Discover Music’s Best Kept Secret – A Weekend in Muscle Shoals

The Shoals consist of the towns of Florence, Sheffield, Tuscumbia, and Muscle Shoals, Alabama. While it’s likely that you’re familiar with Muscle Shoals, the other cities may not be familiar. But when people refer to the things to do in Muscle Shoals, they almost always encompass all four cities. The attractions in all four cities, we’ll say the things to do in The Shoals, make this corner of Alabama a very inviting destination. A weekend in Muscle Shoals will only give you a good taste of the area, and you’ll probably be thinking of a return visit.

The Shoals are located directly on the Tennessee River and have been inhabited by many different people. Early prehistoric people settled near the river as a good source of food. The mussels that are found in the river shoals and the bicep shape of the river’s bend, are speculated to be the origin of the name “Muscle Shoals.” Besides the attractions I mention, there are delightful historic downtowns and lots of outdoor adventures.

They are most famous for the Muscle Shoals Sound. Music and musical history was being made here from the early 1960s through the 1970s. Those sites are great places to visit but there is so much more here. Here’s how you could spend a fun weekend in Muscle Shoals.

Getting to The Shoals

The Shoals are sort of in the middle of nowhere, and you need a car to get there, and get around, no matter how you approach.  The closest Amtrak routes go through Birmingham and Memphis, while the small Northwest Alabama Regional Airport has only one airline with very limited service.

The nearest airport with options is the Huntsville International Airport.  Huntsville is served by 6 airlines with direct flights from several major cities, including Chicago, Washington DC, Miami, Dallas, and Las Vegas.  For long distance visitors, the best option is to fly into one of the major cities and rent a car.  Birmingham is a 2 hour drive, while both Memphis and Nashville are a 2.5 hour drive.  Atlanta requires a 4 hour drive.

If you are coming from the eastern states it is probably easiest to drive the entire trip directly. The fastest option is to go to one of those larger cities first, the use a combination of Interstate 65 and US Route 72. Chattanooga is also a good option, being the origin city of US 72.

Where to Stay in the Shoals

My choice of the best place to stay is the Marriott Shoals Hotel & Spa. It is a comfortable and reputable hotel with a fitness center, pool, spa, and it’s pet friendly, but there’s more. The hotel lobby and restaurants are filled with music memorabilia that gives Muscle Shoals its reputation. 

You can find your perfect room at the Marriott Shoals Hotel & Spa right now!

Spending A Weekend in Muscle Shoals or Things to Do in Muscle Shoals

Friday Morning – McFarland Park and The Shoals Visitor Center

First stop should be The Shoals Visitors Center. It’s a mini-museum and the helpful staff can give you advice, maps, and information, as well as other things to do in The Shoals that we haven’t covered. The Visitors Center is located at McFarland Park. It was home to locals as early as 8,000 B.C. Their main food consisted of freshwater mollusks from the river. The Woodland and Copena cultures, who were one of the earliest known settlers had a village here and built the nearby Florence Mound that you’ll visit later.

You’ll see fisherman still getting their dinner from the river. There is a fishing pier and a marina and boat ramps, if you are boating. It’s also a campground with 60 campsites, playgrounds, a driving range, paved jogging trails, soccer and baseball fields.  On weekends, you will often find musicians picking and singing in the picnic shelters. 

The park has an 18-hole disc golf course if you want to stretch your legs after a long drive. No Frisbees? No problem; you can buy or rent them at the visitors center.

Lunch Options

If all the exercise makes you hungry or thirsty, there’s a floating restaurant and bar here, seen in the photo above. The River Bottom Bar and Grill is known for their seafood options.

Or you can drive downtown and have a tasty lunch at Rosie’s Mexican Cantina. The food tastes authentic and the décor is real Mexico.

Florence Indian Mound and Museum

Learning a little of the Native American history is an essential part of a weekend in Muscle Shoals. Let’s go see what those early people built here, and some of the artifacts. Florence Indian Mound and Museum takes you way back before written history. The mound, built by people just moving out of the Hunter-Gatherer culture, stands 43 feet high. There were no modern tools.

