By CURTIS ROCKWELL/Content Director

PASCAGOULA — Grand Magnolia Music is celebrating one of its biggest months ever in June with the “Grand Mag Grammy Gala”.

The event will feature a two show series headlined by Steve Earle on Sunday June 2nd and John Hiatt on Monday, June 17th.

A few tickets for both shows are still available at http://www.grandmagmusic.com as well as in person at Scranton’s Restaurant in Pascagoula.

The two shows will culminate a 12-year run by the company of bringing world-renowned artists to the Grand Magnolia Ballroom. And to celebrate that milestone, June promises to be one of the biggest months ever in the history of the venue that has hosted numerous Grammy Award-honored artists at what has become a frequent stopping point for some of the biggest names in the live music business.

Hiatt and Earle will each be making their first-ever appearances in Jackson County. Hiatt has been nominated for nine Grammy Awards and has been awarded a variety of other distinctions in the music industry. Earle has been nominated 16 times and has won three Grammys.

The first show features Earle as he brings his “Alone Again” solo acoustic Tour to the Grand Magnolia.

A protege of legendary songwriters Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark, Earle quickly became a master storyteller in his own right, with his songs being recorded by Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Joan Baez, Emmylou Harris, The Pretenders, and countless others. Te year 1986 saw the release of his record, Guitar Town, which shot to number one on the country charts and is now regarded as a classic of the Americana genre. 

Earle’s 1988 hit Copperhead Road was made an official state song of Tennessee in 2023. On that now legendary Copperhead Road album, the title track, with its mandolin-thrashing title track about a Vietnam War veteran who enters the marijuana business, sounded like nothing else at the time (it still doesn’t.) 

Earle has published both a novel I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2011) and Dog House Roses, a collection of short stories (Houghton Mifflin 2003). Earle produced albums for other artists such as Joan Baez (Day After Tomorrow)and Lucinda Williams (Car Wheels On A Gravel Road) 

As an actor, Earle has appeared in several films and had recurring roles in the HBO series The Wire and Tremé. In 2017, Earle appeared in the off-Broadway play Samara, for which he also wrote a score that The New York Times described as “exquisitely subliminal.” Earle wrote music for and appeared in Coal Country, for which he was nominated for a Drama Desk Award. Earle is the host of the weekly show Hard Core Troubadour on Sirius Radio’s Outlaw Country channel. 

In 2020, Earle was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. And in 2023, Steve was honored by the Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music.

When Hiatt pulls into town two weeks and a day later, it will mark his first appearance in South Mississippi in over 20 years.

The Los Angeles Times once called Hiatt “…one of rock’s most astute singer-songwriters of the last 40 years,” is coming to Pascagoula for the first time ever.

Hiatt’s special guest will be Pascagoula’s own Libby Rae Watson.

His tour is part of a 33-city acoustic tour that begins in early May and winds its way throughout the Midwest, up and down the East Coast and ends with a drive through the deep South.

His lyrics and melodies have graced more than 20 studio albums, and the long list of artists who recorded and/or performed his songs include Bonnie Raitt (“Thing Called Love”), Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Bruce Springsteen (“Across the Borderline,” written with Ry Cooder and Jim Dickinson), Carl Perkins (“Memphis in the Meantime”) and Eric Clapton and B.B. King (“Ridin’ with the King”) as well as Delbert McClinton (“Have a Little Faith in Me”), Aaron Neville (“Feels Like Rain”), Suzy Boguss (“Drive South”), Jeff Healy (“Angel Eyes”) and Emmylou Harris’ (“Icy Blue Heart”).

There are many more, enough to reveal that Hiatt is a major contributor to the canon of American songs. His work has earned him a place in the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, a BMI Troubadour award, and a lifetime achievement in songwriting designation from the Americana Music Association.

More than three decades years after the release of his self-entitled debut album, Hiatt remains one of America’s most respected and influential singer-songwriters. As the Los Angeles Times wrote, “(Hiatt) writes the funniest sad songs – and the saddest funny songs – of just about anybody alive.”