About

Burgin Mathews is a writer, a radio host, and the founding director of the nonprofit Southern Music Research Center.

His new book, Magic City, tells the story of Birmingham, Alabama’s significant, influential, and long unsung jazz community. That book grew out of an earlier book: 2012’s Doc, which presented the life history of Birmingham musician and educator Frank “Doc” Adams (1928-2014), drawing from more than a year and a half of weekly recorded interviews.

In 2023, Mathews launched the Southern Music Research Center, a 501c3 nonprofit devoted to the documentation and preservation of the many musical histories, communities, expressions, and experiences of the American South. The Center’s real “center” is its website: an online archive of rescued recordings, rare photos, oral history interviews, and other artifacts and ephemera from the widest range of southern music traditions.

Since 2012, Mathews has hosted The Lost Child radio show, a weekly exploration of classic country music, rhythm and blues, rockabilly, gospel, old-time fiddling, vintage jazz, jug band music, western swing, Sacred Harp singing, bluegrass, hokum, southern soul, mountain ballads, and more. Listen Saturday mornings and Tuesday nights at Birmingham Mountain Radio or explore our (partial but growing) archive here.  

Born in Montgomery, Alabama, Mathews lives in Birmingham with his wife Glory and stepdaughter Norah. For seventeen years, he taught English, Creative Writing, and Film Studies at an Alabama high school. He has also lived in Asheville and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and in Poughkeepsie, New York. As creator since 2008 of the homemade and handmade Lady Muleskinner Press, he is a longtime champion of zine culture and DIY publishing. Sometimes, he draws pictures.