Years Before They Hit It Big, The Red Clay Strays Were Featured In The Sequel To ‘The Shining’

You read that right… there’s a couple of Red Clay Strays easter eggs hidden in the sequel to The Shining.

In case you didn’t know, a movie Doctor Sleep came out in 2019, and to put it in layman’s terms, it’s a direct continuation of the story that Stanley Kubrick’s classic horror movie tells. As a big fan of The Shining myself, I excitedly saw it when it came out, and loved the nods that it had to the original 1980 film.

Little did I know that the movie featured one of my favorite country music acts, and did so before anyone outside of Alabama really knew their name.

2025 has been a big year for the Red Clay Strays. The band from Mobile, Alabama – consisting of Drew Nix (electric guitar, vocals, harmonica), Zach Rishel (electric guitar), Andrew Bishop (bass), John Hall (drums), Sevans Henderson (keys), and frontman Brandon Coleman – recently took home the Vocal Group of the Year award at the 2025 CMAs. They also headlined Red Rocks, and announced headlining shows at Madison Square Garden and Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena for 2026.

All that to say that they are very much a household name in the modern day.

But it wasn’t always easy for the Red Clay Strays. Brandon Coleman often talks about the trials and tribulations the band went through after they formed in 2016. Specifically, they remember the 2020 pandemic really taking the wind out of their sails, and they’ve said numerous times that many of the band members drove for Uber during that time just to keep their dream alive.

Their big break wouldn’t come until 2022, when their hit song “Wondering Why” really took off online and gave the band much deserved attention. But what if I told you that the band had a song (and a t-shirt) featured in a 2019 blockbuster film, and fans of the group are just now noticing over five years later?

If you are to watch Doctor Sleep, and pay close attention to the bar fight scene, you’ll actually hear a couple of seconds of the Red Clay Strays’ 2019 song “Good Godly Woman.” How did that come to be? Well, the director of sequel to The Shining is an Alabama-based filmmaker by the name of D. Scott Lumpkin. He’s obviously got a passion for filmmaking, but he’s also dipped into music over the years.

It was a couple of years before Doctor Sleep that Lumpkin and his wife, Kate, founded Skate Mountain Records, which was based in Lower Alabama and focused on signing artists in the state that had breakout potential. One of the first bands that they signed was the Red Clay Strays.

So while filming was ongoing for Doctor Sleep, the Red Clay Strays were doing some experimental recording sessions in Nashville. Lumpkin was getting samples from the band as he was in the midst of directing, and one of those samples was “Good Godly Woman.”

The director told AL.com that, funny enough, they were shooting a scene in a bar that day, and the sound and style of the sample matched up with what was needed for that moment in the movie:

“It just so happened we were shooting a honky-tonk scene in ‘Dr. Sleep’ that day. The song fit in perfectly.”

So the Red Clay Strays snuck into the movie, albeit a couple of seconds of their music, and the band proudly shared about it through Facebook in June of 2020, when the movie released on streaming:

“Who’s seen ‘Doctor Sleep’? Anybody heard our song yet? Seen our t-shirt or any of our buddies’ T-shirts? If not, you can see it on HBO.”

Notice that they also mentioned a t-shirt.

The film’s main antagonist, Rose The Hat (played by Rebecca Ferguson), was actually seen wearing a Red Clay Strays t-shirt about halfway through the movie. She’s sitting on top of a bus in the scene, and the maroon Red Clay Strays merch is seen clear as day.

A fan actually dove down into the comments of that post above to ask where they should be on the lookout for Red Clay Strays easter eggs in the film, and the band replied with this:

“Our song ‘Good Godly Woman’ is in there for like 2-3 seconds during the bar fight scene and our t-shirt is worn by the main bad lady while she’s sitting on top of the bus towards the middle of the movie. It’s the sequel to ‘The Shining’ so it’s classified as a horror film, but I consider it more of a thriller. It’s a really good movie in my opinion!”

It’s made that much better because the Red Clay Strays are in it.

Crazy to think that the talented band from Mobile, Alabama would end up getting their big break years later thanks to TikTok, and not because they were featured in a successful movie. But the Red Clay Strays do owe some of their success to filmmaker D. Scott Lumpkin.

In that same interview with AL.com from 2019, Lumpkin had this to say about the Red Clay Strays:

“I want the world to watch out, because these guys are going to be giant.”

He was certainly right about that.

If you want to check out the Red Clay Strays’ cameos in the film, it looks like Doctor Sleep is currently streaming on Netflix and HBO Max. You’ll want to keep an eye out for the t-shirt scene (which is pretty easy to spot), and the portion of this song (that’s linked below) that was featured in the movie.

“Good Godly Woman” by The Red Clay Strays

The post Years Before They Hit It Big, The Red Clay Strays Were Featured In The Sequel To ‘The Shining’ first appeared on Whiskey Riff.