Review: Deafhaven - Sunbather

WORDS Brian Carroll  PHOTO Deafhaven

Metal is finally, at long last, absolutely beautiful. Sweet, triumphant, and poignant, armed with some of the most elegantly-conceived chord progressions in recent memory, San Francisco five-piece Deafhaven had grown weary of all the macho posturing and darkness pervading Satan’s one-time genre of choice and focused their energy to make, in their own words, a “lush and rock-driven, even pop-driven” record. This statement of intent, while seemingly nonchalant as a descriptor, must have been a risky choice to make given the baggage of the metal genre, and on the record it shows. Song after song, the band barrels, skyrockets, and catches fire over and over again with a go-for-broke and uniquely brave creative spirit, one that will positively transfix and captivate new listeners. The record is an astounding success, and the band’s gambling experimentation has been handsomely rewarded in the press.

At the time of this writing, Sunbather is the best release of the year according to the legion of critics on review aggregate site Metacritic.com, and the fifty seventh best-reviewed album EVER RELEASED, sitting pretty between classic albums from Tom Waits and Woody Guthrie. Actual people like it too, as the disc consistently receives well-deserved perfect review scores from curious music lovers just tuning in. Like them, I hadn’t heard of this band before Sunbather started making waves on the internet, and while curious, I only knew that the album was supposed to be filed under black metal - that fuzzy, quiet lo-fi sub-genre intimately followed by the coolest of the cool. So, it was somewhat a relief to learn that, no, this is not black metal, heavy metal, or barely metal of any sort. 

Nay, Sunbather is a gorgeous post-rock beast, in the vein of too-easily forgotten bands from recent memory like Godspeed You Black Emperor! and Explosions in the Sky, energized for maximum beauty like the prettier, uptempo songs from a Dan Deacon electronic record like Bromst. Stripped of the trappings of routine metal sound (and accompanying imagery), Deafhaven newly depicts metal as a fantastical creature: the last feathered, giant, navy blue polar bear, its great arms and claws striding the arctic tundra at high speed before naturally taking flight and disappearing into the night sky among the Northern Lights.

Awash with the sort of singular notes played at a rapid-fire rate popularized on Radiohead’s OK Computer and Dick Dale’s version of “Miserlou” that opens Pulp Fiction, the disc makes a constant effort to release itself, to find peace through burnout, and to express in music the brutal, noisy poetry of the human experience and the modern reality of its possible extinction. Holdout sounds from the “old days” of metal include screaming vocals on nearly every track, but they’ve been thankfully buried in the mix and reduced to nothing more than a reedy whisper, a stylistic norm in black metal. Also hanging on for dear life in this complex hybrid of rock styles are the double-bass pedaled, tumbling drum rhythms of your average heavy metal band, but these, too, take a quiet back seat to melody and serve the best purpose possible, which is to propel the sound constantly forward at a blistering clip.

A couple of ideas lifted directly – bluntly – from the aforementioned GYBE and Explosions in the Sky will distract or comfort the seasoned post-rock listener depending on their tolerance and forgiveness of outright theft, but the disc has enough less obvious “borrowing” - like brief interludes of extremely subtle hip-hop-based, dark mystery that would sound at home on a Flying Lotus record – that these parts come off less like rip-offs and more like an earnest, transparent attempt to continue the themes and tricks laid out by those bands. By the end of the album, you might find yourself a little worn out, as its consistently high-energy epics occasionally hover around and over ten minutes in length, but luckily the band includes frequent rest stops in the form of pretty piano segments, field recordings, and plenty of atmospheric production to keep things from coagulating into a terribly formulaic, samey affair.

Highly recommended for post-rock lovers, but perhaps too commercial for strict black metal enthusiasts, Sunbather sounds immediately classic. If you think you might like your rock and roll speedy, dreamy, triumphant, cathartic, over-the top, and serious, you’ll find this is a lovely monster of a record. The sound Deafheaven has crafted here has been confidently chiseled from a familiar stone, so you may only need one listen to “get it,” but by all means, it is well worth that listen and more.

