Hoot’n & Holler’n With Matt Mitchell

A Southern Guide to the 4th of July

A Southern Guide to the 4th of July

The South does Independence Day different, and we've got the receipts to prove it. This episode breaks down why TNT Fireworks (the nation's largest fireworks distributor) calls Alabama home, the unwritten rules of haggling at a firework stand, and exactly when it's socially acceptable to stop shooting off Roman candles in your neighbor's driveway.

We also get into the surprisingly heavy overlap between church and country on the 4th — LifeWay's data on pastors working patriotic music into Sunday service, the unofficial ranking of National Anthem performances (Whitney Houston vs. Chris Stapleton vs. an all-time Fergie disaster), and why "God Bless the USA" might be the most-sung song in America you didn't know had a survey behind it.

Then it's on to the cookout: burgers vs. hot dogs vs. ribs by the numbers, the baked beans vs. potato salad standoff, and why a giant flag-frosted cookie cake might be the most patriotic dessert in America.

Grab a cold one, fire up the grill, and let us walk you through how it's really done here. 

A Night at the Card Tournament

A vault episode from the early days, back when we were still calling the show Scattered and Covered and recording on location instead of in a studio. This one comes from Gamers Guild, a game shop in Jasper, Alabama, where we sat down in the middle of a Sunday night card tournament and talked to the folks running it.

We get into trading cards and the people who collect them, a binder that turned out to be worth more than most people's retirement, '90s satanic panic, dorm-room LAN parties, the worst Captain D's sandwich ever assembled, and a serious investigation into how many people in the room were carrying swords. Mostly we just hang out and wander around one very chaotic shopping center.

This is the last of our vault episodes — the fourth and final on-location recording we had in the can. Thanks for sticking with us from the beginning.

Appalachian Superstitions We Still Can't Shake

You don't walk under a ladder, you don't break a mirror, and you sure don't walk on a grave — not because anybody explained why, but because Grandma said so. This week we get into Appalachian superstitions: death coming in threes, black cats, cows lying down before a rain, holding your breath past the graveyard, and eating turnip greens for money on New Year's (still hasn't worked). We don't believe any of it. We just aren't going to test it either.

Child Labor & Other Fond Memories

Child Labor & Other Fond Memories

Everybody's first job was technically a crime scene. This week on Hoot'n & Holler'n, the crew gets into first jobs, worst jobs, and the ones we quit in record time, the gigs the government knew about and the ones it definitely didn't. 

From hauling boxes of truckers' trip logs and choking on Bondo dust at a body shop, to practicing golf on company time, surviving the CVS pharmacy counter, and the fine art of quitting in three days flat (one clean polo per shift), no paycheck is safe. Plus a steakhouse way out in Bug Tussle and what really happened to all that leftover chicken from Chick-fil-A.

Pour something cold and clock in. Just don't tell the labor board.

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Gatlinburg or Nothing

For half the South, there's no debate: it's Gatlinburg or nothing.

This week we make the great Southern pilgrimage up to G-Berg — Sevier County, Tennessee, a.k.a. the Smokies, a.k.a. the only vacation some families have ever taken. We get into all of it: the saltwater taffy and the fudge, the moonshine that took over the strip, the airbrush tees and glow-in-the-dark mini golf, the great debate over which pancake house actually wins, and whether you can really skip the national park (you can't). We argue about Cades Cove bear jams, the dinner shows, the aquarium, and the proper way to ride the chairlift up the mountain.

Things on Sticks: A County Fair Conversation

We climbed into machines bolted together by strangers, ate things on sticks that had no business being on sticks, and lived to talk about it. This week on Hoot'n and Holler'n, we're talking carnivals and county fairs.

The guys swap stories about the rides that shouldn't have been legal (the Scrambler, the Gravitron, the Tilt-A-Whirl, the one that was just a circle that spun you until you got a hangover the next day), the food that should never have touched a fryer (corn dogs, funnel cakes, chicken on a stick, candied apples, a deep-fried something that briefly seemed like a good idea), and the games that took every dollar in our wallets and gave back a Bon Jovi mirror and a goldfish that wouldn't make it home.

We also get into Visionland, Dollywood, the rope ladder game that nobody can climb, the time someone won a giant stuffed dog and had to carry it around all day, and the strange men who set up tiger cages in mall parking lots and answer to no government on earth.

Pull up a folding chair, mind your funnel cake, and try not to think too hard about who built this ride or when.

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Pawpaw Ain't Got Shorts

Summer in the rural South wasn't a vacation. It was a system.

You got dropped off at grandma's in the morning, ate something, went outside, came back in for more food, went back outside, and came in at dark. Every day. For three months.

