Following his unique sound back to Shoals

Kevin Sport, a singer- songwriter from Greenville, has been in the music industry since the early 1990s, often lending his voice to songs for other artists or collaborating on projects for other musicians.

He even started hosting his own television show in 2008, but it wasn’t until 2020 when he would finally record something all his own.

“The story about ‘Alabama Soul’ is as organic as they come,” Sport said days before launching his concert in Muscle Shoals, where the project got its start.

Before getting into that story, Sport shared key moments in his career that brought him to where he is today — it’s a journey that has been many things but linear.

Since he was a boy, Sport has been most passionate about music, but as he chased that dream first to New York and then to Nashville, Tennessee, he’s found ways of incorporating his other early loves — theater performance, sports and food.

“My journey has been a little different than most,” he said. “You know, this business is tough enough, but I think if you can find your lane and you love what you do, I know it sounds cliché, but that’s a major win.”

After his time in college in the early 1990s, Sport headed to Nashville, but upon meeting Jack White, who founded Bob White Music, Sport landed a role in the stage play “Mama Hewitt’s Family Reunion and the All-Night Barbecue.”

“That’s how we met. Jack has helped me a lot throughout my career,” Sport said. “Eventually my journey took me back to Nashville, where I became a singer-songwriter in 1995. I took my first publishing gig with Bob White Music Company. I love to sing, and I love live performance. That’s how I started out.”

Going on to work with other publishers and collaborating on jingles for companies like Loyall Dog Food, Sport has trouble pinning down his genre. And he’s not all that eager to label it or pigeon-hole himself professionally either.

As he describes it, his sound lives somewhere “between crooner and Southern soul.” That versatility has allowed him to record with other artists from Nashville to the Shoals and beyond.

That love for music in general led him to starting his own show, “The Right Place,” which had an outreach to 60 million households airing on RFD-TV and ran from 2008 to 2016.

“It was a country music show, but really it was more than that,” he said. “I had a lot of singer-songwriters — yes, predominantly country — but we brought in guests from all over and from all types of genres. The tagline was, ‘You’re in the right place when you’re following your God-given dream.’ We’d perform, but we also had deep discussions about life — sharing personal stories that might encourage others.”

Before the launch of the show, Sport had reached out to Conecuh Sausage to see if the company would sponsor “The Right Place.” In forming that partnership, Sport was asked to write a jingle for the company, which led him on another new path.

“I had no idea it would become such a big part of my life,” he said. “We’ve had a long relationship, and that jingle really led me into what I now call the food and entertainment lane.” In that new lane, Sport began performing the jingle “Get Your Grill On” at any live event he was featured in, especially barbecue festivals and tailgates. In promoting his show, he also began holding tailgate events of his own, often taking the time to grill up some Conecuh Sausage and pass out samples to eager fans and listeners.

“I started appearing on barbecue shows where I’d perform alongside pitmasters. I’ve been a regular guest on the ‘John Boy and Billy Show,’” Sport said. “That’s how I met Carl ‘The Cook’ Lewis, a North Carolina pitmaster. We’ve done a lot of shows together, and Conecuh has always been a big part of that journey. One of my buddies put it best. He said, ‘Food gave you the opportunity to do exactly what you love,’ and he was right.”

All that live performing at regional food festivals around the Southeast came to a screeching halt with the onset of the COVID pandemic in 2020. Not ready to give up his greatest love, Sport decided to take the opportunity to work on something he’d been keeping to himself for many years.

Ready to get some of that work out in the open, he called an old friend and fellow songwriter, Mark Narmore, a native of the Shoals who has had songs recorded by Josh Turner, Alabama, Reba McEntire and Shenandoah.

Sport said he chose Narmore because of their shared musical influences.

“He plays the keys in such a way, I mean, he’s got soul in everything he does,” Sport said. “I called him up, he said yes, and we started Skyping. We started this project with no long-term vision, really. We were just doing something because I’d been writing this stuff, he had time to do it, and I needed to collaborate with somebody like him.”

After co-writing together, they took their finished songs to NuttHouse Studio in Muscle Shoals where they could finally meet in person. Sport and Narmore had help from area musicians and invited Christian and country singer Rachel Robinson to add vocals.

“We’re in the studio, and I realize, everyone on this song is from Alabama,” Sport said of his title track.

That realization inspired not only the name for the song, but the concept for a show. He pitched his idea for “Alabama Soul,” and Narmore and Robinson were quickly on board to help evolve the studio project into a full concert experience highlighting the variety of music that, meddled together, helped form the iconic Muscle Shoals sound.

Fittingly, Sport said, the concert will premiere in the Shoals with their very first “Alabama Soul Performance” happening next week at the Ritz Theatre.

“The three of us designed a show and chose songs that were directly from the Shoals. That sound has influenced so many people,” Sport said. “I don’t know if 10 people will show up or 200, but we had to do this, and we had to do the first one in Muscle Shoals. That was nonnegotiable. Once we start getting out there, I think and hope that what we’re doing will resonate with people the same way it resonates with us.”