They learned to make spear points that killed mammoths and mastodons from local stones. They made fishhooks from sharpened deer hoofs. The mound area gave up the largest trove of ancient tools, pottery, jewelry, and pipes found in Alabama. You can climb to the top of the mound and wonder about the lives of Indian priests and chiefs who climbed it before you. 

The museum is filled with historic treasures; pottery, arrowheads, spear points, and ceremonial objects. It has detailed posters explain the different periods and how those people lived. This mound was built during the Woodland Period. It was a later tribe, an ally of the Creeks called the Yuchi, that named the nearby Tennessee River the Singing River.

Tom’s Wall

It was a young woman of the Yuchi Tribe that inspired the next stop. Tom’s Wall, also known as the Wachahpi Commemorative Stone Wall, is the largest un-mortared rock wall in the United States and the largest memorial to a Native American woman anywhere. It is a work of love created by Tom Hendrix in memory of his great-great-grandmother’s journey.

 Tom heard the story from his grandmother about how teenaged Te-lah-nay was forced on the Trail of Tears. She had been taught that a woman who lived in the river sang to her people. When she reached Oklahoma, she listened to the rivers and streams but heard no one singing to her. She knew she had to return home. She set out on a five-year journey through the wilderness and returned to her beloved Tennessee River.

Tom wanted to do something to honor her. He began building a wall of un-mortared stones. One part of the wall is straight representing the march to Oklahoma; the other is twisted and curved with each stone represents a step on her journey back. He created prayer circles along the wall. It contains 8.5 million pounds of stone with no fill and no mortar. It is one of the most touching things to do in The Shoals. Tom also wrote a book about Te-lah-nay’s journey titled “If The Legends Fade.”

Tom passed away in 2017 but his son, Trace, is carrying on telling the story. The wall is near the Natchez Trace Parkway that passes through The Shoals.

Art in the Afternoon

The Tennessee Valley Museum of Art has some of the early heritage preserved there as well as art exhibits. Their showpiece is the Martin Petroglyph, which is displayed in a replicated bluff shelter. It is a 3,000 pound pre-Columbian rock created by some of these early natives 800 to 1500 years ago, with actual human footprints and carved snakes. The rest of the main collection consists of 2 and 3 dimensional works by regional artists. The museum has both permanent and rotating fine arts exhibitions.

Dinner

The hotel restaurant on the first floor, Swampers Bar and Grille, is a good choice for dinner. The food is Southern Comfort food and there is live music to go along with it. There is an outside terrace if you want just fresh air and quiet. They are open until midnight, so if you had some nightlife in mind, it is right there.

A Weekend in Muscle Shoals – Saturday

Breakfast

Start you day with Big Bad Breakfast. Literally. It’s a small downtown restaurant that offers breakfast all day long, or you can swap and have lunch for breakfast or visa-versa. Whatever you choose, eat hearty, as we have a long day exploring the music history, perhaps the main reason for spending a weekend in Muscle Shoals.

FAME Studio – Florence Alabama Music Enterprises

At FAME Studio, there is a sign above the door saying, “Through these doors walk the finest musicians, songwriters, artists, and producers in the world.” They are not kidding. The lobby is filled with gold records and album covers by singers like Wilson Pickett, Little Richard, Mac Davis, Bobby Gentry, and Gregg Allman.  When music lovers talk about things to do in Muscle Shoals, FAME is one of the main things they are talking about.

FAME offers standard tours at 9:00 on weekdays, and every hour on the hour from 10:00 to 3:00 on Saturdays. But I recommend scheduling the Saturday 10:00 Backstage Tour. The upgraded tour adds the publishing offices, the Gold Record and Song of the Year awards, and instruments used in actual recordings, such as the Aretha Franklin sessions.

Back when the music world like all the rest of Alabama was segregated, Rick Hall at his FAME Studio ignored the system and produced both Black and white artists. Percy Sledge recorded “When a Man Loves a Woman” here. Wilson Pickett recorded “Mustang Sally,” Aretha Franklin recorded “I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love you,” and “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man,” her first two gold records, here.