To purchase or listen, click here. 

Review: Daft Punk - Random Access Memories

WORDS Brian Carroll

Chances are, by now you’ve heard electronic two-piece Daft Punk’s catchy hit single, “Get Lucky” featuring guest vocals by Pharrell of N.E.R.D. fame. If so, you’ll know that that song is a blast, and speaks to the world in the same charged, nurturing tone for which the robot-themed dance group is known. It’s strong, and we’re all happy for the song’s success in these dark times. So how does the rest of the album compare?

Random Access Memories picks out and mashes up diverse moments of music from the last century, paying special attention to discarded styles from the late Seventies and early Eighties. It uses itself like a time capsule to tell a nostalgia-drenched, fleeting story. Deadpan disco is present. Also present is deadpan stadium-packing Seventies prog-rock and deadpan dentist’s office smooth jazz, these sounds peppered with short, neo-classical avant-garde interludes. While admittedly terrible sounding on paper, the record manages to convince thanks to the confident guitar work of Nile Rodgers of Chic on nearly every track. A noticeably strong suit this time around, Rodgers’s guitar is placed front and center to provide a busy, kinetic counterweight to the band’s vintage synthesizer riffs.

For the first time, Daft Punk has allowed their unique sound to be heard in a wide variety of matching and clashing live music environments. The album constantly offers up distinct production styles from other artists from the 70s, including Michael Jackson, Supertramp, Goblin, and Italian disco producer Giorgio Moroder. Only stopping to settle into something truly safe by modern standards once or twice, the album boldly and unironically delivers production styles other pop producers lack the confidence, gear, or know-how to touch. The choices in style can be fun to ponder, as random vintage throwbacks and classic rock references work in tandem to expand that Daft Punk sound, in a manner not too dissimilar from mashup artist Girl Talk.

Perhaps telling that the album’s low point seems to be the guest-vocalist-nearly-blew-it “Lose Yourself to Dance,” the duo sounds like they are no longer interested in making straightforward dance music, and would politely like it if we could let them occasionally be Journey, Isaac Hayes, Philip Glass, Judy Garland, DJ Shadow, Hall and Oates, and ABBA. But despite this generous wide range of influences, they also repeatedly promote the flavor of bland, no-name lite FM jazz sound you might overhear while getting your teeth drilled. This is often curiously balanced with the big drum sound of a firmly mulleted stadium prog-rock band, complete with a spandex leotards, smoke machines, and mountains of cocaine. That music like this is up for the same consideration as the more classy, theatrical offerings on display minutes later at any given point on the record says something to Daft Punk’s unique abilty to force their audience to see discarded ideas in new ways, then discard the ideas, too, before their credibility gets away from them.

The band’s signature reliance on the robotic vocal effect that musicians know as the Vocoder allows us to forgive their use of its wicked sister effect – autotuned vocals - on Julian Casablancas’s guest track. While tastefully done in Daft Punk’s hands, both effects sound a little tired, having been beaten to death by American Hip Hop producers for the past six years – a group of individuals who seem to be more in love with modern French Pop of late.

Even music snobs like Daft Punk, and the reason, besides that they freshen rooms, is that their music is about other people: their audiences. This time around, Daft Punk is about other people they like, and that’s cool, too. It’s interesting that they so openly reveal the large extent Italian disco, Moroder in particular, has had on their music by including an expensive-sounding tribute to the mustachioed grandfather of electronic dance music early on in the disc.

Probably the best parts of the album are the few sprinkled gasps of academic, noisy inspiration involving a concert orchestra, and on one track, an enormous choir. Centering around a sense of the epic and spacious, these sections lend the parade a welcome Stanley Kubrick vibe, yet are wiped from memory immediately by disposable pop beats and lie dormant until the next listen.

