Chris Hicks: The Soulful Shredder of Macon
Held Here: Presence in Profile is a series highlighting the artists, archivists, entrepreneurs, and visionaries who have shaped Macon’s cultural identity. Each subject is someone who planted roots and, through their work and presence, have helped preserve the city’s creative spirit for the next generation.
This installment features Chris Hicks, a hometown guitar hero whose Southern Rock credentials stretch from Lizella to the Fillmore East and back again. Known for his long tenure with the Marshall Tucker Band and his deep Macon roots, Hicks is as generous with his riffs as he is with his heart. Whether he’s swapping stories on Southern Rock Insider, gigging at Grant’s Lounge, or jamming with Robert Lee Coleman, he carries the past and Macon’s soundtrack forward with every note. In fact, Chris IS the soundtrack of Macon.
More than a player, Chris has become a connective thread in Middle Georgia’s musical fabric, linking elder bluesmen, Southern Rock architects, touring legends, and the next generation of players who now share stages across the region.
There are some people whose guitar strings seem to run straight through the streets of Macon, connecting dusty barrooms to big stages, rehearsal spaces to radio airwaves, memory to momentum. Chris Hicks is one of them. A hometown player with a road warrior’s spirit, he’s lived the life so many dream about and he’s stayed grounded right where it all began.
More than that, he has become the living center of a musical web that stretches from Macon's Black church basements and Cherry Street barrooms to arenas in forty states. If you follow every thread far enough, it leads back to Chris.
Over time, that spirit made him a rare kind of musician: one who moved easily between local jam circles and national stages, carrying stories, songs, and relationships back and forth until the distance between Macon and the wider music world felt smaller. And if you ever hear a guitar solo soar across a summer night and think, “Yeah, that’s Macon,” there’s a good chance Chris Hicks is behind it.
Chris Hicks, Marshall Tucker Band Singer/Guitarist, practicing in studio, January 6, 2024. Photo by Tom Pacheco.
Guitar in Hand, Soul in the Soil
Some musicians seek the spotlight. Some can’t wait for the next town or the next award. Chris Hicks? He just wants the next good lick, the next story to turn into song, the next jam with musicians he loves. He’s been everywhere from Lizella back porches to the Fillmore East, from Grant’s Lounge to riding shotgun with Stevie Ray Vaughan. And yet, he’s an every man with every road bending him back to Macon, the place that raised him, shaped him, and keeps him grounded while the music never stops.
And don’t ever try to stop Chris. His cheerful energy carries him from one new adventure to the next before you can even holler “encore!”
Chris isn’t just part of Macon’s musical story, he is Macon’s musical story. And our dang good Ambassador, wherever he goes. After 27 years touring with the Marshall Tucker Band (MTB), he’s been around.
Born in Lizella, Georgia, a few miles west of town, Chris came up strumming mountain music with his grandfather on mandolin, playing proms with his high school band, and gigging at every dance hall and roadhouse that would have him. That same boy now stands as one of Southern Rock’s most enduring and endearing figures. Yet, in all his road gigging, he never left home. Not really.
Home, for Chris, has been an anchor more than a stopping place, the point from which every journey begins and the place where the music returns to be shared.
He still lives near Macon, out in Lizella country. Still plays Grant’s Lounge on Poplar Street. Still shows up at GABBA Fest and Society Garden. Still walks the same streets as Otis, Little Richard, and the Allmans before him.
“My first album was the Allman Brothers Band (ABB) At Fillmore East on 8-track,” Chris says. “Duane Allman has more influence on my playing than anyone. I still find myself pulling licks that came from what I heard on that record.”
Chris has learned through the years to trust his playing, and trust his ideas. He’s adamant about believing he can do things. He’ll advise young people, too, to break through those self-imposed barriers and believe they can achieve.
All that playing, and believing, has paid off for Chris.
From Lizella to the Legends
At 16, Chris got a call from Jaimoe. Yes, that Jaimoe, drummer for the ABB, who were holed up in a cabin in the woods near Chris’s neighborhood.
