In this episode of the Biscuits and Jam Podcast, Southern Living's Sid Evans talks to Fawn Weaver, who's been on a mission to uncover the true story of Nearest Green—the former slave who taught Jack Daniel the art of whiskey-making. Her journey led her to purchase the Lynchburg, Tennessee farm where she launched the award-winning Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey brand. In this interview, she dispenses a bit of the insight from her New York Times bestselling book, ‘Love & Whiskey,’ and discusses her foundation for Nearest Green’s descendants.
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00:00Fawn Weaver, welcome to Biscuits and Jam.
00:02Thank you for having me. I love Biscuits and Jam. Literally, I love Biscuits and Jam.
00:08You're not the first to say that, so I think, yeah, we got the name right.
00:13So, Fawn, we're in the podcast studios here, and we just got the little nickel tour of the test kitchens.
00:21What did you think?
00:22I think it's amazing. I think that I would have a hard time here because I'm such a grazer.
00:26So, I would get such a small amount of work done because I'd constantly graze through the kitchens to make sure I didn't miss something that came up.
00:35So, yeah, this location would be a problem for me.
00:37Yeah, if you're a grazer, it can be a little bit addictive being up here.
00:43Yeah, I could see that.
00:45Well, Fawn, congrats on the book.
00:48It's called Love and Whiskey, and it's really fantastic. It's an incredible story.
00:54And I believe I'm correct in saying that it just became a New York Times bestseller.
01:01It did. First week out.
01:03That's amazing.
01:04You must be so excited about that.
01:05I am. I am.
01:07I'm so incredibly proud of the book, but also all the messages I'm getting that are just—it's just transformative for people.
01:15Southerners sending me messages and saying, you know, I'm proud to be from the South again.
01:19That means a lot to me, and so, yeah, it's been an incredible—it's an incredible book.
01:26Well, I can't wait to dig into that, and I want to start out by asking you about the photograph that's on the cover.
01:34Yes.
01:34Because so much of this book really kind of stems from that photograph.
01:41There's so much that you kind of took away from that, and in a lot of ways it kind of instigated your journey here.
01:51But tell me a little bit about that picture, if you could just sort of describe it.
01:54Yeah.
01:54And why it meant so much.
01:57So the photo that's on the cover of the book is the same photo that was on the cover of the New York Times International Edition is where I—I was in Singapore, and it was the cover of the New York Times International Edition.
02:09Here, I think it was the cover of the food section.
02:11It is a photo of Jack Daniel with his leadership team.
02:14And the reason why the photo went a little crazy is because, one, the headline that accompanied it, but also because you're looking at a photograph in which pretty much everyone is white, and then you have an African-American man sitting to the right of Jack Daniel.
02:30That image is cropped, however.
02:32When you actually get Love and Whiskey, the very beginning of the book, I show the full photo.
02:38And in the full photo, this young man, which is Nearest Green's son, George Green, Nearest Green, first African-American master distiller.
02:47That's what we now know.
02:48So this is his son sitting next to Jack Daniel.
02:51Well, it's not just that he's sitting to the right of him.
02:53Jack actually seated the center position of the entire photo to him.
02:57And if you look really closely at Jack, every person in the photo is sitting except for Jack.
03:03Jack never grew to be more than 5'2".
03:05And what people don't know, and they can't tell, but because I have all of the hospital records and things of that nature, is Jack's right leg was amputated.
03:14So he is actually on a cane on his right hand.
03:19And where the people are positioned, are positioned where George Green is positioned, is to cover the fact that Jack is, one, standing, and that, two, he doesn't have a right leg.
03:30When it first began going around the internet, it was very negative because the headline of the story said, Jack Daniels embraces a hidden ingredient, help from a slave.
03:41Very quickly, the internet, without any other context or information, came to the conclusion that Jack Daniels was a slave owner, that he stole the recipe, he hid the slave.
03:51That was everyone's conclusion.
03:52And that story went wild.
03:55It spread like wildfire.
03:57There was absolutely no truth to it.
03:58But I'm looking at this photo and saying, if in the 19th century, or now we know it was taken in circa 1904, but in the 19th century, around that time, if you did not want to give credit to a black man, you did not put him in a photo.
04:15And if you put him in the photo, you put him in the outskirts.
04:18You're not centering him in the photo right next to you.
04:22So while the entire world was reading this story and saying, oh, it's another story of how black people were stolen from in this country and how something was built on the back, I'm looking at this and going, no, no, no, this is different.
04:34This story has to be different because he's in this photo and he's there prominently.
04:41So that means that Jack was trying to make sure he could not be forgotten.