FAME was the first to record a young, homeless guitar player who was staying in the parking lot in a tent, as back up for Wilson Pickett. That was Duane Allman’s opening shot. He went on to form The Allman Brother’s Band and create a new genre, Southern Rock. 

Muscle Shoals Sound – 3614 Jackson Highway

When the back-up band went out on their own after building a reputation at FAME, they opened Muscle Shoals Studio. They had created what is known as the “Muscle Shoals Sound,” a blend of R&B, Soul and Country. It was a sound that artists and the producers came from around the world to get.

Cher recorded the critically acclaimed 3614 Jackson Highway album there in 1969, but it was not a commercial success. But it was the Rolling Stones, who stopped by to record in December 1969 that took the studio to the top of all the charts. They recorded both Brown Sugar and Wild Horses for their Sticky Fingers album, at Muscle Shoals. It rocketed to the top of the US charts. The Stones became the biggest band in the world, finally topping the Beatles, and Muscle Shoals Studio became widely known among musicians.

A couple years later Lynyrd Skynyrd recorded there as newcomers, producing some of their biggest hits. On a subsequent album the referred to the studio musicians by the name “The Swampers” in the lyrics of “Sweet Home Alabama,” making it the name the musicians went by from that point forward.

Muscle Shoals Studio is open from 10:00 to 4:00, offering tours every hour on the half hour. You get to view some of the instruments used, and the recording room where Cher, Willie Nelson, Paul Simon, Rod Stewart, Bob Seger, and so many other big music names recorded. 

Lunch Options

Try something exotic for lunch. Yumm is a downtown Thai restaurant that locals rave about.

W. C. Handy House

W. C. Handy House is the birthplace of William Christopher Handy, considered the “Father of the Blues.” Although he recorded many songs some of the most famous include St. Louis Blues and Memphis Blues. Videos, sheet music, his piano, many other musical instruments, and photos tell the story of his musical heritage. The museum is a small log cabin, but worth a visit. 

During the last month of July the city celebrates the W. C. Handy Music Festival. The festival runs just over a week and features hundreds of events and performances that take place all across the community. If you are a music lover, this is one of those things to do in the Shoals that you can’t miss. You can review the past festival schedules to get an idea.

Alabama Music Hall of Fame

Alabama Music Hall of Fame immortalizes these local stars and all the musicians who have an Alabama connection. You will find those you expect like Hank Williams and all the musicians and producers from the local studios. There is Alabama’s tour bus. There are also people like Sam Philips who is credited with discovering Rock and Roll at his Memphis Tennessee Sun Studio. Sam Philips was born in Florence.

Ivy Green

Ivy Green was the birthplace of Helen Keller, one of the the most remarkable women ever, and learning about this incredible woman must be included in your weekend in Muscle Shoals. Healthy at birth in 1880, a high fever at the age of 19 months left her totally blind and deaf. Her parents had no idea how to communicate with her and let her do whatever she wanted. When Anne Sullivan, a young Irish orphan with limited sight herself, came as her teacher, seven-year-old Helen was a holy terror.

Anne overcame the obstacles to teaching her young pupil and one day as she signed to the child the word W-A-T-E-R while drawing water from the family hand pump in the yard, Helen suddenly realized what the signs meant. She spoke her first word, WATER, and began learning the names of other objects. 

Helen became one of the most famous advocates for the blind and handicapped people as an adult. Helen was the first blind/deaf person to graduate “cum laude” from Radcliffe College. She lecturing around the world and wrote 12 books and quite a few articles. She was inducted into Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame and the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Lyndon Johnson. She met all presidents from Grover Cleveland to Lyndon Johnson. Helen died June 1, 1968, shortly before her eighty-eighth birthday. 

Her home, Ivy Green, is open for tours. A guide leads you through the small home and tells family stories.  Many of the objects in the home are Keller possessions including a 100-year-old quilt made by Helen’s aunt, Evelyn.