The Brothers spent plenty of time out there, working up songs, fishing, jamming through the nights. Word got around fast about the teenage guitar player in Lizella who could hold his own, and soon enough, Jaimoe called to see if Chris wanted to come out and sit in. That first jam wasn’t just a thrill, it opened the back door into Southern Rock’s most legendary circle, a place Chris still carries with him every time he plugs in.
“That call was freaky,” Chris laughs. “Not to mention how freaky it was to jam with Jaimoe again and again.”
It wasn’t just one gig. It became a formative friendship to this day and a backstage pass into the South’s evolving music way back when. As a teenager, he’d head over to Capricorn Records, just to watch the legends lay down tracks, sometimes even jump in himself.
He cut his teeth with his group Loose Change, opening for regional icons like Charlie Daniels, the Atlanta Rhythm Section, and The Outlaws. Under Alan Walden’s management, they recorded in Muscle Shoals, launching a regional vinyl that caught attention and even landed them on a Jim Varney film soundtrack with the song “Love is on the Line.” That led Chris to join The Outlaws in 1989 and later to the MTB in 1996, where he’s remained ever since.
Loose Change kept the wheels rolling, picking up any stage they could find in beach towns, college bars, roadside dives, never knowing when luck might call them back home. One night, on a sandy stage in Panama City Beach, Chris’s phone rang. They were asked to open for Jefferson Starship at the Macon Coliseum. When they later popped open the van doors at the Coliseum’s loading dock, grills and beach sand spilled out everywhere.
“Their road crew saw us struggling with our raggedy gear,” Chris says. “They could’ve laughed us off, but they didn’t. They helped us set up, taught us tricks. That kind of help didn’t happen a lot in this business, but I’ll always remember it.”
Moments like that made all the miles worth it. The road might’ve been rough, but every gig brought Chris closer to the stages and studios that would shape the rest of his life.
Early Mentors and Macon’s Living Blues
Back when Chris was just a teenage kid getting calls from Jaimoe, and his head was filling up with big dreams, two other men opened their sacred circle and let him stand inside: Bobby O’Dea and Robert Lee Coleman.
“Bobby and Robert were great mentors to me,” Chris says, paying tribute to them and their generosity.
Bobby O’Dea was a pillar of Macon’s restless groove, an organist, bandleader, and the kind of big brother who raised up a whole generation of local players. They say Bobby kept the doors open at The Rookery, that Cherry Street institution where the stage might host everyone from Jaimoe to Calvin Arline, Clarence Roddy, and Slim Powell, former bandmates of Sam & Dave, Otis Redding, and Percy Sledge. Long before Bragg Jam was born at The Rookery, Bobby’s open mics and legendary jam sessions brought Macon’s music family together.
And then there was Robert Lee Coleman, truly an unsung hero in the history of Southern music. Born in Macon on May 15, 1945, Robert grew up under the influence of his guitar-playing stepfather, and like so many greats, got his first taste of the spotlight playing gospel in church. By his teens, he was leading an extraordinary group of young musicians called the Underground Railroad, a name that must have carried powerful weight for a Black kid in the Deep South of the 1960s.
One night in 1964, Alabama soul singer Percy Sledge dropped by to hear them play at the Two Spot, Clint Brantley’s club on Fifth Street. Percy was so blown away he recruited nineteen-year-old Robert into his band. Just two years later, Sledge released “When a Man Loves a Woman,” the first Southern soul song to ever top the Billboard Hot 100, with Robert’s guitar in the mix.
Robert’s talent carried him to James Brown’s stage in 1970. For three electrifying years, he toured and recorded with the Godfather of Soul and the newly formed JBs, his guitar groove became the backbone of “Hot Pants” and “Make It Funky,” and you can still hear his riffs on Revolution of the Mind, recorded live at the Apollo.
But no matter how far the road stretched, Robert always came home to Macon, just like Chris does to this day.
