“Midnight,” as performed by Futurebirds—track 24 on the Oxford American’s Georgia Music Issue CD—is not just a melding of eras and genres. It also displays an intersection of geography, as Georgia’s southwest region meets the Futurebirds’ base of Athens in the northeast.

An introduction to “Athens x Athens,” a special section in our Georgia Music Issue about the famous scene.

One summer evening in 1981, I knocked on the door of a modest house on a street improbably named the Plaza in Athens, Georgia, looking for a man who, I had been told, knew some old-time work songs.

I’ve often said that Vic Chesnutt was the best songwriter of my generation; someday there will be classes at fine colleges devoted to the study of his songs.

A selection of works from the Do Good Fund collection, promoting the excellence and diversity of contemporary Southern photography.