04:46So let's find out why.
04:47So I approached the story from a completely different standpoint than the entire world was approaching the story.
04:54I wanted to know why did Jack want to make sure that we did not forget who this man was?
05:00What was the significance of this man?
05:01And that he would make sure that the only photograph that he ever took ever with his team, he seated the center position to the black man.
05:09Yeah, this is not a photo that would have been thrown together at the last minute.
05:12I mean, there was a lot of thought and a lot of planning that went into this.
05:15Yes, this is not selfie time.
05:17Yeah, this was not.
05:18It took a second.
05:19This was you plan this for a very long time to have a photograph taken in 1904.
05:24This you're absolutely right.
05:26There was nothing quick about this.
05:28So it is really incredible that one of the most successful products, one of the most successful brands ever, was really originated by an enslaved person.
05:42Is that something that you knew?
05:43Did you know that story or anything about it before you encountered this?
05:49Well, here's the thing.
05:50I don't think it was originated.
05:51So what we're looking at are it's a couple of different things.
05:56Number one, people give nearest the credit for the recipe.
06:00Almost everyone in Lynchburg was using the same recipe.
06:03There were 16 distilleries in a four-mile radius.
06:06Everyone was using variations of the same recipe.
06:09It's not the recipe.
06:11The difference in the distinguishment between Tennessee whiskey and Kentucky bourbon, both are straight bourbon whiskey.
06:17By legal definition, they're both bourbon.
06:18But the difference, other than location, is a process called the Lincoln County Process.
06:23It takes a traditional bourbon distillate and you run it through sugar maple charcoal before it goes in the barrel to filter out fusel oils, the different things that give you headaches if you drink.
06:34That's the stuff it's taking out before it goes into the barrel.
06:39And that process, Jack and his descendants were very clear in going on the record and saying that process came in with the enslaved people.
06:46So it's that particular process that made the difference.
06:50It's that process that is why Jack Daniel, when he was alive, it wasn't just that he made great Tennessee whiskey.
06:58His bourbon was named the best in the world, and it was.
07:02And so when you're looking at the time frame in which Nearest Green was making that bourbon, it was the best in the world.
07:08And that process is what made it that way.
07:12So really, he was a mentor to Jack Daniel in teaching him how to use this process and how to perfect this process.
07:21Yeah, but he was—we have to go back a little further than that because to understand this story, you have to understand Jack's story a little bit.
07:29Jack was the 10th child, and his mother contracted typhus fever when he was four months old.
07:35Seven days later, she was dead.
07:37So he's the 10th child, and now his father has 10 children, including a four-month-old.
07:44So Jack is being wet-nursed by his next-door neighbor.
07:47And you have men at that time where their way of raising kids was to marry another woman.
07:54So he went very quickly—his father went very quickly to marrying another woman.
07:58Well, that woman never took to Jack.
08:00So by the time Jack was young, right now, we would never put a child in the field at six years old to work, seven years old to work.
08:10Back then, if your hands worked and your feet worked, you were doing something.
08:15And so very early on, all those kids were doing some kind of work around the farm.
08:20That's just how you did it.
08:22And very young age, seven years old, the mom, the stepmom, just did not get along with him.
08:28So Jack goes and begins working as a chore boy at a farm up the road from where they lived.
08:34And that means he's going out getting water from the well for the family, milking cows, feeding slop to the pigs.
08:41Like, this is not a privileged kid.
08:43And then in the Civil War, he becomes an orphan.
08:45During this window of time, Nearest Green is the master distiller on the property that he goes to work for.
08:51So both Nearest and Jack work for the same man.
08:55Gotcha.
08:55And that's how they meet.
08:58But then you have Nearest that becomes a mentor, a teacher, and a friend.
09:03And neither one of them are in a privileged position.
09:07So their friendship is forged out of adversity.
09:09And in terms of age difference, I know the birthdays are a little tricky, but do you have an idea of what the age difference might have been?
09:18We have no idea because if you look at me, I think no one would ever guess that I'm knocking on 50 years old.
09:25Listen, God blessed black people.
09:27I'm going to tell you that much.
09:29We age very quickly, meaning until we're about 25.
09:33We're 15 and we look like we're 25.
09:35But then we get to 25 and we just stop.
09:37Like, we stop and we don't age again until we're somewhere around 60.
09:43So you have a person.
09:46Remember, black people were in slave roles.
09:48Their names weren't even listed, right, for a very long time.
09:52Then finally, their names are listed in the 1870 census for the very first time.
09:59So you have these white census takers going around asking black people who can't read or write and don't have birth certificates, how old are you?
10:08They don't know.