Through most of the 1980s, Robert Lee Coleman and Bobby O’Dea anchored the house band at The Rookery, the kind of band where any night might bring in Jaimoe, Big Mike, Tinsley Ellis, Chris himself, or even Dickey Betts. Sitting in with them meant Chris was stepping into Macon’s living, breathing songbook.
Macon’s past, present, and future were all jamming together in that tight corner bar. Mentorship moved through glances and generosity. Through grooves. Chris soaked up every lesson and unspoken code of Macon musicianship: keep your eyes on the bandleader, feel the spaces between the notes, and when it’s your turn, make space and open the circle for the next kid.
These days, if an electric city bus passes you on a street in Macon, you might see Robert Lee Coleman’s face rolling by, a full-color portrait paying tribute to a man who still holds court around Macon, still mentoring by example.
Mr. Robert Lee Coleman:
Chris Hicks’ mentor, standing in front of the Macon, Georgia, bus with his portrait, 2022.
Photo by Bill Brookins
Bobby O’Dea may be gone, but ask anyone who played Cherry Street back in the day and they’ll tell you: Bobby was a saint, a big brother who raised them all, including Chris.
In the Studio
Producer Paul Hornsby remembers Chris’ early days well. In his book, Fix it in the Mix: A Memoir, Hornsby writes:
“Chris was a young hot-shot guitar player around town. Alan Walden brought him into Muscadine Studios when he was with Loose Change, and even after they broke up, Chris kept coming back. He’d cut his own stuff, work with other people — he just loves to make music. When we did his record Dog Eat Dog World, he cut one of my songs, ‘Georgia Moon.’ I always heard Gregg Allman singing that one in my head, but Chris brought it home — he’s got the voice for it. We became buddies, and we still do shows together now and then. He’s an exciting performer, and he brought new life to the Marshall Tucker Band.”
Paul would know. Before was Capricorn’s go-to producer and before he founded Muscadine Studio, Hornsby was bandmates with Gregg and Duane Allman in Hour Glass, the band he’s often said captured the ABB sound first. He and Chris still play together now and then, just like he said. They even shared the stage during a 2024 holiday show at The Society Garden, one of Macon’s most beloved outdoor venues. Tucked under the trees in the Vineville neighborhood, The Society Garden is a music-lover’s oasis, where hometown legends and rising acts take turns under the string lights. If there’s any musical justice, Paul and Chris will be back on that stage together, and soon.
Paul has spent a lifetime anchored in Macon’s studios and on its stages, helping shape the city’s sound. Through Hornsby, Chris gained studio experience and a deeper understanding of how Macon’s sound was built, sustained, and taken beyond any single era.
If Paul Hornsby is one root in Chris’ life, Alan Walden is another, just as tangled in Macon’s musical soil and as impossible to pull out, even if you tried for a thousand years. (His photo is also on that electric bus, next to Robert Lee Coleman.)
Alan famously auditioned nearly 200 bands before discovering Lynyrd Skynyrd, then managed some of the South’s biggest acts in the same circle of legends that Chris Hicks would one day call friends and bandmates, with Macon at the center of it all. Alan and his brother Phil Walden were the beating heart, and sometimes the competing heart, of Capricorn Records, the label that turned Macon into the cradle of Southern Rock.
This town wouldn’t be what it is to music without the Waldens’ vision and stubborn love for the artists they believed in. Alan doesn’t give praise lightly. But here’s what he wrote about Chris in his book Southern Man: Music and Mayhem in the American South:
“Chris Hicks should have been right up there with Clapton and Duane and all of the rest. This cat plays fantastic guitar — not good guitar, great guitar. He’s since pretty well taken over The Marshall Tucker Band. Chris Hicks is a powerful singer, too... I’d put Chris up against anybody in the world. Pay attention to him.”
Praise from Walden placed Chris within a lineage of players who defined Southern music, affirming what Macon musicians already knew: he belonged to the continuum. Alan’s words said it plainly. Chris isn’t just another player, he’s the real thing, and he’s ours.
