Nestled on the bank of the Tennessee River, the town of Florence in the northwest corner of Alabama plays host to music festivals, seasonal celebrations, a Renaissance faire, and the NCAA Division II Championship Football Game every year. Florence is also the birthplace of W.C. Handy – a composer and musician credited as the “Father of the Blues” – and the town holds a festival every year in his honor, drawing visitors and musicians in droves. A Frank Lloyd Wright home stands in town with tours offered on a daily basis. The area around Florence was originally inhabited by ancient Native Americans, and a museum now sits at the site of a prehistoric mound dating back to 500 BC, rising 43 feet high, and filled with the largest collection of tools, pottery, jewelry, and pipes in Alabama. You’d think with all of these attractions crammed into the little town, Florence would be a traveler’s dream destination. But we didn’t learn about what Florence has to offer until after we decided to go for a very specific reason – Ashley had the town on her list of places to see before we even started RVing.

Florence, you see, is home to the Alabama Chanin Factory and Cafe. If you aren’t familiar with meticulously hand-sewn garments created with sustainably-sourced organic cotton and produced by people earning a fair living wage, you probably haven’t heard of Alabama Chanin. Florence is the epicenter of what could genuinely be labeled a “fashion revolution” pioneered by Natalie Chanin, a life-long member of the fashion industry working as a stylist and costume designer before founding the Alabama Chanin brand. She’s a proponent of the zero-waste fashion movement, employs an open source philosophy (her patterns and techniques are openly available in books and workshops), and espouses “Slow Design” in her cottage industry workshop. When Ashley first started knitting, she stumbled across one of Natalie Chanin’s books and was so captivated by the techniques and designs that she started dabbling in hand-sewing as a result.

Now, anyone who’s hemmed a pair of pants or sewn on a button is probably thinking “Big deal, people have been doing that for ages!” But much like the shift from home-cooking in the 1950s and 1960s to prepared convenience foods, well-made handcrafted clothing gave way to cheaply assembled, mass produced, frequently disposable garments – often made under incredibly poor working conditions in sweatshops. Natalie Chanin is inspiring a return to garments made with intent and care – from where she sources her raw cotton (from “seed to shelf” working with U.S. producers) to the finishing stitches on a one-of-a-kind tunic or skirt made by an employee earning a fair wage. She encourages reusing and repurposing garments that you might otherwise discard – cutting old t-shirts into strips which become a woven seat on a reclaimed chair frame, or turning your threadbare bed sheet into handkerchiefs. Her workshops provide hands-on instruction in basic, functional sewing and in the intricate, complicated techniques which are the hallmark of her signature style.

The finished pieces from her store typically come with a large price tag – the items are priced according to the actual labor used to create them, giving consumers an accurate representation of the time and skill required to produce a hand-sewn garment. While we weren’t going to buy an authentic Alabama Chanin piece of clothing, her unique style is apparent throughout much of Ashley’s current wardrobe. Old jeans are given new life with colorful patches and decorative stitching, exposed knots and dangling thread ends clearly imitating the Chanin technique. Discarded t-shirts morph into skirts and casually elegant dresses, designs taken directly from Chanin’s books. I may have even learned a thing or two from Ashley and occasionally incorporate Chanin’s basic sewing techniques when I need to tackle a (very small) mending project. Natalie Chanin is inspiring a return to the resourceful and frugal ways of our grandparents and their parents before them, while pioneering new methods to create sustainable, environmentally-friendly, community-minded clothing. She’s also figured out how to get her clothing noticed in the high-end fashion industry, creating an avenue by which to spread her message even further. While the Chanin Factory may not be a stop for every traveler through Florence, it is certainly one of the most unique attractions – and if you’re not into hand-sewn boutique fashion, you can still enjoy some Southern cooking made with locally sourced ingredients and a craft beer in the cafe.

Florence acquired the title of Alabama’s “Renaissance City” presumably thanks to the various arts that are prevalent throughout the city. I will admit that our mid-week visit didn’t necessarily reveal anything over and above what any small to mid-size town might offer. We weren’t there during a festival weekend (or any weekend, for that matter) so we didn’t see any live music. The museums, including the Frank Lloyd Wright House, are open for tours nearly every day, so art and culture abound throughout the week – not just on special occasions. Main Street is lined with small shops and a few restaurants, but again – it’s similar to most any other town with around 40,000 residents. We enjoyed a nice lunch at Odette, which features New American fare with Southern flavors (according to the website) and it was good, but not necessarily remarkable. We pedaled over to Singin’ River Brewing and found the brewery to be laid back with the repurposed warehouse vibe that seems to be the industry standard in lots of craft breweries across the country. It’s tucked out of the way but easy enough to find without any trouble. The beer was good and I recommend checking it out if you’re a fan of craft beer and just happen to be in Florence.