Dinner Options

For dinner tonight, try the hotel’s more upscale restaurant, 360 Grille, a revolving restaurant on top of the Renaissance tower. The views are fantastic and worthy of an evening during your weekend in Muscle Shoals. It requires a reservation.

The Miracle Worker

If you are visiting on the weekends of June through mid-July, the play, The Miracle Worker, is one of the must-do things to do in Muscle Shoals. It’s held on the grounds of Ivy Green in an outdoor amphitheater.  Performances take place on Friday and Saturday evenings at 8:00 p.m.

A Weekend in Muscle Shoals – Sunday

Breakfast Options

Start the day right at the hotel with the buffet breakfast in The Swampers Grille.

Natchez Trace

You might take a little time to drive out and explore Natchez Trace Parkway. The road began long before European settlers came. The National Park Service states that the path has been used by “used by American Indians, “Kaintucks,” European settlers, slave traders, soldiers, and future presidents.” Sections of the trail were so used that it remains sunken into the earth. The Parkway has a number of both scenic and historic stops, rangers

The Parkway is not always considered among things to do in Muscle Shoals, since only a short section of the Parkway passes through Alabama, but it does include some historic and scenic stops. Stops to consider include Rock Springs, pictured on the right, the Colbert Ferry Park and the Freedom Hills Overlook. (Tom’s Wall is located along the Parkway, so you could save that stop for today.)

Spring Park

Spring Park can be relaxing or exciting. You can let the kids ride the train ride, a roller coaster, carousel, and play in the splash pad with the 51-jet fountain. There’s a waterfall at the head of the lake with water spilling some 150 feet named Coldwater Falls. Surprisingly, this is the largest manmade natural stone waterfall in the world. Most nights there is a lighted, musical water show at the fountain.

You can relax and have a picnic lunch by the lake at the center of the park and watch the geese and white swans swim. There are grills and picnic tables if you want to do a cookout.

Frank Lloyd Wright Rosenbaum House

Frank Lloyd Wright Rosenbaum House, showcases one of the most memorable architects of his time. You can’t pass it by during a weekend in Muscle Shoals. Built in 1939, the house is reflective of what is referred to as Wright’s Usonian period, so it is different than many of the homes that are more popular.

Wright had a vision that every American citizen should be able to afford a beautiful and comfortable home, that was suited for daily living. He was challenged to build such a home for less than $5,000 in 1934. From then until his death in 1959 he designed 60 different Usonian houses, including the Rosenbaum House. Each house was fully furnished in a coordinating fashion. He was making use of natural light and natural building materials way before “Going Green” became a catchword in building homes.

George H. Carroll Lion Habitat

George H. Carroll Lion Habitat at the University of North Alabama in Florence is home to the only live lion mascot in the country that lives on campus. Leo III and his co-mascot, Una, were the third generation of lion mascots on campus.

Sadly, Una passed away on June 30, 2020, after a period of illness, with Leo at her side. She was 17 years old at the time. Leo, who is now 19, seems to have coped with the loss well, and can be seen playing with his toys in the habitat each day.

Dinner Options

Have dinner at Ricatoni’s Italian Grill for pizzas cooked in a wood-burning oven, freshly-baked bread with herbs and olive oil, or traditional Italian food.

Are You Ready to Visit The Shoals?

The Shoals may seem like they are in the middle of nowhere. That’s okay though because the wealth of things to do in The Shoals makes the area a worthy destination in itself. The entire area has become a pilgrimage for music lovers, but there is so much more to the area, and it is well more than just things to do in Muscle Shoals. The Native American history, the expanding cultural sphere, the abundance of outdoor adventure options, and the blossoming foodie scene are also enough to draw you to The Shoals. On top of it all, the community is friendly and inviting, hosting numerous festivals and events throughout the year.

You can tell your friends you are spending a weekend in Muscle Shoals, if they don’t understand share a bit of The Muscle Shoals sound. Or you can bring them along and let them experience a weekend in The Shoals.

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