Not everything Chris created during those years made it onto a record or a marquee. For a stretch of time, he and guitarist Tim Brooks, one of Macon's most ferociously gifted players, performed together occasionally at Rooster's as a duo satirically called Dixie Hicks & Honkey Kong, two men on chairs with acoustic guitars conjuring a sound large enough to fill arenas.
Kyler Mosely holds a live recording of them working through "Whipping Post," and to hear it, he'll tell you, is to hear Chris channel the raw, marrow-deep authority of Gregg Allman while two guitars intertwine until you can't tell them apart. Few people have heard that recording. It sits quietly in Kyler's archive alongside dozens of other small pieces of sonic gold from Macon's uncelebrated years. It’s proof that some of the most extraordinary music this city ever made happened in rooms that weren't being documented, between players who never needed a record deal to know what they had.
The Day Paul Needed a Wingman
Paul Hornsby is humble and down-to-earth, nothing fancy or flashy about him. He built one of the greatest production careers in Southern Rock history from behind the glass, not out front, and if you ask him, he'll tell you the music was always the point, never the fuss around it. So when accolades started rushing his way, he sought a traveling companion. First, his hometown of New Brockton, Alabama, declared a Paul Hornsby Day in his honor not long after he head been inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 2010, and a mural of him went up in nearby Dothan alongside Ray Charles and Hank Williams Sr.
Paul needed someone steady by his side, so he called Chris Hicks.
Of all the people in his world, the legends he'd produced, the players he'd worked with over fifty years, Paul chose his friend from Macon. Chris made the trip to New Brockton with him, sat with him through the afternoon ceremonies and helped him navigate the strange, humbling experience of being publicly honored. Paul even admitted later that he pulled Chris out front to help with some singing because, as a producer and musician, singing was never his comfort zone.
What Paul didn't know was that Chris had been quietly working behind the scenes for weeks. The Minutes, Paul's old band from his pre-Capricorn days, had secretly contacted Chris and asked him to help them rehearse a song to perform in Paul's honor at the evening ceremony. Chris kept the secret, worked with the band, and on the night of the event, when The Minutes took the stage and played the song they'd prepared for him, Paul's face told the whole story.
"I know it was a surprise," Chris says, "because of the look on his face."
That is Chris Hicks in a single image. Present when called, working when no one's watching, and making sure someone else's moment lands like it should. Paul Hornsby spent decades doing that for other artists. On Paul Hornsby Day, Chris was happy and able to return the favor.
A Good Man, A Great Player
Yes, we should pay attention to Chris. Because he isn’t coasting. Not even close. Friends, fans, and fellow players will tell you the same thing: his talent runs deep, but his kindness runs deeper. He makes folks feel seen, welcomed, and part of the music. Maybe that’s why he’s got a fan club cheering him on from Macon to Muscle Shoals and back again. They know they’re not just following a star, they’re standing with a good-hearted friend who lifts everybody higher.
If you doubt it, scroll his Chris Hicks & Friends Facebook page sometime. The comments read like a chorus of gratitude stretching for miles.
That warmth is how Chris moves through the world.
He once decided to teach himself the banjo, an instrument notorious for humbling even the most confident musicians. He set aside a weekend, stocked up on determination (and a little herbal encouragement), and dug in.
Playing the banjo is no joke, even for a gifted guitarist, and Chris can play just about anything with strings (but no horns), so he knows music, strummin’ and pickin’. The rolls refused to roll, though. He couldn’t catch that muscle memory and nearly quit. Nearly put that banjo down as Sunday night was fast approaching.
But he didn’t give up.
He stayed long enough for his hands to catch up with his ears. Then that beautiful shift happened, the one musicians long for. The patterns aligned and Chris’ rhythm landed on those five stubborn strings. The instrument that had just been fighting him began to speak back, and then sing. What emerged for Chris was technique and knowing. But the bigger outcome was how he pushed through resistance, even his own, instead of retreating from it.
