Bella Steiert: A Little Bit of Everything
A scholar of music fandoms shares her life-changing live music moments.
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Bella Steiert isn’t just a music fan, she is a scholar of music fandom. The 25-year-old is two semesters into a doctoral program, where she is currently writing a 15- to 20-page paper about HeAthens Homecoming.
“I am really interested in the concept of music and fandom and the different ways in which music moves people and affects communities,” says Bella. “I’m making the case for the importance of the community around DBT, with Homecoming in Athens as the gathering site.”
Nancy Einhart
If all goes as planned, her Homecoming paper will serve as a proposal for an even bigger project, laying the groundwork for her thesis, which Bella hopes will combine her passions for Jason Isbell, Drive-By Truckers, and how parasocial relationships impact how we interact with music.
“I am really interested in the concept of music and fandom and the different ways in which music moves people and affects communities.”
Musically, Bella is an old soul. Her first concert was U2 at age 8, and she counts Death Cab For Cutie and R.E.M. among her favorite bands. And when Bella gets into a band, she gets really, really, really into a band — unsurprising given her academic choices. “When I like something, I can’t just casually like something,” she says.
After getting her master’s degree at Ole Miss, Bella enrolled in a PhD program at the University of Alabama, where she is studying media process and effects. She also hosts a podcast called Undefined With Bella — an extension of her college radio show of the same name — where she interviews musicians including Patterson Hood, David Barbe, Matt Patton, and Chad Gamble from Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit.
We met in person for the first time at Homecoming, while Bella was impeccably dressed as the DBT song “72 (This Highway’s Mean).” Keep reading for our full conversation, including our reflections on Athens, Bella’s musical origin story, and her most "unreal" recent live music experience that wasn't Homecoming.
First, I’d love to hear your thoughts on what you felt at Homecoming and how you saw the community and the city and how that all fit together.
That was a really surreal experience for me, because I’d only seen the Truckers twice before. I saw them in Memphis back in 2022, and I was just getting into DBT at that time and I didn't realize how flexible their sets are. I had just started listening to them a few months prior, and I felt like I did not know most of what they played.
I saw them again in 2024, where they did Southern Rock Opera. That was a very different show for two reasons. One, obviously they were doing a set list, which is very not a DBT thing. Two, it was outside in November in Huntsville, so we were all bundled up. I think Matt told me it was one of the coldest shows they ever played.
"It was this unifying experience, almost like a family reunion."
When I first got into DBT, I was an undergrad, and the music that I was getting into around that time was not the kind of music that my peers were into. So I would go to shows with my parents, who were very supportive, or bring friends who weren't fans but wanted to support me. Going from that to Homecoming was intense, but in a good way.
Nancy Einhart
For a lot of my other favorite bands, it feels like every person for themselves at shows. I’ve never felt this heavy communal aspect like at Homecoming. It was overwhelmingly positive and welcoming and friendly and happy. It felt like my Facebook feed in real life. It was this unifying experience, almost like a family reunion. It was unlike anything that I have been to.
I think you described it really well. There are a lot of bands that I've seen multiple times, and everyone's just there to have their individual experiences. But when you're at a Homecoming show, everyone is specifically there to have a communal experience.
Yeah, and everybody is looking out for each other too. Like, I have a bad back, and people kept asking me about it and checking in on me.
I think you told me that you are a bigger Jason Isbell fan than a DBT fan. Is Jason Isbell how you got into the Drive-By Truckers?
Yeah, Jason Isbell is pretty much my favorite thing musically, and it was kind of a domino effect. Before I got into Jason, I wasn’t even familiar with the whole genre of Americana and alt-country. Post-COVID, the first show that I went to was American Aquarium in 2021. My parents are fans and I had heard their music, but I hadn’t really connected with it; I just really wanted to go see live music. But I happened to get an extra ticket and I really loved it.
"When I first got into DBT, I was an undergrad, and the music that I was getting into around that time was not the kind of music that my peers were into."
When I like something, I can’t just casually like something. I go on a big internet deep dive and learn everything about it. So when I was looking up American Aquarium, I kept seeing Jason’s name brought up. He had produced their album Burn.Flicker.Die, and that was my favorite album by them. I got to the point where I could not escape the name Jason Isbell. So I was like, OK, fine, I'm gonna listen to this guy. It was this giant light bulb moment, like, oh my gosh, this guy has the prettiest voice I've ever heard, I'm obsessed. I started listening and I just never stopped. And I found DBT shortly after that.
What is your favorite Jason Isbell song?
My top three are “King of Oklahoma,” “24 Frames,” and “Decoration Day,” which is also Drive-By Truckers. I remember when I heard it for the first time, I don’t think I had ever heard anything that sounded like that. It's not my favorite DBT song, but it's one of my favorite Isbell songs.
