Welcome to a very special hometown memories edition of Biscuits and Jam from Southern Living.

I'm Sid Evans, editor-in-chief of Southern Living magazine.

And today, we're featuring conversations I've had with guests like Robert Earl Keene, Ashley McBride, and Walker Hayes about where they grew up, what made their hometown special, and some of their favorite childhood memories.

I'm going to start this show with a country music superstar and cookbook author, Trisha Yearwood.

So, Trisha, you grew up in a little town called Monticello, Georgia.

Am I saying that the right way? You are. You are. Most people don't. You did it right.

And this is kind of between Atlanta and Macon. And I saw that you went back there when your last

album came out in 2019.

Clearly, this is a place that means a lot to you.

Can you tell me a little bit about what it was like to grow up there and kind of how it

shaped you as a person?

It was a small town, like maybe 2,000 people in the town, maybe 10,000 people in the county.

I'm not sure, something like that.

It's probably still pretty similar.

It's a town that is almost like a time capsule.

Growing up there as a little kid was kind of like a Mayberry situation, you know.

And when you're a teenager, it's difficult because everybody knows you, everybody knows your business. We had a town square and that was not the place to hang out. My dad always said, if I catch you on the square, you know, so we didn't hang out the square. But you also knew that if you were parked on the square, your parents didn't have to see you there. Just someone had to see you there, and your parents would know before you got home that you had been on the square.

So I think that that accountability was something that as a teen I didn't love, but I carried with me as an adult, that small town feeling of responsibility and accountability, which I think was a great lesson.

It's almost like your parents raise you, but also the whole

town raises you. So to go back there, even though my parents are gone and my sister and I both live

in Tennessee, is still home. And I still know almost everybody there. So it really is my hometown

forever. I'll always be from Monticello, Georgia. That's always

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