That small, private victory reveals so much about Chris beyond his musicianship. By pushing through to learn that danged banjo, we see Chris’ character become more defined. And we see how he views the world. His curiosity in playing the instrument was really discipline, his devotion was sturdy enough to outlast frustration, and his persevering showed his determination to stick with something until it opens, like a flower.
Discipline, devotion, perseverance concentrated in learning something new. This is the same unseen labor every working musician endures. Those long hours of practicing and dreaming make their performance look effortless to mere mortals like us. But at home in their bedrooms and garages, they are playing through the awkwardness and bad notes until something beautiful emerges.
Chris approaches life the same way. Where others might see obstacles first, Chris registers possibilities. He sees arrangements not yet tried, songs not yet written, conversations not yet had. His mind moves quickly, leaping toward what might be built rather than what could fail. And there lies his success as a performer and a human being.
His velocity never leaves people behind, though. He slows to meet them when necessary. In rehearsal, after a show, or in the familiar gravity of hometown gatherings, he listens fully and makes room. The warmth people feel in his presence is practiced, an opening of his heart as deliberate as any scale or chord progression.
And then there is the grin. It arrives early, often followed by a shoulder bounce or quick lean-in, as if laughter is queued up just beneath the surface. Because it is. Chris seems perpetually on the verge of releasing joy through gesture, timing, or a perfectly placed aside that breaks tension and invites everyone closer. People feel welcomed before they realize why.
Joy, in his case, is not lightness. Far from it. He’s lived. He knows life’s challenges. His joy is steadiness. Chris may spend his days performing on stage to thousands across the country, reveling in their applause, yet he can still come home, sit patiently inside the small, complicated stories that shape a community, and not turn away. He stays present. He stays kind. He stays engaged with life-long friends and new ones.
Talent open doors, yes, but character like Chris’ invites people inside.
And the banjo weekend? His whole life has been the same bet, over and over, that sticking with something for long enough will make it sing.
What Making It Actually Looks Like
There are people who look at Chris Hicks and feel a pang of something like regret on his behalf. He's that good, they say. Paul Hornsby said it. Alan Walden said it. Chris is a world-class guitar player and singer. He could have been huge. As if the life he's built somehow doesn't count as making it. He’s had thirty years with one of Southern Rock's most storied bands, a solo catalog that spans decades, a name that makes legends light up when they say it, and a hometown that claims him like a favorite son.
Let's be clear: Chris made it.
He made it the way the best musicians make it, not through a single breakout moment that gets replayed on VH1, but through the long, sustaining work of building a life entirely inside the music. He has played arenas and juke joints, festivals and funerals, recording sessions and front porches. He has toured nationally for three decades, recorded with legends, and never once had to pretend to be something he isn't. The music has always been enough, because he has always been fully, joyfully, stubbornly in it.
Fame is a narrow definition of success, and it was never really Chris's measure. His measure is different: Is the music honest? Is the room alive? Are the people around him lifted up? By those standards, Chris has been succeeding since the night Jaimoe called a teenager in Lizella and asked if he wanted to come jam.
There's also something worth naming about longevity. In a business that chews through talent and spits out burnout cases with frightening regularity, Chris is still here, still wanted, still playing, still curious.
That doesn't happen by accident. It happens because the people who matter in this industry, like the Jaimoes, the Paul Hornsbys, the Alan Waldens, the Outlaws, the MTB, trust him. Not just with their stages. With their music and their legacy.
And then there's what the spreadsheet doesn't capture. The fan who drives four hours to see him play. The young guitarist who got a phone call back. The musician friend who knows that if Chris is on the bill, the night will be good, not just musically good, but humanly good. That kind of making it echoes further than a platinum record and lasts a whole lot longer.