10:10So then the census taker is guessing.
10:12So there is literally on he is born in 1820, according to one census.
10:20And then the next census, which is 10 years later, he's born in 1834.
10:25So it's not a small gap.
10:28And so all we can do is sort of back our way into trying to trying to figure it out.
10:34But we have no idea.
10:36The only other indication that we have is the fact that he was called uncle.
10:40The significance in Lynchburg with the term uncle was that wasn't a term of endearment.
10:47And in Lynchburg, you didn't have many people calling people aunt.
10:50It was really just uncle.
10:52And the three most respected men in Lynchburg were Uncle Nearest, Uncle Jack, Uncle Felix.
10:59Uncle Felix is his wife is who actually wet nurse Jack.
11:02So you have these three men who are really the most respected, and all of them are referenced as uncle.
11:09But we have no idea when they began being referenced as that.
11:15And so we don't know.
11:16So you're just reading clues, and the research continues.
11:20Doing the best we can.
11:21Doing the best we can.
11:22Yeah.
11:23Well, Fawn, I want to come back to that story in a second.
11:27But I want to take a minute and just talk about your story, which is also incredible.
11:33And you grew up in California.
11:35Yes.
11:35You did not have an ordinary childhood, I think, to say the least.
11:39No.
11:39And there's a line in the book that I stopped cold on, which is, I grew up listening to Smokey
11:45Robinson and Stevie Wonder tell stories at my parents' kitchen table.
11:49Mm-hmm.
11:49They were Uncle Stevie, Uncle Smokey.
11:52Absolutely.
11:53But here's the thing is that people always assume that if celebrities are around, there's
11:57wealth, there's power, there's influence.
11:59It's the year that I was born, my father decided not to renew his contract with Barry
12:05Gordy, with Motown Records.
12:06And he had been making a lot of money at a glass house on the top of Hollywood Hills.
12:11And then instantly, he now doesn't have money.
12:14He's got stuff, like fancy cars, but no money to put gas in the cars.
12:20Will Smith has a similar story, ironically, where you've got all these fancy cars, but then
12:23you don't have money for the gas.
12:25And that was my father.
12:27And so he, they couldn't afford to live where they lived anymore, but they were starting
12:32off with a nice house.
12:33So they could downgrade to another house, but it would still be a very nice house.
12:37And so I grew up in a beautiful home in Pasadena, California, but we didn't really have anything
12:42outside of the home.
12:44And meaning we had that real estate, but there wasn't a whole lot more.
12:49There wasn't money.
12:50There wasn't spare anything.
12:51And so the juxtaposition of people thinking you have power, thinking you have wealth,
12:56thinking you have money, and you don't have any of that.
12:59You just have a house.
13:01And so I grew up with that, but he immediately, he left Berry, left Motown to become a minister.
13:09So what ended up happening is, is he became the minister of all of the people who were
13:13on Motown Records.
13:14So they were around our kitchen table, not because they were doing anything music related.
13:20My father became their minister.
13:23And so he'd have all these Christian entertainment, Bible studies, and there'd be hundreds of people
13:27in our living room, all entertainers.
13:30And, but they were there for a Bible study.
13:32I mean, this sounds like a book of its own.
13:34Yeah.
13:34Oh, Lord knows.
13:35Lord knows.
13:36But people look at me as the child of a Motown hit maker.
13:40And I look at myself as a preacher's kid, because that's all I knew.
13:44I didn't know anything else other than being a preacher's kid.
13:47So there was also some friction with your parents.
13:49Sure.
13:49Because he's a preacher.
13:51And I'm a rebel.
13:52That don't mix.
13:54So tell me about that.
13:56I mean, you, you left, uh, you left home when you were 15 and, uh, really went out on your
14:05own and ended up, you know, living, I think in some homeless shelters for a while.
14:10Yeah.
14:10Talk to me about the impact that that's had on you.
14:14I mean, I can't even imagine the stories of, you know, what that experience was like in
14:19terms of your career and your path.
14:22Yeah.
14:23It was, to me, it was the greatest gift ever.
14:26Because most people go through life as representatives of themselves.
14:32Somewhere along the way, they were either hurt and it caused them to pivot how they present
14:38themselves, how they represent themselves, how they show up as themselves or throughout
14:43life.
14:44They were molded in those earlier years, whether it's in high school and college and junior
14:47high.
14:48So their personality that made them different, that made them unique, that made them special,
14:53then they, they get shaped by the world and told, no, no, this is how you're supposed
14:57to do this.
14:58This is how you're supposed to do this.
14:59Well, leaving home at 15 years old, I didn't have anybody to tell me this is how you're
15:04supposed to do this.
