for somebody else. Guy Fried is one of those people. He survived boarding schools. He was at Idlewild South when Idlewild South was the place to be. He was at the Byron Pop Festival when half of Georgia showed up and the other half wished they had. He rode horses to fallout shelters at the height of the Cold War, when everybody thought the world might actually end and some people apparently decided the best response to that was to saddle up. He kept a lion. He jumped cars on a motorcycle inside the Macon Coliseum. He ran with Evel Knievel. And one day he decided he was going to become a professional rodeo cowboy — having never ridden in a rodeo in his life. He became one anyway. But none of that is actually what this conversation is about. It’s about a man who loved his people fiercely, who was shaped by a father and mother who poured everything into him, and who one day had to face losing that. And he’ll tell you about it straight — no performance, no self-pity. Just the truth, the way a man tells it when he’s lived enough to know the difference between a story and the thing that actually happened. I’m Brad Evans. This is Mostly Harmless. And this my conversation with Guy Fried This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bradevans11.substack.com/subscribe

  8. Apr 17

    The King of Cocaine

    I’d been trying to get Jerry on the phone for almost a year. Mutual friends, messages passed through people, a couple of near-misses. He cancelled on me twice — which, if you know anything about drug dealer time, you know is practically punctual. I kid. He’s not a drug dealer anymore. He works at Anderson Diner, which has been in his family a long time and sits in the heart of Macon serving some of the best soul food you’re going to find anywhere in this city. The kind of place where the food tastes like somebody actually loves you. But in the 1980s, Jerry ran one of the most sophisticated cocaine operations this city has ever seen. Forty-five men. Four trap houses. All four corners of Macon. By his count — and I have no reason to doubt him — he was moving somewhere between sixty and eighty thousand dollars a day. He never touched the product. Never drank. Never used drugs of any kind. Not once. Not even a beer. All that cocaine flowing through his hands for years, and he never tried it once. I found that remarkable. I also found it smart. He found it obvious. He was a businessman. A very good one. Operating in the only market available to a Black kid from Tindall Heights who grew up with cardboard in his shoes, a mama working double shifts at the medical center, and a father who was gone by the time he was five. He tried to go straight. He worked at Georgia Power. He tried to enlist — the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines. Kept missing the qualifying test by one point. The one time he passed, they gave the spot to someone else. So he made a decision. He knew exactly what that decision meant. He just didn’t know how long it was going to cost him. He got caught. Somebody he trusted set him up. He did twenty-eight, almost twenty-nine years in federal prison. Three life sentences. Three twenty-five year sentences running behind them. He filed three hundred and fifty motions trying to get out. Had a judge look him in the face and tell him, I don’t care if you’re right, I’m still turning you down. He finally got out on clemency granted personally by President Barack Obama, who called him on the phone before signing it. Jerry said he hit the floor crying. He said he’s still not over it. And now he’s here, talking to me, on a Tuesday afternoon, because he finally had time. This is Jerry’s story. And I think you should hear it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bradevans11.substack.com/subscribe

  9. Apr 9

    A Conversation with Chris Hicks of the Marshall Tucker Band

    There’s a certain kind of music that comes out of places like Macon, Georgia. It’s not polished. It’s not chased. It’s lived in. It’s front porches and back rooms… barns full of cigarette smoke and guitars getting passed around until somebody finds something worth keeping. And if you came up around here at the right time, you didn’t just hear it—you got pulled into it. In this conversation, Chris Hicks talks about growing up out in Lozella… learning to play alongside his grandfather… figuring out somewhere along the way that all those chords he already knew could unlock just about every song he’d ever loved. He gets into the Macon scene when it was still humming—clubs, jam sessions, Capricorn days… the kind of place where you could end up playing with guys like Bobby O’Day one night and learning from people like Eddie Kirkland the next. It’s stories about the players you’ve heard of—and a lot you probably haven’t… the ones who could’ve been as big as anybody, if things had lined up just a little different. And underneath all of it is that thread you hear in every great Southern musician… where talent, timing, community, and just enough chaos all collide. This is a conversation with Chris Hicks.” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bradevans11.substack.com/subscribe

  • 9 Episodes

Ratings & Reviews

3.8
out of 5
4 Ratings

About

Stories Was everything and Everything was Stories -Harry Crews Brad Evans Interviews Folks from All Walks of Life. bradevans11.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Brad Evans
  • Episodes
    9
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © brad
  • Show Website
    Mostly Harmless

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