Designed as a love letter to the twentieth century, and how its sounds find a place in our subconscious to be stored, the album’s various reference points are capable of opening much baggage upon chance encounter with the right memory. It’s a romantic, up-til’-dawn sort of record, full of silly, fleeting fears, the sort of rock opera Don Johnson might imagine if reflecting back on his Miami Vice years in a drunken stupor at sunrise.

When all is said and done, RAM is a more all-encompassing affair than “Get Lucky” lets on.
High-concept and well-planned, it loses points when a scant couple of genre mashups don’t mesh. Despite their noted good intentions, Daft Punk overreaches occasionally here, particularly on the rock-based songs. The album contains at least one terrible moment, but you will be entertained by the band’s seemingly reckless commitment to their approach. As time with the record goes on, you’ll appreciate how carefully and cleverly the album was conceived, as a lonely bundle of meaningful excuses to explore and expand the Daft Punk sound by paying tribute to older artists.    

It simultaneously saddens, livens, cools, and weirdens. Uniquely vintage by design, Random Access Memories points with longing nostalgia to the late 70s and early 80s, when pop music was quietly ignited by a cheery, Italian music producer in a golf shirt named Giorgio Moroder. His electronic recording techniques shook, doomed, and outlived disco, changing the course of pop for the next fourty years. His legacy is rather looming, and he’s not a household name. The record seeks to rectify that, but paints a convincing background portrait of the music’s surrounding era to give it context. Interesting to behold.

Random Access Memories is available for download on iTunes and Amazon.
Daft Punk action figures by Bandai are available for pre-order on Amazon.

Beaches & Burritos: Touring With Hail The Titans

WORDS Josh Carples

When the weather warms up, it’s sometimes nice to book shows near a beach. Of course, in April the weather didn’t quite warm up as much as expected, and yes, the water was a bit cold. That didn’t stop people from hitting the beaches, and it didn’t stop us from getting in the water. How often do people in Montgomery, Alabama get to step in the waters of the Atlantic, right? Salt life, baby! (No, not really.)

So we hit the road to Florida, first to Destin, then to Jacksonville. A special note about Destin – your GPS system, if it hasn’t been updated, may send you on a road to a toll bridge. That road will not lead to the toll bridge. In fact, it will lead you to the toll bridge employee parking lot and a cul-de-sac style dead end. That’s when you send your drummer out, on foot, to talk to the person in the booth. “How do we get to where you are?”

So anyway, sometimes when you’re on the road, showers are scarce, and the ocean is your salty-but-cleansing friend. So we travel through Jacksonville toward the beach. Traveling through a new city, you get to see all the sights and local businesses, and some of the names really catch your attention, but not necessarily in a good way. There’s the “Hands On Children’s Museum,” and a bit down the road is “Kids by the Hour.” Luckily, our van has windows, and we don’t all sport mustaches, so your kids are safe. I just, personally, would have gone with different names.

One of the perks on the road is finding local food places. And I think we found the holy grail of burrito restaurants in Jacksonville – Burrito Gallery. Had George Lucas and Steven Spielberg met there to discuss Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, that film would have ended much differently. Ever had a yellow curry chicken burrito? You should. I got the carnitas burrito, and it was great. I can only assume the secret ingredient is unicorn tears because it was pretty magical. Unicorn tears, man. Unicorn tears.

Josh Carples is a member of the Montgomery-based band Hail the Titans, a singer-songwriter, actor and writer, and he somehow manages to work a “big boy” job in his free time.  Find out more at HailtheTitans.com and JoshCarples.com.

Alabama Jazz 101: Two Classics From Our Recently Departed

WORDS Tom Jean  PHOTO Jon Kohn

2013 has seen the sad passing of two Alabama jazz giants: legendary be-bop guitarist Johnny Smith (June 25, 1922 – June 11, 2013) and modern jazz drummer Steve Ellington (1942 - March 22, 2013). In memorial, we recommend listening to the following releases as testament to their respective mastery.

