Lonnie Holley is an acclaimed, Birmingham, AL-born and-based multi-disciplinary artist, art educator and musician, who has had a profoundly difficult, well-documented life: As a child, he was taken away from his family by a burlesque dancer, who then left him in the care of the proprietors of a whiskey house on the state fairgrounds.
Holley then wound up living in several foster homes, before spending time at the notorious Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children in Mount Meigs, where he suffered terrible abuse.
From the time he was a small boy — around five or so — Holley worked a variety of menial and/or backbreaking jobs: He picked up trash at a drive-in movie theater, washed dishes and picked cotton. He even has had stints as a chef and even a gravedigger.
His creative and artistic life began in earnest in 1979: Heartbroken by the death of his sister’s two children, who tragically died in a house fire, he carved tombstones out of a soft sandstone-like byproduct of metal casting, which he found discarded by a foundry near his sister’s house. Holley firmly believes that divine intervention led him to the material — and in turn, inspired his art.
He went on to make over carvings and began assembling them in his yard with various found objects. Locally, he began to occasionally be known as The Sand Man.
In 1981, Holley brought a few examples of his sandstone carvings to Richard Murray, the then-director of the Birmingham Museum of Art. Murray was so impressed that the museum displayed some of those pieces immediately.
Murray then introduced Holley to the organization of that year’s “More Than Land and Sky: Art from Appalachia” exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. This lead to Holley’s work being acquired by several renowned institutions including New York’s American Folk Art Museum, Atlanta’s High Museum of Art and others — and he has had his work displayed at The White House.
By the mid 1980s, Holley’s work had expanded to include paintings and recycled and found-object sculptures. His yard and the adjacent abandoned lots near his home became an immersive art environment, that was highly celebrated by the larger art world. Unfortunately, that art environment was frequently threatened by scrap metal scavengers. Worse yet, his work was tragically torn down as a result of the expansion of the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport.
Holley sued and eventually won a settlement against the airport authority. The airport authority paid him $165,700 to move his family and his work to a larger property in Harpersville, AL.
From 2003-2004, Holley created a sprawling, sculptural environment at the Birmingham Museum of Art’s lower sculpture garden as part of their “Perspective” series of site-specific installations. The creation of the installation was documented in Arthur Crenshaw’s film, The Sandman’s Garden and by photographer Alice Faye “Sister” Love.
He also installed sculptural work for the exhibition Groundstory: Tales from the shade of the South at Agnes Scott College’s Dalton Gallery, which ran from September 28, 2012 to November 17, 2012.
2012 was a very busy year for Holley: He released his full-length debut album Just Before Music that year. He quickly followed up with his sophomore effort, 2013’s Keeping a Record of It. He signed to Jagjaguwar Records, who released his third album, 2018’s MITH, an afford that featured a sound and approach informed and inspired by the blues, soul, avant-garde jazz and spirituals.
Holley’s fourth album, 2023’s Jacknife Lee-produced Oh Me, Oh My was a sharpening and refinement of MITH. Stirring in one moment and a balm the next, Oh Me, Oh My details histories both global and personal. The album featured an acclaimed collection of collaborators including R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, Sharon Van Otten, Moor Mother, Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and Rokia Koné, who serve as choirs of angels and co-pilots, assisting in giving Holley’s message flight, while reaffirming the man as a galvanizing, iconoclastic force.
The album also saw the refinement of Holley’s impressionistic, stream-of-consciousness lyrics. During each writing and recording session, Holley and Lee would discuss the essence of the song they were working on, and then attempt to distill Holley’s words to their most immediate and earnest center.
During each session Holley and Lee would discuss the essence of the song and distill the acclaimed multi-disciplinary artist’s word to their most immediate and earnest center.
His recently released fourth album Tonky derives its name from a childhood nickname given to him when he lived a portion of his childhood in a honky tonk. Holley has long been an incredibly gifted storyteller with a commitment to the oral tradition and Tonky puts this on full display. The album is as expansive in sound as it is in making a place for a wide range of featured artists to come through the door of the record and feel at home, no matter how they spend the time they get on a song.
The album sees Holley and his collaborators delighting in finding a sound and pressing it against another found sound and another until, before a listener knows it, they’re awash in a symphony of sound that feels like it stitches together as it’s washing over you. The album’s sound is the result of decades of endlessly evolving and experimentation, informed by Holley’s life.
Last Friday, Holley shared Tonky‘s latest single, album closing track “A Change Is Gonna Come.” Anchored around instrumental contributions from Jacknife Lee, Jordan Katz, Marlon Patton and Steve Dress, the slow-burning and meditative “Change Is Gonna Come” features twinkling keys, mournful horns, bursts of 808s and some soulful gospel-like background vocal wailing serving as a lush bed for the acclaimed Birmingham-born and-based artist’s soulful and expressive delivery.
Arguably, one of the more emotionally ambivalent songs of Holley’s growing catalog, “A Change Is Gonna Come” is about renewal and the limits of hope and faith that sees Holley asking the listener “Are we truly ready and prepared for that change?”
Directed by Matt Arnett and Ethan Payne, the accompanying video for “A Change Is Gonna Come” features Holley on presumably his property with a variety of America-themed tchotchkes, family heirlooms and broken statues. Throughout the video, we may be reminded that Holley is a survivor, but that he has a deep sense of kindness, fairness and an unwavering dignity.
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