The Swampers and friends at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio.
It all started with a U-turn. It was May 2008, and Greg “Freddy” Camalier was helping his childhood pal Stephen Badger move from the East Coast to New Mexico for a new job. Driving the back roads across northern Alabama, they pulled out a map to find a place to bed down and realized they’d passed Muscle Shoals 40 miles back. “We knew a little bit of the music that came from there, it was music we loved,” Camalier recalls. “So we turned around and drove back to spend the night.”
They spent the next 24 hours soaking in the Shoals and the surrounding area: the small-town ambiance, the verdant fields and forests along the Tennessee River, the remarkable musical history forged by producer Rick Hall and the house band at his Fame Studios, which came to be known as the Swampers. As the segregation wars raged across the South, these back country white boys collaborated with black artists to make some of the greatest R&B records of all time: Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman,” Aretha Franklin’s “I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You),” the Staple Singers’ “I’ll Take You There,” memorable sides by Wilson Pickett, Etta James, and others. In the years to come their uniquely funky, soulful sound would lure the Rolling Stones, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Rod Stewart, and other rock and pop luminaries to Fame and Muscle Shoals Sound, the rival studio founded by the band. Duane Allmann got his start in Muscle Shoals; so did Lynyrd Skynyrd, who would immortalize the Swampers in the lyrics to “Sweet Home Alabama.”
By the time they left town, the road-tripping friends had decided to make a movie. Co-produced by Badger and directed by Camalier, a Colorado real estate man with only a glancing movie background, the music documentary tells the inside story of Muscle Shoals, with a strong emphasis on place and personal history – particularly Rick Hall’s remarkable journey through grinding poverty and the premature deaths of his brother, father, and wife to achieve exalted status among several generations of superstars. The film, featuring interviews with Aretha, Pickett, Mick ‘n’ Keith, Alicia Keys, Bono, Steve Winwood, and all the key Muscle Shoals players (most of them still musically active) – and, of course, a wealth of classic songs – premiered in January at Sundance and has been a favorite on the spring film festival circuit, winning the audience award last month at Toronto’s Hot Docs. It lands this week at Sheffield Doc/Fest, ahead of which we spoke by phone to the debut director.
MFW: Given Muscle Shoals’ place in music history it’s hard to believe no one had made this movie before.
Greg Camalier: It’s true. That still dumbfounds me – such a big story. And everything gets reported on everywhere in today’s world. Talking to the guys down there as we began the process, they did mention that over the last 30 years or such, they estimated 25 to 30 people or crews had come down there with the intent of making a film, but none of those had ever panned into anything.
What convinced you that you had to make this movie?
We pulled into this restaurant [in Muscle Shoals]. The restaurant had a lot of character and soul to it. We just were talking to people, we had this great dinner, and we start to learn at dinner about some of the music that had come from there. When we got to the hotel, we went on the internet that night before bed, and we started reading about – oh my God, did you know they cut here, did you now he cut here, did you know she cut here? We were blown away, because it’s all music we knew and loved, but we had no idea it came from this little town, and now that we’re in this town it was all the more fascinating. And the town really spoke to us. It had this sleepy Southern charm.
You spend the first several minutes of the film on this visual travelogue of that area. Did you sense instantly that the history of the town and the landscape were integral to the story you wanted to tell?
We immediately felt the presence of the town in the landscape. The idea for the film came when we were just completely by ourselves, out in nature, next to the body of water there. We absolutely felt the energy and the essence of the landscape and the town. There’s something, when you think of this town, this landscape, this river, the natural beauty – you can’t separate it. That day I wouldn’t say we knew how it would be shaping the film, but we were absolutely moved by the landscape in that 24 hours.
How did you approach Rick Hall and the Swampers? Were they immediately enthusiastic?
Steve and I, our next trip down there was just he and I, no cameras or anything. We went down there to meet the guys. We knew that without them and their willingness and participation, we didn’t have the film. We met with [Swampers guitarist] Jimmy Johnson and [bassist] David Hook over at Jimmy’s place. That meeting went great, they were very open to it and excited. They were absolutely ready to give [a movie] another whirl and see if something came out of this one. Rick was not as easy of a sell. He was much more suspicious, and he grilled us pretty good. I wasn’t so sure for the first time meeting him, because he was a lot tougher customer. But as the film went on it became a great relationship.
Fame Studios founder Rick Hall
Was he reticent about opening up about all the pain and loss in his life?