Johnny Smith - Moonlight In Vermont (Roost, 1952)
Although perhaps not as well remembered as jazz guitar comrades Barney Kessel and Herb Ellis, for a brief period of time in the 1950’s Birmingham native Johnny Smith  (above right) was indeed a household name. This is the release that put him in the spotlight, and has had a lasting influence for generations of guitarists.

Largely self-taught as a teenager, he became skilled at tearing off literate but tasteful, fast and swinging solos of the Charlie Christian “horn-style” variety. But where Smith really cooked was in his perfection of the “chord melody” style, whereby the simultaneous playing of multiple notes carries the musical themes and improvisations (as opposed to single notes, like a horn player). Smith’s virtuosity is in full-effect on this critically-acclaimed early 50’s quartet outing (also featuring future tenor saxophone star Stan Getz as added bonus) which finds Smith virtually re-inventing a set of mostly familiar standards (the title track, Stars Fell On Alabama, Tenderly, etc.), all while displaying an appealing buttery-smooth electric guitar tone. A great make-out record.
Available for download on iTunes and Amazon.com

Dave Holland Quintet - Jumpin’ In (ECM, 1984)
Atlanta-born journeyman drummer Steve Ellington (see above) emigrated to the Montgomery-area in the 90’s, and frequently brought his percussive fire to the Sunday night jam-sessions at 1048 Jazz and Blues in Old Cloverdale. He spent decades building his well-deserved reputation as a reliably consistent and professional sideman both live and in the studio for jazz greats such as Sam Rivers, Hampton Hawes, Art Farmer and Roland Kirk.
It is arguably this 1983 session for bassist / composer Dave Holland which best illustrates the depth of Ellington’s abundant talent. Steve’s awe-inspiring work as anchor for this all-star piano-less quintet (which boasts saxophonist Steve Coleman, trombonist Julian Priester, and trumpeter Kenny Wheeler) is made more impressive by the sheer diversity of material here. Ellington sounds equally at home in the entire wide spectrum that is modern jazz, all while revealing a flawless technique, an innate sense of dynamics, and indeed taste (which is rarer than it should be). Witness the blistering hard-bop of the title track, the funk / march of Coleman’s “The Dragon And The Samurai,” and the chamber-like tranquility of Holland’s “Sunrise” (some very delicate brushwork here). Check out the drum solo on “New One,” it will put a smile on your face. We’ll miss you, Steve.
Available for download on iTunes and Amazon.com

Too Tough To Live: Q&A with Dan Sartain

WORDS & PHOTO: Rebecca Seung

RS: You were born in Birmingham, Alabama?

DS: Yeah, in an area called Midfield. I’m not sure if it was Midfield or Fairfield or Central Park, but it was in that area, like West Birmingham. I loved it, didn’t know any better. I don’t know if I’d like it now. It looks kinda the same, and it feels kinda the same. But when you’re young and you don’t know any better, you just love where you’re from.

RS: When did you come to Montgomery?

DS: I’ve been in and out of here for about 7 years or so, back and forth. Back up to Birmingham, went out to San Francisco, went out to San Diego, lived in London for a little while.

RS: What’s your favorite?

DS: Right now, I’m thinking maybe I had the best times of my life in Birmingham. Every time I go back, there’s more stuff happening than there was when I lived up there. I don’t know if the novelty would wear off or if it would remain feeling cool when I live up there again. Hope so, ‘cause the longer I’m away from it the more fond I feel for it... but I just wanna do whatever it takes to keep traveling to different places.

RS: So is touring like the ultimate thing for you?