Running with the Outlaws
By 1989, Chris Hicks had paid enough dues to fill a jukebox. He'd opened for Charlie Daniels and the Atlanta Rhythm Section with Loose Change, recorded in Muscle Shoals, and played every beach bar and roadhouse stage the Southeast could offer. He was ready for the next level and the next level came in the form of The Outlaws.
Formed in Tampa in 1972 and one of the first Southern Rock acts signed to Arista Records under the legendary Clive Davis, The Outlaws built their reputation on a triple-guitar attack, tight three-part harmonies, and songs that hit like a freight train and lingered like a summer storm. Green Grass and High Tides alone could fill an arena. These were serious players, and they ran a serious operation. When they brought Chris in, it was an acknowledgment of something his Macon mentors had known for years. Chris belongs on big stages.
Chris spent years in The Outlaws' orbit, touring the national circuit at a time when Southern Rock was fighting to hold its ground in a changing musical landscape. He was there because the music still had fire in it, and so did he. That tenure planted him firmly in the wider Southern Rock family, building friendships and professional trust with the musicians who populated that world, and setting the stage for everything that came next.
Nowhere was that trust more vivid than on the Southern Spirit Tour, a rolling thunder of Southern Rock royalty with The Outlaws, MTB, .38 Special, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, and The Barefoot Servants, all on the same bill, night after night. On that tour, Chris wasn't just part of the show. He helped make the show.
"Van Zant was out of .38 a couple nights, and I got up and sang his parts on 'Wild-Eyed Southern Boys,'" Chris recalls. "Nobody sits in with .38. But before it was over, they were pulling us out onstage."
Nobody sits in with .38 Special. Except Chris. Because by that point, every musician on that tour knew what Macon had known all along. When Chris Hicks is in the building, you want him on your stage.
That’s the kind of trust Chris inspires, and moments like that just keep finding him.
Catching a Ride
Chris has been known to show up in the right places, trusted by legends, stumbling into these moments that become folklore. One night, after one of Charlie Daniel’s Volunteer Jams, where Lynyrd Skynyrd played their first reunion show, Chris missed the shuttle bus back to the hotel.
No problem. He started walking when a car pulled over. And who was inside?
“Stevie Ray Vaughan and his people,” Chris says. “I sat down next to Stevie Ray. He and B.B. King and Toy Caldwell had just finished jamming. That was the kind of night it was.” It was the kind of night that defines Chris’ career: serendipitous, star-studded, loaded with sound, and soaked in story.
Hard Work and Heart
For all his road miles, Chris has never lost touch with what grounds him: family and hard work.
“My dad taught me to work hard at anything if you expect good results,” Chris says. “He’s a hard worker to this day. My mom taught me to be true to myself and my own heart. She does that every day, too. She always know what’s right, know what’s wrong.”
Chris remembers his grandpa, the man who taught him his first chords, with a warmth that never fades. “I’d love to talk to him again and pick a few.”
That same faithfulness runs through every corner of Chris's life in Lizella.
Chris’ musical education started in a concrete-floored garage right there in Lizella, just down from his own house. Kyler Mosely, his distant kin, neighbor, and one of his oldest friends, had rigged a drop cord from his bedroom window, snaked it through the yard, and lit up a room with no door and no electricity. Tim Brooks and the Alien Sharecroppers rehearsed there. Others wandered in off the street because the sound carried that far.
Kyler had actually heard 8-year-old Chris play guitar for the first time ever at Chris's grandfather's house and he never forgot it. Both of them, it turned out, were paying attention to things that would define the rest of their lives.
Tim Pinson has been Chris’ friend since high school, when the two of them played in a band together as teenagers cutting their teeth on Middle Georgia stages. Chris and Tim Pinson jammed in Kyler’s garage and they had also been shaped by Mr. Eddie Cannon, the Lizella guitar teacher who had one of the first eight-track recording setups in the entire Southeast. A kid from this quiet stretch of Middle Georgia having access to that kind of instruction and equipment was no small thing.
