Jamey Johnson, Chapel Hart to Play Alabama’s June Jam 2023
Jamey Johnson, Chapel Hart, Jake Owen, Exile, and Randy Travis will all appear at June Jam 2023, Alabama’s long-running charity concert benefiting disaster relief in Alabama. Set for June 3 in Fort Payne, Alabama, it marks the revival of the festival, first held in 1982.
Along with Alabama’s Randy Owen and Teddy Gentry, June Jam includes the Oak Ridge Boys, the Nineties country collective known as the Frontmen, bluegrass duo Dailey & Vincent, vocal group Home Free, the Isaacs, and Dee Jee Silver.
Alabama retired in 2004, but reunited in 2011 on the strength of a collaboration with Brad Paisley, “Old Alabama.” The Eighties icons, known for “Mountain Music,” “Take Me Down,” and “40 Hour Week (For a Livin’),” a workingman’s anthem whose influence can be felt today in songs like Elvie Shane’s “Forgotten Man,” weathered the death of guitarist Jeff Cook in 2022.
Chapel Hart are a recent addition to the lineup. The country trio of sisters Danica and Devynn Hart and their cousin Trea Swindle broke out singing “answer songs” to hits by Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton, like “You Can Have Him Jolene,” but quickly solidified their own identity.
“What I’ve seen from ‘You Can Have Him Jolene’ is that this generation of kids and especially children who weren’t country fans by any stretch, they’re going ‘Dang, who is this heifer Jolene and why do we not like her?’” Danica Hart told Rolling Stone recently. “So they’re having to go back to listen to Dolly’s song. They’re getting lost in the story, which is where we found ourselves in country music.”
Johnson, meanwhile, remains a popular live draw — even as he’s been reluctant to release a new album. On Friday night, he joined Warren Haynes and Gov’t Mule onstage at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium to perform the Band’s “Up on Cripple Creek” and Drivin N’ Cryin’s “Straight to Hell.”