DS: Yeah, I guess so. While you’re out there, you don’t have to worry about starving or anything. I like traveling when I’m not playing music, but then, sometimes when I travel when I’m not playing music, I feel an anxiety when nighttime comes around. I’m like, "when is load in, when is sound check?" It’s not that I’m unable to enjoy myself, but I’m in a foreign place without time restrictions and having to be somewhere and your muscles being sore as shit. I’m there to party, and I don’t know how to do it anymore. I don’t like going to bars, having to buy the drinks. I’m integrating back into just hanging out again. I don’t mean to be such a hermit.

RS: Well, what would you change about Montgomery?

DS: Oh, that’s asking a lot. It’s just a little rougher than it has to be around here. I wish it wasn’t because then maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to go out.

I feel like in Birmingham I can go up there now and be my kind of goofy self that smiles too much and doesn’t always say the right thing, and maybe my personality or my demeanor or my look or something is off putting to people. I don’t know what it is, I’m fine with it, but in Birmingham I feel comfortable enough to be myself because I know within any kind of little clique or group of people, I’m gonna know one of the people out of that group and have done them a favor or vice versa or worked with each other or dated each other or punched each other, I know there’s gonna be some kind of connection there - whether it’s a good connection or not. I know where I stand, I know where I am.

RS: So what about music? What are some of your all time favorites?

DS: Chuck Berry’s gotta be in there.

Alice Cooper Group, cause when he went solo, it wasn’t the same, and a lot of people don’t know that. They just think Alice Cooper is Alice Cooper, but there was a point when he fired the whole band and got a new band and made it more about the stage show and things like that, and a lot of people didn’t really notice the transition but there was one. When they were the group, they were one of the best. There was no dead weight, no person in the band didn’t do anything.

Devo too, Devo’s gotta be in there. That guy is the most underrated lyricist. I won’t go so far as to call Devo underrated. It seems like a lot of people want to classify them as a one hit wonder, and I guess they are, but they were far more than that. They get their credit though. They’re still around, still touring, still selling out venues. I feel like Beatles fan think the Beatles are underrated sometimes. It’s weird talking to some Beatles fans. It’s like, how much credit do you think they need?

I think the Ramones thought that they were slighted, too. They thought that bands like Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains were stealing their thunder, and it’s like, get real man. They might be big, but they don’t have the influence that a band like the Ramones did. And how famous do you wanna be? The Ramones were pretty fucking famous. I think from '77 on, there wasn’t a point when they couldn’t get 5,000 people at a show, at any Ramones show.

That people embrace a lot of these celebrities is astonishing to me. Like Kid Rock? When I saw that guy, I thought "that guy is as ridiculous as Vanilla Ice any day of the week, right?"

RS: I think more ridiculous.

DS: Yeah, at least Vanilla Ice - at least that song was good. When I saw Kid Rock, it’s like, no way anybody’s buying this shit. That dude still gets on the cover of Rolling Stone. He was on CNN dropping his opinions with Piers Morgan about political stuff, and it’s like, "why are you asking this guy?" I don’t care what Kid Rock has to say about politics. I don’t even care what he has to say about music. You watch that CNN shit, you go crazy anyways. But, it’s like all of a sudden Kid Rock’s opinion matters. Those people seem kind of ridiculous enough to capture my attention, and I say ridiculous in the best possible way. Very entertaining dudes.

RS: Did you teach yourself how to play guitar?

Dad knew how to play guitar, so there was always a guitar around. Eventually I just begged and begged him. It’s weird cause I’m scrawny, and I was a scrawny kid, too. And when I wanted to play football, my dad was like yeah, I’ll teach you how to play football. I sucked so bad, but I had the heart. Highly encouraging of that, but when I wanted to play guitar, he discouraged it. I had to beg and beg and beg to play guitar, and I started getting better at that, so eventually he warmed up to the idea of teaching me. As a reward system for getting a grade or something, he’d teach me a new chord, but I was learning the chords instead of getting the grades.

RS: When did you start playing shows?

DS: When I was 13 or 14, I started playing shows at bars in Birmingham. I could get in because I was working.

