BY KENDYL HOLLINGSWORTH
KENDYLH@OPELIKAOBSERVER.COM
OPELIKA —
Each year, millions of Americans gather around the table to celebrate Thanksgiving with food and family. These are two themes reflected in “The Thanksgiving Song,” which local artist Dallas Dorsey recorded and released this year.
The song is available on multiple digital platforms, including Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Amazon and Pandora.
Dorsey said “The Thanksgiving Song” has been a long time coming, getting its start during his childhood with the help of his sister Anna Laura.
“When we were still young children, she was maybe 7 or 8 years old and used to just sing,” he said, laughing. “I don’t know why.”
According to Dorsey, it was during one of these singing bouts that Anna Laura gave life to the song’s opening lyric, “It’s time to eat the turkey and the green bean casserole.”
“It just kind of stuck, so … I kind of built on that over the years and wrote some verses, kind of included some family stories in it, and kind of went with it from there,” he said.
Anyone who has attended one of Dorsey’s live gigs around town may have heard the song before, but now the song is available for anyone to hear, anytime.
“I play it live around the holidays, and I’d always wanted to record it, and finally we bit the bullet … and got it done,” Dorsey said. “… It’s something to be proud of [and] kind of have a record of it.”
While Dorsey has recorded at professional studios in Nashville and Birmingham, he decided to go a different route to record “The Thanksgiving Song.”
He enlisted his friend Daniel Brooks to engineer and record the song from Brooks’ home in Valley, Alabama. Brooks also played bass on the track, and Hunter Jackson added drums. The song was recorded live in the home.
While Dorsey still had access to the same software used in the bigger studios, he said he was able to enjoy the process more surrounded by friends in a comfortable environment.
“There’s an element of stress in those bigger studios,” Dorsey said, which is why he enjoyed the intimacy of the home studio experience. “I was with my buddies — with my friends — and I’ve played with them for a long time and felt a lot more comfortable.”
Dorsey said the love of music runs deep in his family, which has its roots in Opelika. He grew up exposed to a wide variety of musical influences, and it was his grandfather who first inspired him to play guitar. That first lesson resulted in Dorsey, then about 8 years old, “butchering the chords” of the country classic “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,” according to his website.
“I kind of had country on one side of the family, and then had, like, big band swing on the other side of the family,” Dorsey recalled. “… I really fell in love with the guitar and stuff listening to what my dad was into, like Eric Clapton and rock ‘n’ roll stuff. I’ve kind of come back around to country music and appreciating all that as well.”
Further honing his skills in the guitar ensemble at Opelika High School, Dorsey has been playing music ever since. He has also played guitar and bass for his longtime friend and fellow Opelikian, Adam Hood, “for probably a decade or more,” he said.
No matter where life or his music takes him, Dorsey said Opelika will always be his home. The city’s community mindset and strong support of the arts have always been two things he’s admired about Opelika.
“I think our community has always embraced the arts and tried to develop that, you know?” he said. “It’s not just, like, an old mill town or an old railroad town. It’s more than that. They’ve kind of pushed a little bit more of the arts and that community as well, so it’s really cool.
“It’s kind of changing and evolving, and more people are coming in, but it’s always had a lot really good people that cared about the community and cared about other people.”
For now, Dorsey is continuing to promote “The Thanksgiving Song” near and far. Overall, he said he’s eager to keep doing what he loves.
“Lord willing, I want to just keep writing and keep trying to get some music out there,” he said. “… I’m just trying to get [the song] heard and trying to keep making more art.”
Listen to “The Thanksgiving Song” online, or catch it on Kicker 97.7 FM around the holiday. To learn more about Dorsey or to check out his other music, visit dallasdorsey.com.