We stayed at McFarland Park, located along the river on the outskirts of town yet close enough to bike easily into Florence. McFarland doesn’t take reservations, so visitors can only find a spot on a first-come first-served basis. We arrived on a Tuesday afternoon and had our choice of quite a few vacant sites. We paid (cash or check only, McFarland doesn’t take credit cards) for two nights in the trailer-office located in the camping loop and decided to add another night later in the week. The park is susceptible to flooding so visitors should be aware of the weather while staying at McFarland. Boaters have access to a launch area from within the park, and McFarland even contains a full-scale marina with boat slips, a store, and restaurant. The bathroom and shower facilities aren’t the best, but adequate. They did, in fact, provide shelter for us and maybe a dozen other RVers when the tornado sirens activated in the wee hours of the morning on the third day of our visit. We didn’t see a funnel (although it was still dark at the time), but reports were coming in of sightings in the surrounding area. Everyone was fine and the park was undamaged, so we chalked up another mildly harrowing weather-related event while traveling with the RV (see this post on the tornado in Eagle Nest, New Mexico). That was the first time either of us had heard a tornado siren, so it took us a few minutes to understand what was happening when we were awakened before 6AM by a strange noise. We found other people already sheltering in the bathhouse alcove and decided that was probably the best we could do. Happy to report that we never had to put the structural integrity of the building to the test.

The waters of the Tennessee River flowing between Florence and Muscle Shoals sprouted numerous legends and folklore related to music. The Yuchi Tribe inhabited the area in the 16th century and named the river “Nunnuhsae” – Singing River. One legend attributes the nickname to the sounds the water made as it flowed over rocks and cascaded in waterfalls descending 140 feet through the valley. Another legend tells of a young Native American maiden who was so enraptured with the river that she’d sing every time she visited the water’s edge. Her voice would carry miles and miles downriver through the canyon and anyone who heard the muted, melodic sound just assumed it came from the river. Yet other legends claim the river is home to a muse, a timeless artistic spirit inspiring mortal musicians to create great works while in the area. Florence and Muscle Shoals have produced an inordinate amount of hit songs and talented musicians over the past decades, so maybe the muse story might hold a bit of supernatural truth. The river has been dammed since the days of the Yuchi inhabiting the valley, its natural flow through the valley altered and its true voice muted, lost to history.

Muscle Shoals, just across the river from Florence, is home to FAME Studios and Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, both well-known recording studios that gained national popularity in the 1960s and 1970s. These studios recorded hits by musicians like Aretha Franklin, The Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bob Dylan, and the Rolling Stones. Florence, Muscle Shoals, Sheffield, and Tuscumbia (the “Quad Cities”) all contributed to the “Muscle Shoals Sound” which is only loosely described as soulful, funky, rhythm and blues. This sound has been credited to a group of studio musicians dubbed The Swampers, having earned that moniker because their gritty, earthy groove sounded as if it burbled up from the mud around the river. Any major artist traveling to record in Muscle Shoals would have The Swampers as the studio band on their recorded albums. This group of musicians created such a distinctive sound that they were immortalized in the fourth verse of “Sweet Home Alabama” –

Now Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers
And they’ve been known to pick a song or two (yes they do)

Rick Hall founded FAME Studios in the late 1950s and grew into a shining beacon in the recording industry known not only for the music produced by his studio, but for providing an inclusive and welcoming space for all musicians at a time when our nation was just embarking on the glacial and embarrassingly long overdue process of desegregation. Musicians and popular recording artists continue to visit the area, occasionally performing in local venues to rehearse new material. We definitely missed this aspect of Florence and the Shoals during our visit. Maybe if we’d stayed over the weekend or ventured into town later in the evening, we may have caught some live music somewhere but we simply didn’t find anything happening during the day.

With the reputable music scene and rich musical history of the area, Florence should be a hot bed of live music and entertainment. I would like to experience more of the music scene should we return to Florence one day, but I’d rather discover whatever the authentic musical culture in Florence may be, rather than the tourist attractions of music festivals and staged concerts. We certainly saw enough flyers hanging in shop windows advertising local artists’ performances around town, we just didn’t hear any of the music. Maybe Florence just isn’t one of those places to display all it has to offer on first glance. This might be one of those times when a quick trip through an area doesn’t reveal the true soul of a town. Should we make it back to Florence in the future, we’d give the town a proper chance by figuring out a way to stay longer, become more intimate with the local culture, and spend more time seeking out the quiet melody that the river might yet play to those willing to listen.