Zac Brown entertained audiences for years as a solo artist, winning people over with his deft flat-picking and original songs. Eventually, Brown added band members John Hopkins (bass) and Jimmy De Martini (fiddle) to form the Zac Brown Band; the trio expanded to a five-piece when Chris Fryar (drums) and Coy Bowles (guitar/organ) joined. The quintet employs an aggressive tour philosophy (often playing upwards of 200 shows a year) and has opened for the Allman Brothers, Willie Nelson, Travis Tritt and Sugarland, among others. Their grassroots approach to music has won them legions of loyal fans throughout the South, especially in Brown's home state of Georgia. The band's self-financed debut, Home Grown, was released at the end of 2005, and the live effort Live From the Rock Bus Tour followed in 2007. The Foundation was released in 2008, producing the Southern celebratory single "Chicken Fried," which made its way to the country charts. - LRYAN

Trace Adkins is a former college football star and oil-rig roughneck with a deep baritone and a smart, dark honky-tonk sound. - LRYAN

Struggling through nearly a decade of obscurity and label troubles, Kid Rock became a global institution in 1998 with the massive success of Devil Without A Cause, which spawned the mega-singles "Cowboy" and "Bawitdaba," went platinum 11 times over, and established Robert James Ritchie as the reigning king of his very own genre, a hybrid of rock, rap, metal and country. With 2001's Cocky, Rock delved deeper into his mix of classic rock moves and gold chain-draped rapper posturing, but by 2003's Kid Rock, the Detroit-bred champion of hicks had transitioned away from hip-hop and more toward rock, covering Bad Company and pushing the guitars (even acoustic ones sometimes) way up front. Kid's interest in this modern version of the classic rock he grew up with deepened on 2006's "Live" Trucker (featuring album art that paid homage to Bob Seger's Live Bullet) and culminated in 2007's Rock N Roll Jesus, which went so far as to mash up Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London" and Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" for the hit single "All Summer Long." - MMCGUIRK

Lynyrd Skynyrd epitomized 1970's southern rock. Just as famous for their reckless lifestyle as their three-guitar wail, the band did for the word "redneck" what gangsta rap bands would later do for the word "n*gg*" -- turned a derogatory slur into a badge of honor. "Free Bird," their anthemic tribute to Duane Allman, was much more than a hit: it has become a classic rock staple, a song whose stature can be measured by the way countless high school bands continue to maul it in gymnasiums across the country. The band's career was tragically cut short by a plane crash which killed leader Ronnie Van Zant and two other members in 1977. Skynyrd reformed ten years later with Van Zant's little brother Johnny taking over as vocalist. The new line-up has continued touring and recording into the '00s. While they've put on plenty of pounds and stubbornly stuck to a sound that's now over thirty years old, their blues-inflected hard rock is still curiously vibrant. - TQUIRK

Before assembling the first legendary lineup of the Allman Brothers Band in 1969, Duane and Greg played together in two British-Invasion-style projects called the Allman Joys and Hourglass. Duane decamped to Muscle Shoals where he was exposed to the finest Soul and R&B players around, appearing alongside Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin. These influences fed into the gumbo of sounds that made the Allman Brothers Band's self-titled debut unlike any record that had come before it. At a time when the color line dividing the American South was still something people fought and died over, the Allman Brothers not only integrated blues and soul with swampy, Psychedelic rock and bits of country; they went one step further by including an African-American in their lineup. The twin percussive attack of Jaimoe Johanson and Butch Trucks gave early concert favorites such as "Whipping Post" and "Dreams" an elaborate architecture, which Dickey Betts and the Allmans supplemented with tidy bits of soloing, sharing leads with the poise of a seasoned jazz group. They were one of those rare bands who always sounded better live than in the studio -- Live at Fillmore East being one of those epochal documents (like Johnny Cash's penitentiary performances or MC5's Kick Out the Jams) that captures a certain music at that certain time when it's as near perfect as it ever will be. The live version of "Mountain Jam" featured on Eat a Peach (1972) is still one of the best ways to stretch a jukebox quarter into a half an hour of pure happiness. - CDRISCOLL