RS: Did you have to leave as soon as the set was over?

DS: Sometimes, they’d be pretty lenient in those places. I had the most fun at bars when I was a teenager. When I turned 21 they stopped being as fun.

RS: They started charging you?

DS: Yeah.

RS: Dan pulled up a youtube video of rapper Dangeruss.

DS: It’s weird now that people call everybody else out for the ironic thing. Now people just have weird taste, you know what I mean. I feel weird 'cause I go around with this Star Trek shirt on but I like Star Trek, but then, being a 30 year old who lives at home, I shouldn’t be walking around with a fucking Star Trek shirt on and be into it. So either way is a lose-lose.

Either you’re the guy who’s into Star Trek and is wearing the shirt, or you’re the guy who’s 10 years late on wearing the shirt that’s funny but you don’t mean it. If that’s going away, I think it should start to become socially unacceptable for people to be nerds too cause that's gone too far, a little bit.

RS: We’re too nerdy now?

DS: The whole world is. They nourished it, and we became the makers. When we were kids, we were entertained by E.T. and stuff like that, but that was people our parents’ age and their vision of what they thought we would like. Now we’re the people making the childish things, and we’re like, Iron Man, Batman... But I fucking loved those Batman movies, so I don’t know.

RS: What else have you done other than play music? I know you’ve had a lot of odd jobs.

DS: I used to cut hair. I could see myself going back to that. Worked in movie theatres, done a lot of dishes. Mostly try to avoid work now. I feel like I’m winning if I don’t work. I want to work again, I want to get back into it. But it’s like, you can’t goof off your whole life and then go and get what everybody else has been working for.

RS: So are you thinking about not playing music anymore?

DS: No, I still love music, but at some point, you just outgrow your own usefulness. I can keep going, but I know what to expect out of it now. I know what I can get out of it. And it’s good, and it’s nicer to know. I keep getting reassured.

Every time I go back over to Europe, I think they forgot about me, or the audience won’t be there, but they are - they come back. And they’re good, you know. And I keep thinking they aren’t gonna do it forever, but maybe they will. If you don’t expect to do much more than play to several people at a bar - which is what I wanna do - if you expect that when you go out, and you get that, I’m fine with it.

RS: You just released that 7” with Richie Ramone. What are you working on now?

DS: Yeah, I was working on some stuff today. Going to send it off to some folks, see if they’d be interested. It’d be the same deal as we had with Richie. I’d like to work with him again, but it was pretty expensive.

That’s how I got into starting to do that stuff, 'cause my friends wanna get paid to do sessions and do things like that, and they ask about as much as these people who live in LA. My friends’ bands, I like them, but I don’t sit around and listen to them, and I definitely haven’t had the history with them. But bands like the Ramones or the Go-Gos or X, those are people I’ve been listening to for 30 years now - I’ve been listening to them my whole life. And they’re still working, they’re still out there looking for work. And I figure, people who do this kind of thing, they figure a day working in entertainment is better than a day not working in entertainment.

So you can look these people up and see the rates they charge, if we’re not doing it as a friend thing anymore. Ever since my friends have known I work with record labels, it’s like, I gotta pay for stuff. When I did it before I had a record label, people always wanna volunteer, can’t do enough to help you, but now they know there’s a record label. But that money still comes out of me, when I have to pay people to be on records cause you’ve gotta recoup - which doesn’t happen. I’m lucky, 'cause I don’t recoup on my records. They always spend more money to make my records than they get back, so it doesn’t make any sense for me to be on a record label anymore, but they like it, so they do it, so that’s cool. It’s a good position to be in.

Follow Rebecca and her music thoughts on her blog GetBent 

St. Paul and The Broken Bones: Sweet Soul Music

WORDS Robert Wool

On stage, Paul Janeway is as captivating a front man as anyone. In a full suit and bow tie, he gives off the vibes of a man proselytizing to a congregation.

