"Bo Duke", John Schneider Making Appearance At Flora-Bama
Special show at the Flora-Bama brings multi-talented John Schneider to town
He may have started out as “just a good ol’ boy” but in the intervening decades John Schneider has been one of the busiest entertainers around charting number one hits, writing and directing movies as well as continuing his acting career.
The multi-talented Schneider has come a long way from the 1980s hit TV show “Dukes of Hazzard” and is taking time out of his busy schedule to play a special concert at the world-famous Flora-Bama on Saturday, Feb. 19. Click here to buy tickets and learn about the perks surrounding the appearance including the VIP experience and a ride in the show’s famous 1969 Dodge Charger.
“The balance of careers really takes care of itself,” John says. “We spend time recording an album and then there’s time spent mixing the album, which gives me time to be off either touring with music or working on a movie. When the movie is finished filming, there are many aspects of postproduction that need to be done, and if I am not doing them myself, then naturally so I don’t get bored, I am out on the road. I guess the moral to the story is that Alicia and I are both hard, hard workers who don’t really, at this point anyway, seem to need any downtime.”
While John’s road to fame was started by his role in the Dukes of Hazzard as Bo Duke that role in his nascent career hardly defines him today. A part of those days is still with him and the TV show’s famous car, the General Lee will be at the Bama for the show. One lucky fan can win a ride with John in the car and others can pay for a ride.
But since that early splash of popularity, he’s released nearly 40 albums, had five number hits on the country charts, four in the 1980s and the latest in 2019. His film appearances also number close to 40 and he’s also written, directed and appeared in several of his own productions which at the same time spawn other albums for the soundtracks. TV credits started in the 1980s and continue today as well.
“Now we just had a song released just a couple of days ago called ‘If I Was a Younger Man’ and that is off of our Southern Ways album and has a lot of the music from our latest movie which is called ‘Poker Run’ in it,” John said. “We’ve landed on an interesting way to do this. We make movies then the soundtrack to the movie is the music we release. I think it’s pretty great and I don’t think anybody else has done that. When a movie comes out an album is usually right on its heels. Or, when an album comes out a movie is right on its heels.”
The vast majority of the music and his own movies are put together by he and his wife Alicia working in tandem.
“My wife and I are a force to reckon with,” he said. “We’re a force of nature. We are totally independent. We have no label, there’s no promotion department. There’s none on the movie end either. We do what we want, when we want with whom we want. We go out there and peddle our wares. We sell it. All of the risk is ours but also all the reward is ours which is kind of cool. A lot of people like to howl at the machine and then try to slip into bed with the machine at the same time. The machine can kiss my butt.”
During the first year of the pandemic, Schneider found a way to get in front of crowds with more than 20 show dates in 2020 and close to 50 in 2021. This year he’s looking at 100 shows with his band including the Flora-Bama date.
“When the pandemic came and everybody turned their tail and hid in the basement, we started doing drive-in movie theaters and dirt tracks,” he said. “We will find work or we will create work and if we can’t then we’ll create a venue and do it anyway. Successful people don’t sit around and wait for things to happen. We don’t. We make things happen. If you’re afraid of hard work you have a little bitty dream. If you’re not then the sky’s the limit.”
The dirt track dates let Schneider indulge in yet another of his passions and that’s racing cars.
“We’re really hitting a great stride with the dirt tracks because I actually race dirt tracks, too,” John said. “We’ll show up at a dirt track and do a concert on a Friday night, then I’ll do the national anthem on Saturday before the race and then race. We’re kind of a unique circus that comes to town.”
While his most popular success musically was on the country charts, his shows and recordings these days harken back to his teen years listening to his favorite bands from that era.
“It was a great time and I’ll do some of those songs when we’re there,” he said of the chart-toppers. “We do more of our own Southern rock. I guess two or three albums ago we did one called Redneck Rebel. So, we’re going to do a bunch of songs from there. We don’t do cover songs but we sound like the stuff that was on the radio when I was in high school before Skynyrd’s plane crash and the Marshall Tucker Band. We do pretty hard-hitting Southern Rock.”
