Yep there’s southern which is the Jeff Sessions thing and then there’s country which is twangy and more Appalachian.
I grew up in middle and eastern TN but my family is from all over the place. — Vermont, the Dakotas, the Carolinas, Louisiana. Nobody ever knows where I’m from. The AL locals think I’m from California when they first meet me.
I enlisted in the Navy from Texas and was stationed in Virginia with a whole bunch of Yankees, from New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. As you can imagine, I picked up pretty heavily on their accents.
But not enough, apparently. When I’d go home on leave, folks would tell me I talked like a Yankee but when I went up north, they’d say, “You’re from the south aren’t you?”