His body shakes, his fingers wag, and in particularly intense moments he places one hand over his eyes and with the other he positions a sweaty outstretched palm towards the crowd as if dispelling evil spirits in a gospel soul sermon. Playing with such fervor makes sense. Soul has its roots in Gospel and at one point in his young life Paul was on a path to becoming a man of the church. Thankfully he saw the light of soul music and Birmingham’s St. Paul and the Broken Bones may just be the next big thing to emerge from our great state and capture the attention of the nation.  

So far in 2013 the Broken Bones have enjoyed success playing shows around the Southeast and are building buzz on the web. They’ve opened for John Mayer, garnered popularity in talent and industry heavy Nashville, and played festivals such as South X Southwest, the Hang Out, and the Cut Bait festival in Columbus, Georgia. 

 Their songs are filled with retro rhythms, bass and booming horns that make you want to move and would sound at home in the background of Blues Brothers. In their popular “Broken Bones and Pocket Change,” Paul laments the pain and feeling of loss after a tough breakup. The song has all the attributes of a classic Soul jam and we can all relate to the feeling of hurt being, “all she left me with,” when a relationship ends. We’ll be looking forward to September for the full length album to offer more soulful consultation.

The album, which is already fully mastered but yet to be titled, was recorded at the historic Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals. The one-time tobacco warehouse converted in the 1960s to lay down tracks by Soul greats such as Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, and Clarence Carter seems an apt setting for St. Paul and the Broken Bones to record their first full length album. In the same building where Wilson Picket’s “Mustang Sally” was canned, Paul and his group of soul servants worked with Ben Tanner, keyboardist of the Alabama Shakes, to help with production.

 Paul let MADE in on a secret of their studio session. For the recording process the band did things a bit differently to contribute to their Soulful sound, “We did it kind of old school - we did it all by tape, the record sounds old.” Unlike most musical conglomerates of twenty something’s who prefer tracking with laptop computers, St. Paul and the Broken Bones (who are comprised of guitars, bass, drums and horns section) stepped back in time with the soul greats by recording analog. 

This month St. Paul and the Broken Bones will be embarking on a tour to share their old-school sound nationwide. With shows in New York City and Philadelphia, the band will look to mirror the meteoric rise to fame felt recently by compatriots the Alabama Shakes. Although it’s worth mentioning the Athens, AL rockers when talking about the Broken Bones, Paul thinks we shouldn’t get carried away, “People say ‘Oh this is the next Alabama Shakes’ or whatever the hell they say, but they come to our show and see it’s not the same.” Although he has much respect for the Alabama Shakes, Paul thinks the comparison only works geographically but not musically. 

With songs being played on satellite radio and features of the band the doing the rounds on the blogosphere, the future looks promising. The success of this band would show other musically inclined Alabamians that our home is an acceptable launch pad for a career. Where others have felt the pull and gone on to more conventionally musical sites, the Broken Bones are staying put. “Some people are like, ‘Hey when are you guys moving?’ I don’t want to move - Birmingham is home. Nashville is only three hours away and it’s good not to get engulfed in that culture and just do our own thing.” Good thing they’re sticking around. You can find them playing locally at shows in Birmingham and Mobile in mid-June. 

As a measure of success, today’s heavily marketed and image based groups look at album and ticket sales or the modern endorsement of fame today: Twitter followers. Not Paul. In the sentiment of a true Soul man he knows what’s really important. “I just try to take it one step at a time and enjoy it because this shit can turn on you and if we take more steps awesome - if not, it’s one good story to tell your grandkids one day and I guess that’s the whole point.” 