15:04So I could simply go off of gut.
15:06I could simply go off of this is how I was born to be.
15:10And so I've had the unbelievable gift and pleasure of being able to live my entire life showing
15:18up exactly as I am, not as a rep of me, showing up as exactly who I am.
15:23So when we, when we go back, I was, I'm in the middle of my book tour, of course, and
15:29at one of the book tour stops, one of the questions to me from the audience was, what
15:33would you go back?
15:34Oh, this was Atlanta.
15:35What would you go back?
15:37And if you could write a letter to your 19 year old self, what would you say to her?
15:41And I said, I would say to her, don't change a thing.
15:44Not a single thing, because I walk through this world with a level of freedom that I've
15:51not seen other people experience.
15:54And I think it's because I never let the world mold me.
15:56I never let it shape me.
15:57I mean, in some ways you're lucky to be here.
15:59I mean, you said that you tried to take your own life a couple of times.
16:03Twice, yeah.
16:04Was there someone or a group of people, you know, who helped you through that period?
16:12No, it was just me.
16:13And on the other side of it, but that's all I needed.
16:16It was me and a whole lot of books.
16:18So when people come to me and they say, will you be my mentor?
16:21I say, that's a crutch.
16:22You don't need a mentor.
16:23Let me give you some books you can read.
16:25Because that, so many books, I'd say hundreds of books became my mentor.
16:30And reading just the different things from America's Titans, reading things from some of
16:35our most brilliant minds and understanding why people come to that place that I came to when
16:41I was 20 years old, where I tried to commit suicide.
16:43That is not abnormal.
16:46And so understanding how I got there, why I was there, and then ensuring that from that
16:53moment forward, I lived a life that was so purely of purpose and was exactly why I was
16:59here on earth.
16:59That became my mission at 20.
17:02A lot of people don't get that mission until they're in their 50s, 60s, where they decide,
17:07you know, you'll talk to people.
17:08And all of a sudden, at 65, 70 years old, they have no filter, right?
17:12They just say what's on their mind.
17:13Finally, whatever is on their mind is what they say.
17:16Well, I've been doing that since I was 20.
17:18Because on the other side of having tried to commit suicide, I'm like, well, I'm here
17:23for a reason.
17:24I want to know what that reason is.
17:25I'm going to figure it out.
17:26And once I figure it out, no one is going to shake me.
17:29And so I've had the gift of living that way since I was 20 years old.
17:34That's a blessing.
17:36And especially as I talk to other people and people ask me for advice, and I realize how
17:41much of a gift it was that I learned why I was on earth so soon, so early.
17:47Yeah, from reading the book, you clearly had a strong head on your shoulders and an idea
17:53of what you wanted to do in the world.
17:55And I think, you know, that also goes to your marriage, because you found your husband.
18:04You're like, yep, that's the one.
18:06That's the guy that I'm supposed to be with.
18:10And it was interesting to me that he was very much a part of this story as well.
18:15He was kind of there every step of the way.
18:19You've written a couple of very successful books about marriage in your previous life.
18:26Same life.
18:27I mean, I'm about to celebrate 21 years of marriage.
18:30And my first book, I wrote it.
18:33I began writing it when I was in my eighth year.
18:35And I didn't give any personal advice in there.
18:38I traveled the world.
18:39I interviewed couples happily married 25 years or more to deduce the common denominator.
18:43And no matter where in the world I was, there were 12 things that they did similarly.
18:49Well, I've now spent from that year eight until now doing those 12 things.
18:55So that book was as much of a help to me as it was to all the people who read it,
19:00because I wanted to have a happy marriage, my entire marriage.
19:03Like, who wants to be in the house with somebody they don't really, really, really like?
19:07And so I determined, like day one of my marriage, I was going to really enjoy it.
19:13It was going to be a true partnership.
19:15And so Keith is throughout this book, because I can barely sit and talk to anybody for longer
19:20than five minutes without mentioning my husband, because we have that type of partnership.
19:25Well, I just love that, you know, he was kind of, he wasn't super in favor of this whole project.
19:30Oh, no, at all.
19:32And he said, you know, there's no way in hell we're going to Lynchburg for five days, you know,
19:37maybe, you know, three.
19:39And then you kind of, you know, you kind of agreed on four or something.
19:43But and then once he kind of got there and got into it, he was all in.
19:49Well, absolutely.
19:50I mean, one of the first things we did when we got there doing research is learn from one
19:55of Jack's descendants that they the home where this property, the farm where Jack grew up
20:01and where he worked as a chore boy and Nears Green was the master distiller, this 313 acre
20:06farm, including the home, including the original stream for Jack Daniel Distillery, number seven
20:11and where that originally was.