These days, Tim is the bassist and beating heart of Lizella Reign, the community band that rehearses every Wednesday in the wooden shed Tim built behind his house on South Lizella Road. The band has lovingly nicknamed the little wooden shed The Pinsonian Institute. When Chris is off the road from MTB, he'll swing by, shake every hand, pull up a chair on the screened porch with the rest of them. No announcement. No fuss. Just a man coming home.
Kyler Mosely, now president of GABBA and co-host of The Whipping Post Radio Hour on 100.9 The Creek, lives just across the street from Tim and he’s often settled into a porch chair when Chris arrives. He’s the same Kyler who first heard Chris play at his grandfather's house more than half a century ago.
Four times now, Chris has brought Lizella Reign with him as his backing band for solo local dates, putting his oldest friends on stage in an act of loyalty so plainly felt that no one has to say what it means.
At a recent Loose Change reunion at The Society Garden, assembled to honor the life of Dave Peck, Chris stood at the microphone and dedicated his original song "Smile" to Kyler as a recognition. The weight of decades landed in that gesture, everything from a concrete garage with a drop cord to the stages both of them had helped fill. Kyler didn't need the spotlight to earn that moment. He just had to show up, as he always has, and listen.
Lizella didn't produce musicians by accident. It raised them with intention and passed guitar knowledge and musical standards from one generation to the next, the way most families pass land.
Every note Chris plays now is a little piece of that old porch music and Lizella spirit his grandfather, and neighbors, passed on to him.
Marshall Tucker Band and the Blueprint
To understand what it means that Chris has spent nearly thirty years with the MTB, you have to understand what the MTB was, and is.
Formed in Spartanburg, South Carolina, in 1972, and signed to Capricorn Records in 1973, MTB arrived on the Southern Rock scene as something genuinely different. Where the Allman Brothers burned with blues fire and Lynyrd Skynyrd came in loud and defiant, the MTB brought a wider palette of jazz flute, country twang, gospel warmth, and soul, all wrapped around melodies that could make a grown man pull over on the highway just to finish hearing the song.
They were Capricorn's second great act, and the label, rooted right here in Macon, of course, treated them accordingly.
Their run in the mid-1970s was extraordinary. Seven gold albums. Three platinum records. “Can't You See,” written by guitarist Toy Caldwell, became one of Southern Rock's defining anthems and it hasn’t aged because it was never really about a particular moment, it was about the feeling of every moment. “Heard It in a Love Song” climbed to #14 on the pop charts in 1977. If you grew up in Middle Georgia in that decade, these songs would have been playing in the background, and they were our air.
Who produced those gold and platinum records? Paul Hornsby. The same Paul Hornsby who later recorded Chris Hicks at Muscadine Studios. The same Paul Hornsby who put his arm around Chris and invited him to Paul Hornsby Day. Before Chris ever set foot on a MTB stage, the sonic blueprint of that band had already passed through the same hands that shaped Chris's own recordings. That's not coincidence.
In Macon's music world, that's how the lineage works. The same people, the same rooms, the same love of the same sound is passed forward through time like a song learned by ear.
When Chris joined MTB in 1996, he stepped into a story that had been building his whole life, and one that ran from a Capricorn Records studio on College Street through Paul Hornsby's console at Muscadine, out to arenas across the country, and back home again. Twenty-seven years later, he's still here. Not because he had nowhere else to go but because there's nowhere else he'd rather be.
Still Hungry, Always Creating
Chris thinks fast, talks fast, plays faster, and that’s how he’s become a bridge between eras: one foot in the golden days, one in the now, and both hands toting the legacy onward.
On the Southern Rock Insider YouTube series, Chris’s curiosity drives the conversation. His deep knowledge of the music and the players comes out in quick, engaging bursts; stories from a musician who’s just as excited to look back as he is to look ahead, constantly uncovering connections and opening new doors within Southern Rock.
In short, Chris is a delightful host: part historian, part showman, part musical detective.