Yeah. Half the time he was like, “Freddy, what the hell are you doing? God, I’m out here building a fire, you’re filming me on my tractor.” [Laughs] He was like, “Freddy, you should really film me in the studio. You know, I made some records.” I don’t think he thought I knew what the hell I was doing. As for the rest of your question, was he reticent – on one level, no. He’s very candid. With the musical history stuff and the stuff with the Swampers he was very candid, he had a great memory. A guy like that, you can see how oral history got handed down for centuries. But then some of the more personal stories, absolutely, he didn’t want to talk about. And then finally, like, two years in – one of ‘em was really three years in – at the very end he was willing to open up. I think that came with the sense of trust with us and comfort that we weren’t going to not do his story justice.
You have some film history, but judging from IMDB it’s slightly odd. Before you did this you were on the team of producers for a couple of indie comedies in 2007, one of which starred Paul Rudd and a lot of other pretty well-known people. What was your first brush with moviemaking like, and what was the gap between that and getting back into film with this project?
The Ten [the Paul Rudd movie], I really had nothing to do with that film. That [IMDB listing] is really not that accurate. Skills Like This is accurate. That was shot locally with people I knew, and I was a producer on that. When that happened I wanted to get involved in filmmaking. I was really missing a creative outlet in my life. And I love comedy. I learned a lot, but I knew that the next thing I did, I wanted creative control. I wanted that kind of freedom. But this film, the way it came down, was completely serendipitous. And if you’d asked me at the time, I would never have guessed in a million years that I would make a documentary. It’s pretty cool how life just serves you up these twists.
Greg "Freddy" Camalier
Did you find it instinctual? Especially in the way you began the film, this willingness to be a little more abstract and to set a sense of place – that seemed to come from a place of confidence about what you were doing.
No one’s ever asked me that. That’s an interesting point. I’ve always had a healthy self-esteem, and I think all those traits in your personality come through in your directing – who you are. I never had a problem in my life wanting to say something different and worrying about that. I did feel comfortable with it. I really believed it was gonna work. It’s funny you mention the opening, because I had even a more abstract opening that I really wanted to use [laughs]. I’m still torn about it. I kept getting shot down, from my fellow producer to people on the crew to these little test audiences. I just kept saying, “I’m sticking with it.” By the fifth little test audience, when the numbers were, like, 95 percent against, they finally coaxed me out of it.
The film gets into, unavoidably, the time and place when they were doing this: Alabama in the ’60s and ’70s. It seems almost like what was going on with George Wallace and segregation and Martin Luther King was one thing and what they were doing in the studio was another – like it never occurred to them that there was an issue bringing black artists in to work with them.
When we were hearing in the first few interviews, “Oh, there was no real racism in the studio,” we were a little suspect. We were thinking, really? We got 41 interviews to come, let’s see what happens. Is that a little bit rose-colored glasses? But boy, you know, 12 interviews, 13, 14 interviews in, it was real apparent with all the different players and session guys and everyone in that studio, that was not what was going on. Even outside the studio. It was a beautiful thing, how they treated each other as equals in the middle of the heinous belly of the beast of the ugly civil rights struggle. Those guys were totally – they didn’t rise above it, they just were above it.
For the benefit of those of us who’ve never tried it, how does one go about getting Mick Jagger and Keith Richards in one’s film? Especially when one is a first-time indie filmmaker?
I’m sure the first-time filmmaker doesn’t help you, but what does help you tremendously was we had this incredible, iconic, and fabled story of American music, which, although very unknown to the general public, is hallowed ground to most musicians. These guys were legends to most of these musicians. And the fact that their stories had never been told, they’ve never had a moment in the sun – you combine those two things and you’ve got the best anecdote you can have to get a Keith Richards and a Mick Jagger to show up and talk.
Aretha Franklin during her Muscle Shoals session
Even Aretha, who keeps a very low public profile these days.
I know. She was great. I was so honored and thrilled we got her. She was very gracious. She was not in a rush, really took her time with us. She sat around afterward just chewing the fat and wanted to watch some footage.
A lot of people in the film talk about what makes the “Muscle Shoals sound” unique – it’s almost a trademark. What makes it so singular for you?
Everyone does have a slightly different definition of it. For me, I always identify it as this propulsive rhythm section. I also identify it as raw – you can really sense the live-ness, the living, breathing quality to it. You can always tell it’s a bunch of good musicians playing live. You can sense the rawness, you can sense the fluidity, you can hear the little bits of imperfection, which I like. That makes it sound, to me, better than this perfect recording.
Do you have a favorite track?
I do not. There’s so many great ones.
Give me three.
Three? Boy. Most stuff Dan Penn wrote – I just love his songwriting. “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man,” I love that song. “I’d Rather Go Blind” by Etta James. And – not a Swampers song, not a Rick Hall production, but first cut in Muscle Shoals; I always find it very emblematic of those guys and their story – “Simple Man” by Lynyrd Skynyrd. Those are three Muscle Shoals tracks I love from the bottom of my heart.
Muscle Shoals screens on Saturday, June 15, at Sheffield Doc/Fest.