20:13And it was for sale.
20:14And so we bought it.
20:16We weren't even there for a week before we now are in escrow for for this property.
20:23And so everything changed once that happened.
20:27It was it was so I don't like to use the word serendipitous because I don't believe that
20:33things just happen.
20:34I believe things are orchestrated from a place much bigger than us.
20:38And and for me, everybody has a different place of where they think it comes from.
20:41I think it comes from heaven.
20:42And so when we began seeing all these things just roll out in front of us, that made no
20:48sense.
20:48That property had been on on the market for 15 months.
20:51That is absolutely positively insane.
20:53The amount of history in that property.
20:56We now have the whole second floor plexiglassed in because one of the rooms, the girls like
21:01a museum.
21:02It's absolutely like a museum, although we don't use it as such.
21:05But there is so much history on the walls from the early 19th century that we had to
21:11we literally had to plexiglass it in.
21:16I mean, this is one of the more incredible aspects of this story in terms of how you
21:21connected with all of this, how you found this place.
21:25I mean, you come to Lynchburg.
21:26You've been there for four days.
21:28You find out that this place is on the market and it's the farm where Jack Daniel and Nearest
21:35Green work together, spent a lot of time together.
21:39Yeah.
21:39It's amazing.
21:40Yeah.
21:40It's now on the National Register for historical places.
21:44As it should be.
21:45Yeah.
21:45Yeah.
21:46So just real quick, tell me, just describe the farm for me.
21:50So if you're pulling in the driveway, like give me a sense of like the property and what's
21:55there.
21:55First of all, we've completely restored it.
21:57So that 313 acres is now has white picket fence, country fence around the entire thing.
22:03And when you come into the gate, the iron gate that we added, you just go up this hill and
22:09it's these rolling hills and you just keep going up and up and up and up until you come
22:13to a two story home.
22:15That was it is very much so the style of that time, the style of the early 19th century,
22:22mid 19th century.
22:23And it's this beautiful home.
22:25And right when you walk in to the right is what was a parlor.
22:30And that's what I turned into my research room.
22:32So I was I was gathering documents, thousands of documents and original artifacts from around
22:38this country for this story.
22:39I would bring them into that room.
22:42And so the the early chapters of the book were written from that property.
22:47I was able to walk the grounds and just really feel and and people ask me all the time and
22:53walking those grounds there.
22:55There's a thought that because nearest green was an enslaved man and he was on that property
23:00that horrible things happened on that property.
23:02And I tell people all the time, listen, I can't walk the grounds of plantations.
23:06I can feel my ancestors.
23:07I truly can feel their pain.
23:09I felt nothing but love and peace as I walked that property.
23:13That's why we bought it.
23:13If I had felt any level of challenge as I walked that that property, any level of of
23:20hurt and pain other than what we all go through in normal life, I wouldn't have bought the
23:24property.
23:24It's because I walked the property and there was nothing but peace.
23:28And so you can't really account for that in the way that we tell American Southern history.
23:33We don't account for the nuance.
23:35We don't account for the fact that there were actually white people that were putting their
23:42lives on the line for us because they knew it was wrong for us to be enslaved.
23:46We have somehow written those people out of the books or it could just simply be that they
23:52were in so much jeopardy themselves that they for the most part remained hidden.
23:57They weren't exactly writing books about it, right?
23:59Because their lives were as much in danger as the black people.
24:04If someone was coming to lynch a black person and a white person was protecting that black
24:09person, the black person and the white person would be lynched.
24:11So that's the nuance part.
24:14One of my favorite stories in the book that came through this research is Lynchburg had created
24:19this town, even though they were the county center, which back in that time, basically the county
24:25meant the county courthouse where was wherever you could get to from wherever you lived during the
24:31day on horseback and buggy and get to the court, do your business and get back home before it was
24:37dark. That's how they determined the radius of what was the county courthouse.
24:42And so you had all these people coming into this town of Lynchburg and which blacks and whites
24:46were treated equally in this town of Lynchburg. But people are coming from outside of this town
24:51and they don't feel the same way. And so there was a bit of animosity and hatred toward even
24:58Lynchburg, Tennessee, because you if you went there, you would see white people and black people
25:03walking down the street together. You'd see them having dinner together. You'd see that wasn't in most
25:09of America at that time. And so you have this really unique story. And I can't really attribute it to
25:16anything other than Jack Daniel LeBron wasn't as big as it is today, but it was big for that time.