What about your favorite Drive-By Truckers song?
For Isbell, I have my three favorites that are very concrete, but for DBT, it changes. Recently it’s been “The Buford Stick,” which was one of the ones that I really wanted to hear live, and they played it the first night of Homecoming. I also love “72 (This Highway’s Mean),” which I dressed up as at Homecoming.
It just depends on the day. I love “The Righteous Path,” I love “3 Dimes Down.” “Where the Devil Don’t Stay” has been a consistent favorite of mine. “Carl Perkins Cadillac” is another one. There are just so many! And it changes after you hear some of those songs performed live. “Grand Canyon” I really started loving after I saw Patterson play it solo. That's become a part of my rotation.
“Let There Be Rock” might be my consistent favorite. Especially when they do it live and they end with it. You can't help but sing along to it and it just makes you happy, which is not a word that I would use to describe most of their songs. But that one, every time I listen to it, I can't help but smile.
I usually ask people about their favorite Drive-By Truckers shows. But I’d like to ask you, what are your favorite concerts of all time?
Not related to Jason or DBT, the best concert I’ve been to was Oasis at the Rose Bowl last year. I got into Oasis pretty recently and very intensely. I was like, I need to find a way to see them live, and if I don’t go, I'm gonna regret it for the rest of my life.
I somehow worked it out during the first semester of my PhD program. It was actually the cheapest to see them in LA, out of all their American dates. So I left Alabama for just over two days, and in the same way that Homecoming was an indescribable experience, that was too — watching so many people see and achieve something that they never thought would happen, which was Oasis getting back together. That concert was just unreal.
"When I was 9, I had a little CD case with Nirvana and the Foo Fighters and R.E.M. and Dave Matthews."
I also saw Jason for a three consecutive night run in Nashville at this new venue called The Pinnacle, around the time when Foxes in the Snow came out. That was my first time seeing him without the 400 Unit, and he played a lot of songs that I had never heard before; he doesn't really switch up his sets as much as DBT. Within those three days, I heard every song on Foxes in the Snow besides one. I heard "Danko / Manuel" for the first time live, and I think I also heard "Outfit" for the first time, if I remember correctly. It was a really cool experience to get all of those at once.
I also love Death Cab For Cutie. I got to see them with the Postal Service, when they did all of Transatlanticism, which is one of my favorite albums of all time. And they did all of The Postal Service album. That was another crazy, felt-like-a-fever dream moment. And the Friday and Saturday sets at Homecoming were really great too.
What kind of music did you listen to when you were growing up? You mentioned Death Cab for Cutie, which is an older band. When you were in high school, did you already have what I would describe as cool taste in music?
I grew up listening to a lot of alternative music, like alternative rock. My family was very much into Coldplay, John Mayer, Dave Matthews, Jack Johnson, and I was always into music. When I was 9, I had a little CD case with Nirvana and the Foo Fighters and R.E.M. and Dave Matthews and All-American Rejects and stuff like that.
In high school, I was into indie/alternative or emo — "Hot Topic music," I jokingly like to call it. Twenty-One Pilots and Panic! at the Disco and Fall Out Boy. Blink-182 is a huge one for me. Vampire Weekend is another big one for me. They still are. My mom also loved new wave and Depeche Mode and New Order and The Cure. It's funny, because now she likes a lot of the music that I listen to, and I've kind of inspired her taste. So we took turns on that.
"That was another crazy, felt-like-a-fever dream moment."
I was also a huge One Direction fan. I loved Jonas Brothers, Hannah Montana, High School Musical. On my iPod, I would go from listening to Justin Bieber to American Idiot. So I also love pop and a lot the stereotypical stuff that a lot of girls my age grew up listening to. I loved Ed Sheeran for a while, I’m a Taylor Swift fan.
That’s why my show is called Undefined. When I was on the radio, I wanted to get away with playing a rock song into an ‘80s song to a pop song to an Americana song. So that's where I got the name from, because I kind of have eclectic taste. There's a lot of music that is hard to define by genre. Drive-By Truckers is a good example; I feel like you could put them in multiple categories. I’ll often ask people “what kind of music do you like?” —not music nerds, just people at school — and often they will say “I like a little bit of everything.”
Is there any band that you wish you had seen live but didn't?
The biggest one is R.E.M. I was too young when R.E.M. were touring, and I grew up listening to them. The fact that I was never able to see them live was very disappointing. And if he was still alive, I wish I could have seen Townes Van Zandt, but he passed away when I was really young. And of course The Beatles, but that’s probably everybody’s answer.
Subscribe to Bella's Substack, Undefined, and follow her podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your podcast platform of choice.