Larry Smith and Nat Rudulph combine their talents to bring us a whole CD full of original music for today's Southerners. These songs reflect a Southern perspective on the current cultural climate. Having played at numerous conferences and rallies over the past couple years, the appeal of their music is its honesty.

Larry Smith has listened to traditional music all his life and received his first guitar at the height of the sixties folk revival. When his children neared adolescence, he grew concerned with the social decay resulting from the sixties temper tantrum, and became alarmed at the Orwellian prescriptions of the new Establishment. His first recording, Politically Incorrect, was the result of this realization and was written for two reasons: to relieve frustration over the social decay and the threat of the ‘New World Order’, and to protest the long time domination of folk music by the Left.

After discovering the Southern Movement, it came as a revelation to Larry that the South didn’t necessarily have to follow the rest of the country down the road to the Brave New World. Also, as a sixth generation Florida Cracker, it has become particularly clear to him that Southern culture is under attack. His current songs are written from this perspective. Larry describes himself as a ‘right-winger folk-singer’ and lives with his family in the Florida Panhandle.

Nat Rudulph’s father bought him his first guitar in the sixties. (He has since passed that Gibson LG1 on to his own son.) The first time Nat picked the instrument up he was so tone deaf he couldn’t tell whether it was in tune or not. After much effort, he finally taught himself to play using a folk music chord book. He was influenced by everything from Mississippi John Hurt to The Carter Family.

Nat became politically active with a ‘conservative’ group in the early nineties after deciding that he could no longer idly sit by and watch the culture go to hell. A couple of years later he came upon Southern Nationalism and knew he had found a better home. He began to re-educate himself. Deeply stirred by the ideas, he wrote these songs as the only expression he felt adequate to convey them.

Nat and his wife Vicki live on the banks of the Alabama River among moss covered trees near Blackwell’s Bend. They live within 25 mile of where 6 generations of Rudulphs have lived.

Larry and Nat met one another at a League of the South Chapter meeting in Sumter County, Alabama in the fall of 1998. Larry was asked to provide music from his first recording as part of the program and Nat played some of his Southern songs. The match was made (no doubt intentionally!) by Martin Murphy, ‘the instigator’ mentioned on their new recording, Basic Gray - For the Past, the Future, the Truth.

There was an immediate mutual respect and desire to get together to pursue their shared interests at that first meeting. Unfortunately, the two men live a good four hours drive from one another, so practice has often been long distance, with recordings of new songs mailed back and forth to come up with the individual arrangements. They have played at the last three League of the South National Conferences, a number of other League Meetings, SCV functions, and private events.

Their CD, For the Past, the Future, the Truth was recorded at the Smith home with the aid of a computer software program and an incredibly patient teenage son, Clayton. Friend Joe Arnold provided much needed technical assistance and a great deal of encouragement. The Basic Gray cover design uses only musical instruments, no singers. This was mutually agreed upon by all after previewing some rather unbecoming photos of Larry and Nat after they’d been recording for a couple of days straight. The barn featured in the cover photo is located in a friend’s cow pasture and was built in the early 1800s - Brenda arranged the instruments, Larry shot the photo and added the ‘do not cross’ tape, while Clayton shooed the cows away (they thought it was feeding time). Brenda did the cover layout and Nat finished the photo editing.