25:21And he was a big man around town. Well, he always had black men around him that he treated the same
25:28as as as white people. So it's really hard for racists to be in an environment in which the person
25:35who you look up to treats black people as as the same. And so these are the stories of the South that I
25:43think are missing. And I think if we had them, they they would give us a little bit more hope
25:48about where we are now and where we can also be as a country.
25:52There's an image in the book or kind of a scene where you're talking about the relationship between
25:58Nearest Green and Jack Daniel. And you said after long hours at the still, Nearest played his fiddle on
26:06the porch and Jack danced. Yeah. What a beautiful image that is. And, you know, says so much about
26:14their relationship. Where did you get that nugget?
26:18Yeah, that's actually comes out of a book called Jack Daniel's Legacy. So there is a white reporter
26:23from Tuscaloosa, Alabama named Ben Green, Ben A. Green. And he came to Lynchburg, Tennessee to write
26:29the authoritative biography of Jack Daniel. He came at the behest of Jack's nephew who Jack had
26:36turned the distillery over to. Jack died in 1911, but he turned his distillery over in 1907. He was
26:42quite sick. And at the behest of his family, they decided they wanted a biography to be done. But the
26:49people who were interviewed for this biography were the people that knew Jack best. It was his friends,
26:54his family, people that had worked for him, people that had touched him, his nephew,
26:57than his great nephews. That too was being interviewed for this. And in the biography,
27:03Nearest Green and his boys are mentioned more times than Jack Daniel's own family. That's a big deal.
27:09And if you think about what was happening when that book was published in 1967,
27:14if you didn't want to credit an African-American family, you just left them out. No one would have
27:20faulted. No one would have said anything. What's so odd about this story, and to me,
27:26so unbelievably amazing is that we know who Nearest Green is at all. When you think about every
27:32bourbon, and again, I was a bourbon drinker before I began this journey. When you think about every
27:37bourbon in this country on a back bar, we don't know who the Black distillers were. If that business
27:46goes back 150 years, there was a Black distiller. But we only know the name of one Nearest Green.
27:54And so that's what I think is so extraordinary about this story is that Jack and his descendants
27:59made sure that we wouldn't be able to erase this family. Yeah. There's so many different layers to
28:05this, and it's so remarkable. And, you know, thinking about Lynchburg, which is a remarkable
28:12town also. You know, you're coming from California. You come to this place. You don't know anybody.
28:21You're getting to know people. Then you end up, you know, buying a farm there. Now you've spent
28:26a lot of time there. Yeah.
28:27Tell me about that town and what it feels like to you now. I mean, you know, it seems like it's
28:33a very close-knit family. It's almost like everybody's either related or connected or
28:38cousins or something. Absolutely.
28:40So, you know, does it sort of feel like family to you now?
28:43Oh, absolutely. But it did early on. The town of Lynchburg brought me in very quickly,
28:49very early on, because almost everyone in some way, shape, or form touches the Green family or
28:55touches Jack's family. Now, Jack didn't have any descendants, so there aren't really any Daniels.
29:00But his nephew was a Motlow, and so there's a lot of Motlows, and then the Motlows and the
29:06Tollies married and all the rest of that. So there's a lot of Tollies. And so the family,
29:11I would, like, if someone tells me their last name, I can tell them whether or not they have
29:15family in Lynchburg, because there's only so many family names in Lynchburg, and everybody's
29:20connected in some way, shape, or form. But I had someone tell me when they read the book,
29:24they said it feels very much so like a love letter to Lynchburg. And in a certain regard,
29:30it is, because as an African-American woman, to know that you had a town, there's a story where
29:36there's a black man that was being charged with something, but he hadn't yet, he hadn't had his
29:43due time. And at that time, if someone, if a black man was charged, then all of a sudden you'd have
29:48these white mobs that would come and decide to carry out their own vigilante justice.
29:52And so this sheriff, he guaranteed that this black man would be protected in the jail in Lynchburg.
