“I spent my time between Dauphin Island Parkway and downtown Mobile growing up. My parents sent me to Leinkauf Elementary School. I was in the minority and learned a lot from that. Going over to my friends’ houses, I saw the differences, but I discovered the culture of music, hip hop, and dance. That set the foundation for my own music later on.

I was obsessed with Michael Jackson as a kid. My dad took me to his work conferences, and I was the entertainment. The DJ played Billie Jean, and I’d dance for everybody. That’s when I got into music.

My dad played guitar and sang, showing me different genres. My mom only played James Taylor. If you’re going to learn to write songs from somebody, James Taylor is a damn good one to learn from. My brother followed the Grateful Dead and eventually did stage design for Widespread Panic, Bruce Hornsby, and a bunch of different festivals. I got that side of music from him. I was blessed to have great influences around me and a lot of different styles.

Dad took me to see Prince in Mobile in ’97. Third row. I was ten years old. I remember Prince coming out and saying, ‘There ain’t no kids here tonight. We’re gonna burn this down.’ I was like, ‘I’m the only kid here. This is awesome.’

When I was twelve or thirteen, my dad played ‘Secret Agent Man’ by Johnny Rivers. It took me about a month to learn that one part on the guitar, but I finally got it. Then Dad taught me the basic chords, and I ran with it. But even before music, my English teachers nurtured my writing and told me I had a talent for it.

I went to Auburn, majored in Exercise Science, and was going to be a physical therapist. I barely graduated, but I was the only child in my family to get a degree. 

I played in psychedelic bands and blues bands–even played bass in a bluegrass band–for 10 or 15 years. I learned how to work a stage and an audience. During that time, I also got clean and quit the opioids.

Around 2014, I was singing in a way that wasn’t good for longevity. I was spitting up blood after a few shows and took time off to figure out how to pivot. I’d never really been a singer. I’m a pretty good songwriter and pretty good with bands, but not a singer. I rearranged my name from Bernard Palmer Breitung, and B.B. Palmer was created after that time.

Then I got evicted and slept in my car in parking lots between Opelika and Auburn for about a year while I was making my album, Lee County’s Finest. Walmart was always there for me. Sometimes I’d stay with friends or in the clubhouse at the apartment complex where I was working. My boss didn’t know.

After that record, I finally found a place I could afford. That’s where I found a copy of the Bhagavad Gita. That text started the whole creation of the Krishna Country EP.

When I was making Krishna Country, I’d just started working as a caregiver for a brilliant young man in Auburn who had cerebral palsy and was full chair-bound. Three months into that, I got a notice that my roommate’s sister was moving in, so I had to move out. I moved in with the guy I was working for and became his full-time caretaker. It was the best job I’ve ever had.

I was naturally built for caregiving because I’ve always waited on my family and served them. That job also came shortly after I found the Bhagavad Gita and learned you can find a lot of joy and peace by serving someone else. I became a part of his life, and he took care of me. It was symbiotic.

One of the hardest times was when my band went with another artist in 2023. I lost that family and means of getting my music all over the U.S. I was depressed and living at my grandma’s house in Demopolis, sleeping a lot and trying to get through it.

Aaron and Rosey Hill at Greenhouse Studio in Atlanta took me in and worked with me for three years on my new Alabama Samurai album. They pulled me out of my depression. They also found all the session players, and I had some really good people playing on this record: Laur Joamets (Sturgill Simpson), Landon Jordan (Young Jeezy), Bett Resnick (Zac Top, Kacey Musgraves), Mair Songs, Adam Higgins, Paul Wagner, and a lot more. 

Alabama Samurai is a working-through-frustration record. It’s also the shadow work of looking at the darkest parts of myself to become a more well-rounded person and release things that happened. I’ve had a few rebirths, and music is the best therapy I can get. 

I started tracking this album on my birthday, April 20, 2023. I was 36 years old. RZA and Wu-Tang were a massive influence on getting through my depression, and their first album is 36 Chambers. It all came together.

For the first decade of making music, I’d play my dad something, and he’d say, “I’ll be honest. This is terrible. You’re gonna have to find something else to do because this ain’t it.” After my first EP, he thought I had something. The other day, he told me he was proud of me and my music, and how I kept going. He sees all the influences he gave me start to emerge in this new album. It’s Waylon meets Wu-Tang.

I get my grit from my family. My mother and father are warriors and survivors. My granddad was a badass. He was a fighter pilot in World War II. He had nine children. He was an architect with his dad, who designed the Bankhead Tunnel. He lived up the road from Callaghan’s and got two beers at noon there every day. There are two pictures of him on the walls at Callaghan’s.

I’m named after my Dad’s father, Bernard. He was a great man, but didn’t do some things right.  He died young, and sometimes I feel like I’m a reincarnated version of him sent back to get some things right in this life. 

After all the ups and downs, I’m excited about this chapter of life and music. Alabama Samurai comes out at the end of the year, and I already have the next album that will be released next year. I want to change the younger generation’s interpretation of what country music can be. There’s nothing totally original under the sun, but there are ways to bring freshness to it, to color outside the lines. I hope to be to somebody what my heroes were to me—to keep music moving forward and keep it growing so it’s not stagnant.

That’s what success looks like from here.”

B.B. Palmer

B.B. is playing a sold-out show with Jacob Brock at Callaghan’s Irish Social Club and presented by Mobile Bay Radio on Aug. 1.

Here’s the song “Maggie” from the upcoming album Alabama Samurai.

Photos by Mike Dumas

B.B. with the World War II photo of his grandfather at Callaghan’s Irish Social Club (photo by Mike Dumas)