He’s sat down for candid, two-part interviews with Capricorn legends like Willie Perkins, Alan Walden, and Paul Hornsby; spotlighted his original band, Loose Change; and caught up with newer voices like Crawford & Power. He’s also delved into the careers of fellow, local Southern Rock veterans like Steve Hammond, sharing rich stories and letting Hammond reflect on his own journey, and Eddie Stone, exploring his musical path and influences.
Between guests, Chris turns the camera inward, riffing on the greats, like Toy Caldwell, the Outlaws, Southern guitar gods and their gear, with sharp insight and a reverence only a fellow musician can offer. Best of all, he’ll often grab a guitar mid-conversation and sing a few bars that light up the screen. His personality is bright, infectious, and full of heart, showing Chris as an entertainer and archivist. Watching him feels less like a show and more like swapping stories on the back porch with a friend who’s seen it all and still can’t wait for what’s next.
In many ways, the series functions as an oral history in motion, preserving memories, relationships, and musical knowledge that might otherwise fade with time.
Through every gig, every late-night jam, every Southern Rock Insider episode, and every song traded across a smoky stage, Chris has become the keeper of countless musical kinships, proof that Southern Rock is a living, growing family, not just a genre.
And maybe that’s his true gift. Chris is a lodestar at the heart of Southern Rock. His spark has connected him to more musicians than any map could hold.
Just think: the MTB alone has seen more than 30 members pass through over the decades, each one carrying their own network of songs, stages, and sidemen. Trace those branches out far enough and you’d find Chris standing right at the center of the music universe, a true Six Degrees of Southern Rock, keeping the circle alive, bridging eras, genres, and generations in a way few musicians manage, and fewer still sustain.
Chris carries the torch for the ones who came before, keeps the circle unbroken for the ones who’ve passed on, and opens the door wide for the next ones still to come. He also holds their songs in his hands, picking up their licks, telling their stories, and making sure the music never stays in one place too long.
Ideas Keep Knocking
He’ll tell you he’s done everything he ever dreamed of, yet not nearly enough. Because for Chris, the riffs keep buzzing, the ideas keep knocking, and the road will always call him back out again.
But home will keep him steady while he chases whatever he dreams up next.
How did Macon ever get so lucky to have Chris grow up in her red clay, and give her back so much life? He’s proof that this town’s got a way of raising legends who never forget the streetlights and neon lights, and the smell of beer and barbecue drifting out of doorways, that first showed them the way.
So here’s to Chris Hicks, our star and our good man, still strumming, still believing, and still reminding us that a joyful spirit can carry us anywhere we’re brave enough to go. And that coming home can be the sweetest note of all.
Why Held Here
Chris Hicks is Held Here by the chords he’s struck that keep echoing long after the show’s done, by the songs that travel, the family in his heart, and the road that always leads him home. He’s held here by the simple promise that Macon’s music will always find its way forward, just like him.
Chris Hicks: Musical Highlights
Solo Albums: Dog Eat Dog World, Funky Broadway, and Rattlesnake Rock & Roll
Marshall Tucker Band: Longtime guitarist, songwriter, and vocalist — featured on Face Down in the Blues and Beyond the Horizon
The Outlaws: Brought his bluesy, soulful edge to the Southern Rock legends
Collaborator: A go-to guitarist for studio work, with credits alongside Bonnie Bramlett and many, many other greats
His discography spans decades — and every project bears his unmistakable blend of fire and finesse.
(Featured image on Held Here page by Jack Benas.) Some stories in this profile were first shared by Chris Hicks in an interview on Everyone Loves Guitar.
About the Author
Cindi Brown is a Georgia-born writer, porch-sitter, and teller of truths — even the ones her mama once pinched her for saying out loud. She runs Porchlight Press from her 1895 house with creaking floorboards and an open door for stories with soul. When she’s not scribbling about Southern music, small towns, stray cats, places she loves, and the wild gospel that hums in red clay soil, you’ll find her out listening for the next thing worth saying.