In this episode, the boys break down everything that made a Southern summer in the 80s and 90s what it was. The ice cream truck. The Little Hugs from the deep freeze. Cornbread and buttermilk for lunch. Watermelon on a newspaper. Magnolia grenade wars in the front yard. Driveway basketball where the only thing worse than missing a shot was losing the ball down the holler.

Plus a long detour into pawpaw culture including the khakis, the coveralls, the missing fingers, the steadfast refusal to own a single pair of shorts, carry an umbrella, or learn to swim unless his life depended on it.

This is a summer episode for anybody who spent their childhood with grass-stained knees, a belly full of hose-water, and a grandma who'd make you snap beans if you tried to come back inside.

90s NBA: Backboards & Baggy Shorts

Most of us remember the 90s NBA as a Chicago story. The Bulls dynasty. The Dream Team. The commercials we still quote at each other thirty years later. But spend a little time digging into the decade and a different picture comes together...one that doesn't get talked about nearly as much.

Michael Jordan was from Wilmington, North Carolina. Scottie Pippen grew up in central Arkansas. The teal and purple craze that swept four professional sports leagues started with a Chapel Hill designer. The Magic duo that almost broke up the Bulls dynasty came out of LSU and Memphis. The Rockets team that interrupted the Bulls run with back-to-back rings was anchored by a Phi Slamma Jamma Cougar who never left Texas. And the fastest-selling rookie signature shoe of the entire decade outside of Jordan's was worn by a Duke kid from Dallas.

This week, Matt, Joey, Eric, and Drake sit down to talk about arguably the greatest decade in professional basketball — Reggie Miller and Spike Lee, the New Orleans Jazz somehow ending up in Salt Lake City, the Larry Johnson Grandmama commercials, John Tesh's Roundball Rock, courtside celebrity hecklers, the Bulls dynasty, the Hornets, the shoes, and the time Dennis Rodman went missing in Vegas in the middle of the season.

The 90s NBA may have looked like a Chicago story. But it definitely got the assist from the South.

Pork Skins and Throwing Stars: The Death of the Southern Flea Market

It don't get more American than going to the yard sale and the flea market on a Saturday morning. But the version we had down here in the South was never quite the same as the one they had everywhere else, and somewhere around 2010, it just stopped.

This week on Hoot'n & Holler'n, Matt, Eric, Drake, and Joey walk one more lap through the sacred aisles of the Southern flea market.

We get into the booths we lived for: the camo guy, the pork skin man, the Coke can airplane artist, the wind chime guy who hated to see Drake coming, the wood-burned Bear Bryant clock that didn't run, and the baseball card man who would not let your sticky little fingers anywhere near a Topps rookie.

We talk about the weapons our parents let us bring home (switchblade combs, survival knives with broken compasses, throwing stars going clean through vinyl siding), the AM radio trading post show, the consignment-sale takeover of the modern yard sale, and the inexplicable rise of the indoor flea mall.

Plus: a true crime detour into the Jasper flea market's body count, a found-cassette mystery worthy of a Netflix doc, and Matt's open letter to Mark Zuckerberg about a man named Joe in Northport, Alabama.

It's a long goodbye to a Southern institution. Pull up a chair, dig out a dollar, and let's go.

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Arcades in All the Wrong Places

Out in the rural South, a real arcade was a 45-minute drive and a pilgrimage to Charles Entertainment Cheese himself. The rest of the time, you made do with what you had....and what we had was one Pac-Man at the Pizza Hut, a Street Fighter at Dips and Dogs, and a beat-up row of cabinets up front at Walmart next to the kiddie ride that smelled like feed and chicken pox.

This week on Hoot'n & Holler'n, Matt, Joey, Eric, and Drake pull up a chair, drop in a quarter, and talk through the arcade games that defined growing up Southern in the 80s and 90s. The favorites worth every quarter (Cruisin' USA, Mortal Kombat II, WWF Superstars, and the Super Street Fighter II moment that changed Matt forever). The ones that get way too much credit (looking at you, Pac-Man). The hidden gems nobody talks about anymore (Burger Time, Paperboy, Golden Tee). And the multiplayer classics that nearly ended friendships — NBA Jam, NFL Blitz, and a few rounds of air hockey played way too aggressively.

Plus: bratty kids pretending to play NASCAR, pirate money jammed in coin slots, the Satanic Panic coming for your joystick, and the eternal mystery of how that one Walmart arcade machine was still standing after a decade of abuse.

Pull up a chair. Drop in a quarter. Let's do some Hoot'n & Holler'n.