30:00And then this mob came in. The press is now identified. They then prosecuted these people
30:06later. But this mob came in from Tullahoma, a nearby city, with the absolute intention of lynching this
30:15man. And so he's in the jail. And this mob is surrounding the jail, telling the sheriff to release
30:22this black man. And the sheriff sounds the alarm. So the whole town of Lynchburg shows up, but the
30:29town had burned down previously. And so everyone showed up thinking it was a fire. And they get there
30:35and they see this mob. The sheriff's out front with a rifle trying to protect this black man that is
30:41inside. And it becomes this all out brawl in Lynchburg where you have this mob with guns and
30:47you have these people from Lynchburg who didn't know they needed to bring their guns. They all had
30:51them, but they didn't know they were necessary. But they literally that sheriff to the very last shot
30:57and everybody who had guns to the very last shot tried to protect this black man. Now, unfortunately,
31:02they ended up getting him. But then they all very quickly identified all of those men to the police
31:09and those men were prosecuted. Those that's not something that you really hear about because that
31:13entire town that really showed up to protect this this black man, they were white. Yeah, that's
31:19that's remarkable. And yeah, not not a story that would have turned out that way. And a lot of towns
31:24and not at all. But it did in Lynchburg. Yeah. And so as I'm in Lynchburg and and just experiencing
31:30the warmth of the people that welcomed me in there and it I mean, literally from the very beginning,
31:36when people learned the story that I was working on, they began trying to help. I would show up my
31:42car would have like a document on it that would help me to tell the story. I have no idea who would
31:48drop off the document or I would get a phone call and say, hey, I have you know, my wife got some some
31:54some boxes from the courthouse when the court moved or remodeled it. And there's a document in here for
32:00a mini green. Does that mean anything to you? I go, yeah, that's that's nearest his daughter. I've been
32:05trying to look for it. And and then they'd welcome me over to their house and and for me to go through
32:10the documents. And and so it's it's so special to me how the entire town rallied to make sure that
32:16this story was told right. Both the African-American community and the white community, which in
32:21Lynchburg is not separate. Right. And you also mentioned, I think, that a lot of people, black
32:27families and white families share the same last names in a lot of cases. They do not not for good
32:32reasons, though. Right. And so this is now going back to days of enslavement. So you do have people
32:38that share the same last name almost across the board. It's the last name. So Edie started off as
32:44white. Then it was black. Green was white. Then it was black. So you do have a lot of that that's
32:49that's there. And that was pretty common. The enslaved people usually took on the last names of their
32:54enslavers. Fawn, the book is called Love and Whiskey. I want to talk about whiskey for a second. Yes.
33:01So tell me about the whiskey itself, Uncle Nearest, and what makes it special? What kind of process did
33:11you go through to get it to where it needed to be? Yeah. Well, first, Uncle Nearest, his his great,
33:16great granddaughter, Victoria Edie Butler, is our master blender. She is now four time master blender
33:21of the year. Our bourbon and Tennessee whiskey, whichever one you want to call it, it's legally both.
33:27But Uncle Nearest, our bourbon, Tennessee whiskey, is the most awarded bourbon in the world five years
33:33running. And every single year we rack up so many more awards than everybody else in the industry.
33:40And people can't figure out why. Listen, whiskey is in Victoria's blood. This is this is this is what
33:46she this is like. She was literally if you've ever seen a person born to do something, it's her
33:51blending uncle nearest. There is such a legacy. There's such a rich legacy in that. I also think
33:57because Nearest Green Distillery in Shelbyville, which is just above Lynchburg, it's an hour south
34:02of Nashville, but 20 minutes north of Lynchburg. Our distillery is now the seventh most visited
34:07distillery in the world. People from every background come and they enjoy the tastings, but
34:12also just being on the grounds. They're beautiful 458 acres that we have built out in a pretty stunning
34:19way to honor Nearest and everyone who comes there. But the whiskey is is extraordinary. And a part of
34:26that is because generally with a blender, what they do, what blenders, what distillers do is they proof
34:32the whiskey down to 40 percent and they're looking for flaws and really a 20 ABV, but a 40 proof.
34:40And they will they taste it by basically putting it in their mouth, chewing it, swishing it around,
34:46spitting it out. And then they're there. What is remaining? They're looking for the flaws.
34:51Well, Victoria came in and she didn't know any better. So she began tasting directly from the
34:56barrel. And then when people told her, well, you're supposed to just, you know, put it in your
35:01mouth, swish it around, spit it out. And she says, well, then how will I know how that tastes going down?
35:06So how will I know what it tastes like in someone's throat? How will I know if it actually
35:10burns once it goes down or if it's more like a warm hug? How how will I know that? So she is the
35:15only master blender who actually tastes at barrel strength and does not spit out. I think that's
35:22the reason why we're the most awarded is that we actually have someone who is tasting the final
35:27product. It's about one o'clock in the afternoon here in Birmingham. So normally I wouldn't be
35:32drinking bourbon at this time of day, but right now I kind of wish we had. Listen, as soon as you said,
35:37let's talk about bourbon, I started looking around the table trying to figure out where
35:41the uncle nearest was and wondering if I should have brought a bottle because I have no issue
35:45having it at one o'clock in the afternoon in Birmingham. I should have brought some myself
35:50next time. I appreciate that. So, Fawn, you've always cared a lot about giving back in some way.
