How Sweet It Is – The Loft Seeks to Soothe the Soul with New Live-Music Series “Sweet South”

Music, sweet music, filled the air in downtown Columbus on a warm Wednesday evening in November. The streets were alive and abuzz as middle-aged rock and rollers poured out of restaurants and bars on Broadway, giddy to see classic rock favorites “Foreigner” on their farewell tour stop at the RiverCenter.

Meanwhile, the sweet sound of live music wafted from the Loft’s balcony onto the street below and baptized believers and non-believers alike. Such a vibrant school-night scene has been missing for far too long.

“We don’t want you to worry about a thing,” local maestro Jesse Shelby tells a small but attentive audience in the Loft’s Listening Room.

Shelby’s greeting comes at 7 p.m. sharp, the start time for Sweet South — a new free live-music series at the Loft on Wednesday nights. Sweet South arrives with a two-fold purpose: give music-lovers a fun night out during the work week which gets them home at a decent hour; and give musicians the opportunity to collaborate and explore the treasures of the Great Southern Songbook.

Shelby’s intro ushered in a cover of Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” (“Don’t worry / About a thing / Because every little thing / Is going to be alright”) and kicked off a stellar set of covers which painted that magical, mythical Songbook with a broad, masterful brush. Fronting his hand-picked quartet, Shelby (guitar/vocals) is joined by the talented cast of Chris Helms (silky-smooth saxophone / Hammond B3 organ), Martell Hughes (on-time, other-worldly drums), and Jason DeBlanc (groove-tastic bass). The band is soon joined by former Columbus favorite Lylie Mae, who delivers a delicate, yet powerful, vocal jazz scat on several songs.

With the band behind her, Lylie Mae presided over choice nugs like Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay,” and Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Bad Moon Rising.” She closed out her jam session with Ma Rainey’s “Farewell Daddy Blues.” This is where the band launched sounds from the New Orleans funk group, The Meters, and finished their first set.

Later in the night, Shelby and the boys swung for the fences on a sprawling, rollicking take of gospel classic “I’ll Fly Away.” Whew! The Great Southern Songbook, indeed.

“There is a Southern focus with the songs we play,” Shelby explains by phone a week later. “Blues, zydeco, jazz, rock — all came out of the South. These are the styles where everybody playing feels at home. It’s a native language for us.”

The musicians he chose for the gig are “so incredibly professional” they were able to perform that night’s far-flying material with no rehearsal, he says. The band and setlist are specially planned (or sometimes ‘half-planned, half unplanned’), with space for special guests to show up and pick a few tunes to play.

“I feel super lucky to share the stage with these talented musicians,” says Shelby. “It’s one thing to have a real tight band you play with all the time, but it’s exciting to mix and match both musicians and material outside of what we all normally do. That’s the gumbo.”

Noted local musician and producer Jason Ezzell — fresh off his much-praised role in managing the music stages on both days of the Rush South Music Fest — serves as co-host of Sweet South with Shelby.

The two rotate Wednesdays in the weekly series, but both hosts share the same commitment to fostering a welcoming place for talented local players — one that spans genres and generations, inviting fresh faces and new instruments to grace the stage.

Ezzell is certainly no stranger to the Loft’s stage. He ran the Wednesday Open Mic for years and has played there with several bands, including his buddies in seminal Columbus jam band Skydog Gypsy, who he played with in their early days. Many of the artists he recorded and produced at his Spinnaker Studios (Zac Young, Julianna Money) have headlined shows at the Loft.

“When Jesse and I first sat down and talked to [The Loft’s owner Buddy Nelms] about this,” recalls Ezzell, “we talked about the soulful connection the Loft used to have on Wednesday nights. Jessie and I then had a conversation about it and we decided to take it [on] because we felt like, with the right people, we could make it something really special.”

Now with the right talent assembled, Ezzell says he’s excited to partner with new players and work on material that’s new to him. “Yes, we are celebrating the classic music from the South —but a lot of people overlook a lot of things from it. OutKast is Southern music. REM is Southern music. It’s not all country-fied and roots rock. We’re starting to dig in to get a pretty deep song list, instead of everything sounding like four chords then a slide solo.”

Beyond expanding the scope of what’s considered part of the Great Southern Songbook, Ezzell also has an aim toward what he called “future sight.”

“I want to get to the point where Jesse and I can turn this over to some younger talent and keep it going,” Ezzell continues. “There is some animosity around here, about the same people doing the same stuff all the time. I don’t want to perpetuate that any more than anyone else. I want to be able to stumble across a 20-30 year old person and realize, ‘That is the person who needs to be leading the next generation in this town.’”

As owner/operator of the Loft, Buddy Nelms has a unique perspective on the torch passing between generational talent, as he has overseen a stage that’s basically been the only game in town for 30-plus years.

When dozens of area musicians came to the Loft to jam in a mournful tribute to beloved, late musician Kenny Lewis this past spring, the vibe was “real warm,” Nelms recalls, “A heartfelt reunion.” It is in that very familing feeling, that communal spirit, that inspired Nelms to bring back Wednesday night to the live-music rotation.

That night was the first thing the Loft had hosted on a Wednesday since COVID, before which the gentlemen jammers in Mango Strange raged deep into the night for several years. Inspired, Nelms then made “a dream of mine” come true and bought a Hammond B3 organ— the longtime, signature sound in Georgia’s soulful blend of blues, and now a focal point for the Sweet South series.

Jokingly calling himself “a recovering Southern Baptist,” Nelms believes this cherished instrument — the heartbeat of gospel music traditions, beloved for its cascading waterfalls of sound — will “take people to church.”

“I’ve long considered the Loft to be a church — a church without guilt,” he says.

“When you go to church, you’re looking for something. When you climb those stairs up into the Loft, you’re also looking for something. And you can have a real spiritual moment there. Because we have that kind of fellowship; we celebrate with music, we break bread together. You can come in for a Wednesday night and, you know, life is pretty good for a moment.”

By Frank Etheridge