Photograph by Jolie Loren
When Michelle Malone learned from a mutual friend that legendary Nashville songwriter Dean Dillon had seen her perform at a festival and was interested in writing songs with her, she froze.
Malone has forged a three-decades-long career as a singer-songwriter based out of Atlanta, but she’s never had mainstream commercial success. Dillon, on the other hand, is in the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. He cowrote the country classic “Tennessee Whiskey” and hit songs for such stars as George Jones, George Strait, Kenny Chesney, and Alabama.
“When I found out he wanted to write with me, I was so incredibly scared that I tried to come up with every excuse in the book not to do it,” Malone says. “I was taken aback because I just couldn’t figure out what I’d have to offer somebody like him. He can write with anyone in the world; why me?”
Finally, she relented and flew to Colorado, where Dillon lives, arriving a day late after missing a connecting flight. She was standing in the baggage area, waiting for her suitcase and feeling a bit frazzled, when she heard a gentle voice behind her say, “Hey, are you Michelle?” She turned around and saw a hippie-like man with long white hair and a flowing beard; judging from the videos she had watched of him, she almost didn’t recognize that it was Dillon.
“We got in his pickup truck to go to his house,” she says. “He put me at ease so quickly. We got to talking, and the next thing you know, we’d written a song.”
Photograph by Stephen Houseworth
Malone’s new album, Southern Comfort, features five songs cowritten with Dillon, anchored by “I Choke on My Words.” It was the second tune she wrote with him. Malone envisioned it as a humorous look at the crazy things she did in her youth, sparked by longtime fans who sometimes remind her of past antics. (She once threw a microphone stand at someone who refused to stop talking during her performance.)
“Dean saw the song completely differently,” she says. “We were both kind of wild and off the chain for a while. He took the idea and made it into one of the saddest songs I’ve ever had to sing. It took me about a year of singing it before I could get through it without crying.”
During the recording sessions for the song, Malone kept imagining a Buddy Miller–like guitar part. Malone had met the celebrated guitarist years before on a Lilith Fair tour when he played with Emmylou Harris, and Miller had given her his phone number and email. So she cold-called him to see if he’d play on the song.
At first, Miller said he hadn’t touched his guitar in a while and didn’t know if he was capable of playing on a recording session. He eventually agreed to give it a try. “How humble was that?” she says. “I knew anything he did would have that Buddy Miller spirit. And that’s what I was looking for, the spirit that he kisses music with.”
Southern Comfort is Malone’s 16th studio album. “I think this is one of my best albums,” Malone says. “The record feels like home to me. It goes back to my rock roots. And it also feels like it is broadening my horizons.”
She will have an album release concert October 19 at Eddie’s Attic, a show that will feature her longtime musical partner, guitarist Doug Kees.
Photograph by Kevin Scherer
Malone grew up in Atlanta. Her mother was a jazz and lounge vocalist, and as a kid Malone used to tag along with her to gigs. She attended Agnes Scott College and planned to become a doctor, but music beckoned. Malone fell under the wing of the Indigo Girls, and her first band, Drag the River, was signed to Arista Records. The group released one album in 1990, but Malone grew frustrated when Arista tried to dictate a more commercial sound, and she left to follow her own creative vision.
Her career arc has included turns as an acoustic guitar singer-songwriter, a rock ‘n’ roller, and a slide-playing blueswoman. Southern Comfort leans into Malone’s songwriting and rock ‘n’ roll sides. The title track opens the album with an homage to old-school Rod Stewart, complete with a 12-string guitar and a drum lick straight out of “Maggie May.”
The song is a tribute to the late drummer Billy Pitts. He was Malone’s bandmate in Drag the River and played with the Georgia Satellites for many years.
“I like to think we all grew up together in the band, although we didn’t do a lot of growing—we did a lot of acting out,” Malone says with a laugh. “When you’re in the trenches with people at a young and impressionable age, it just stays with you.”
Photograph by Rick Diamond
After Pitts’s death, Malone remembered how much he’d loved a song she’d cowritten called “Southern Comfort.” Drag the River had recorded the tune, though it was never released. Malone decided to record it for this album in memory of Pitts. She hoped to use his Drag the River drum track on her new version, but she couldn’t locate the original tapes. Instead, she brought in some of his friends to play on the song: guitarists Rick Richards of the Georgia Satellites and Charlie Starr of Blackberry Smoke, along with keyboardist Joey Huffman, who played with Pitts in the Satellites.
“It felt like something I could do in Billy’s honor and heal that pain a little bit,” says Malone. “It’s tough to lose someone, but it’s good to be vulnerable and just feel it. This is a very cathartic record for me. I figure if it can touch me in that way, it’s bound to touch other people in a similar fashion.”
This article appears in our October 2024 issue.
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