For songs and tour dates visit 

www.stpaulandthebrokenbones.bandcamp.com

Montgomery, Say Hello to The Breedings

The Breedings are a Nashville based band of brother and sister Erin and Willie Breeding. Willie writes the songs, his sister Erin sings. They describe their music as "emotional and boozy, melodic and catchy" classic country, and their live show hammers home the power of Erin's voice and Willie's lyrics. I met the Breedings a few years ago when they played Lambstock in Patrick Springs, Virginia, and from that day have wanted to bring The Breedings to Montgomery. That goal will be realized this weekend: The Breedings will play a $5 happy hour show in the A&P Lofts courtyard (behind Pine Bar and True) Friday from 5:30 - 7:30, and again on Saturday at the Montgomery Street Fair at 2:30 p.m.

The band came together in New York City, where Erin would visit Willie to sing with him at his shows. Erin also sang harmonies on Willie's solo albums, leading one reviewer to say Willie was being outsang by his back-up singer. Realizing their complementary styles combined to form something greater than themselves, they moved to Nashville in 2011 and have been playing and recording since.

Their first album, Laughing at Luck, is available to stream on their website and can be purchased online. Laughing at Luck falls closer to "rock" on the "country <--> rock" spectrum, with songs likeWhen it All Comes Down and I Know I Say leaving their chugging drums and guitars behind when Erin and Willie sing power choruses in perfect harmony. Another stand-out track, Everything You Wanted, is arranged with a soulful combination of organ, guitar, wood block, and horns, adding musical depth to an already lovely song. Their newest album, Fayette, leans further toward more classic country; The Breedings described the album as "ten songs the listener is as likely to consume on a Saturday night with drinks as the next morning with the resulting remorse and coffee."

The Breedings are excited about the connection between Hank Williams and Montgomery, and I expect we'll have at least one whiskey drink by Hank Williams's grave before they head back home. Make plans to support this great band on their first trip to Montgomery.

​Photo Credit: Will Holland

Touring: Is Today Shower Day?

Words: Josh Carples

Josh Carples is a member of the Montgomery based band Hail the Titans, a singer-songwriter, actor and writer, and he somehow manages to work a “big boy” job in his free time. He will be periodically sending dispatches from the road when his band is on tour.

“The tour is booked. Now it’s time for packed venues, screaming fans, after parties, groupies, free-flowing alcohol, drugs, hotel room destruction and daily hangovers. Hashtag YOLO, amirite? Ah, the glamorous life of a touring musician… with a day job. If only that were the case.

Allow me to start over: The tour is booked. Now it’s time to live in a van with three other hairy, sweaty guys for the next however-many-days, shower every two-to-three days (if you’re lucky), sleep intermittently and maybe even grab a meal that doesn’t come from a gas station once in awhile.

When touring, you never really know what to expect, especially if you’re hitting a city you’ve never been to. Playing a hole-in-the-wall venue on a Monday night in a city far from home might mean that you’re playing to the bar staff or to the other band on the bill, and if you’re lucky, the handful of friends that came to hang out with them.

But you load in all the equipment, check levels, mentally focus, and play your heart out. Maybe someone there will like you or you’ll make a friend. Maybe they’ll tell others about you or bring more people the next time you come to town. Maybe… just maybe, they’ll even let you park in front of their house and sleep on their floor.

After four or five hours of sleep on a stranger’s floor, you get up, find coffee, and head to the next city to do it all over again. Sometimes, you get lucky and play an awesome venue or house show with great bands and a great crowd. Sometimes, you play for three people and the sound guy. The key is to give them both the same show.

It’s not fame or money that keeps bands touring independently: it’s the love of music, and the experiences and stories are the icing on the cake. When some random girl wants you to drive her to see her jailhouse boyfriend in another city (the answer is “no”), when you hear a man on a D.C. sidewalk yelling about how his knees are worth $100,000, when you meet family members for the first time, when you experience restaurants you’ve seen on Food Network, and when a bartender, fan or sound guy tells you that your band is incredible and that he hasn’t heard anything like it before and then offers to buy the band a round, you’re reminded about how it’s all totally worth it.

Catch Hail The Titans this May in New Orleans or Atlanta, and AlleyBar in Montgomery June 28.