Q&A with Sam McLeod, author behind Waffle House song contest

Waffle House is already known for its hash browns, waffles and hefty mugs, and now the chain is looking to add another gem to its menu: original music.

Through July 15, aspiring songwriters can compete for a chance to professionally record a song that will be played on Waffle House jukeboxes nationwide. The contest is part of a book tour promoting author Sam McLeod's latest work, "Big Appetite: My Southern-Fried Search for the Meaning of Life" (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, $23). McLeod is a cousin of Waffle House CEO Joe Rogers Jr., he said.

We caught up with McLeod, whose book explores his childhood in Nashville and other points in the South. He will host a book signing and speak about his work and the song-writing contest Saturday at the Waffle House Museum in Decatur.

Q. So Waffle House is promoting your book across the country. How did the songwriting contest happen?

A. I'm not a musician myself. Certainly not a songwriter. [Waffle House execs] were saying if I wrote a song that worked they would put it on the Waffle House jukebox. You know, I wrote four "Big Appetite" songs and they rejected all four of them. So I said, "I give up. Let’s get someone else to do it. I’ll just stick to writing books."

Q. You live in Washington state now. Do you still consider yourself a Southerner?

A. People ask me "How can you write about the South if you don’t live there?" They’re almost mad about it. I said, "Wait a minute, I’m writing about my childhood. I carry that with me wherever I go." Being out of the South and looking in to write this book, there were these little jewels that flashed in my memory of Nashville, that when I lived there, I'm not sure I noticed.

Q. What are some of your favorite childhood memories in the book?

A. One of the stories in the book is about my mother and Vidalia onions. It was the first time in my life I thought my mother might be nuts. As a little kid, you don’t want your mother to be nuts. We had Georgia relatives, the Rogers family, and they’d send us these onions from what we always called "the great state of Georgia.” My mother prized these Vidalia onions and thought onions wouldn’t get better than that. She’d wait for them every spring and put them in pantyhose legs and hang them in our laundry room and keep them for months. [Now we live in] Walla Walla [Washington], known for Walla Walla sweet onions, sort of the rival to the Vidalia onion, and there’s this debate about which is better.

Q. So which is better?

A. I can’t tell the difference, to be honest.

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