35:57And one of those ways was the founding of the Nearest Green Foundation. What kind of opportunities
36:02do you want to create through that? Yeah, well, the Nearest Green Foundation,
36:09its primary responsibility is paying for the secondary education. So full scholarships for
36:15every one of Nearest Green's descendants. Every single semester, we're cutting checks to
36:19universities around this country paying for Green descendants to go to college. What I learned coming
36:26into this is Nearest Green and his boys and his grandchildren had such a legacy of excellence in
36:32the whiskey business. But most people don't know that Tennessee prohibition began 10 years before the
36:37rest of the country. So 1910, Jack Daniel Distillery left Lynchburg, went to St. Louis. So there was
36:45nothing in Lynchburg, Tennessee, in terms of an industry, absolutely nothing. You had a few, you know,
36:51general stores, a few places that sold ice cream and coffee, but you really had nothing in that
36:56entire town from 1910 until the other side of prohibition. And in Tennessee, prohibition ended
37:03county by county and Lynchburg was the last county to come out. So you have almost 40 years that Jack
37:09Daniel Distillery is not operating in Lynchburg, Tennessee. So all of the branches of Nearest's family
37:14left Lynchburg. One went to Indianapolis, one went to St. Louis, one is in Nashville,
37:20one is in Tullahoma, one is in Texas, but none of them remained in Lynchburg. So when I began bringing
37:27the family together and I was watching the young people, it was very clear they didn't realize they
37:32came from a legacy of excellence. They're getting a bunch of D's and F's in school and just kind of
37:37just floating through life, if you will, and with not a whole lot of purpose. And so I told the young
37:43people, this was before we ever started Uncle Nearest or ever sold our first bottle. I told the young
37:48people, I said, listen, if you get into college, I'll pay for it. Just get in. And so now at that
37:54time, those young people, because they weren't really doing what they needed to do to get into
37:58top colleges, they, you know, they could get into community college and work their way up.
38:03But that began back in 2016. So now the checks we're cutting are to some of America's top
38:10universities. And, and so that is, that is why the foundation was created to completely change the
38:15trajectory of, of that lineage. So they returned back to that of their ancestor, which was a legacy
38:22of excellence. That's so great. What a great idea. And, and, uh, I know you're just love being a part
38:28of that and, and seeing kind of the, you know, looking to the future and thinking about what all this is,
38:33is going to do down the road too. Absolutely. Well, Fawn, I just have one more question for you and
38:38it has to do with the dedication. Yes. You said, uh, in the dedication, you said uncle nearest and
38:43uncle Jack, thank you for choosing me as the keeper of this legacy for this leg of the race.
38:49Yes. Tell me what it means to you to share this story with the world. Every generation has had a
38:55keeper of this story. Even when the story disappeared and, and people that get the book will, will learn.
39:01I like to give that in full context, but because we are a country that's turned into everyone
39:05communicating in 140 characters and nuanced stories can't be communicated in soundbites.
39:11And, but that, that piece of it, why it disappeared is it's important to understand the nuance to it.
39:16But every generation has had a keeper of this story to make sure the legacy of nearest green
39:21never died, to make sure this relationship of love, honor, and respect between Jack Daniel nearest
39:27green never went away. And, and so I just happened to be the keeper of that legacy,
39:34right now, but I'm only going to be here so long, right? I'll be 48 this year, you know,
39:40knock on wood. I get another 40 years. I look good. I look good, but I, I, I, I am hopeful that
39:46I'll have, you know, another 50 years or so. And I'm able to go at this pace, but when I'm gone,
39:52it's very important for this legacy to continue on. And it's very possible that someone else won't have
39:57to come after me because now we have uncle nearest and we have nearest green distillery.
40:02So his story will continue to be told through those two mediums forever. And, but I, I do just
40:09see this as, as my leg of the race as building out nearest green distillery and uncle nearest so that
40:15this story can never again be forgotten. But, but I don't pretend that I am the reason that this story
40:21is coming to life. I'm shining a light on it, but I, I absolutely believe that this is nearest in
40:27Jack in heaven. They're enjoying some whiskey and, and they're laughing about it all and all of the
40:32fuss that people are making about it. I, I absolutely believe it with, without, without question. I
40:38believe it. And maybe there's some fiddle playing and dancing. It is, it is quite possible. They don't,
40:43they don't strike me as harp dancing people. Well, Fawn Weaver, congrats on the book and all your
40:52success. And thanks so much for being on Biscuits and Jam. Thank you for having me. Now,
40:57can we actually have Biscuits and Jam? Let's go to it. All right. All right.