Alabama Shakes In 2012 Alabama Shakes transitioned from relative obscurity to critical darlings with their debut release Boys & Girls earning three Grammy nominations. Heralded as rock and soul revivalists, in 2015 Alabama Shakes changed their initial throw-back sound significantly, resulting in the modern masterpiece Sound & Color which took home four Grammy Awards for the group. The Marquee’s Brian F. Johnson talks with the gregarious front- woman Brittany Howard about that crazy time of growth, changing things up for their sophomore release and her favorite purchase to date — her Roomba vacuum . Page 8 Lake Street Dive Boston’s Lake Street Dive gar- nered massive attention with their last release Bad Self Portraits, Publishers: Brian F. Johnson, Jessica Johnson which allowed them to have their Editor: Brian F. Johnson pick of producers for their new Publisher’s Assistant: Nessa Fried record Side Pony. The Marquee’s Tim Dwenger chats with Mike Sr. Contributing Writer: Timothy Dwenger Calabrese about what albums Photo Content Coordinator: Daniel Page inspired them to seek out produc- er Dave Cobb, what he brought to the table, and ultimately captur- Interns: Sonia Amodeo, ing the energy that they were hoping for. Page 12 Isadora Cavalcanti Hard Working Contributing Joe Kovack, Hap Fry, Writers: Derek Miles, Brandon Daviet, Americans Matt Treon, Miranda Brooks, Lindsay Allen, Michael Chary, Clayton Moore, Conner North, After three years and two albums Sarah Baranauskas together the members of Hard Review Lisa Siciliano, Tobin Voggesser, Working Americans are coming to terms with the fact that the group photographers: Brad Yeakel, Daniel Page, isn’t a side project. The Marquee’s Sarah Baranauskas talks with Derek Miles, Elliot Siff, Kirsten Cohen, Conrad Meyer, Dave Schools and Chad Staehly about Todd Snider’s ‘suspect’ M.O. Josh Elioseff, Kit Chalberg in putting the group together, how the ‘alchemy’ took over and the new album Rest In Chaos. Page 14 Web genius: sideonemedia.com Co-Founder: Brandon Yates Paper Bird Denver’s Paper Bird went through some well-documented changes in recent years. The Marquee’s Brian F. Johnson talks with Paul DeHaven and Carleigh Aikins about the result of those changes, what it did to the group dynamic, how it changed the group’s sound, and To contact The Marquee: (303) 917-3304 how their new eponymous album is almost like a debut after 10 [email protected] www.marqueemag.com years as a band. Page 16 The Marquee P.O. Box 889 Contents Boulder, CO 80306 Colorado Music Festivals in August...........................................................Page 18 Copyright Local Album Reviews...................................................................................Page 23 The entire contents of The Marquee and www.marqueemag.com are . Page 32 Copyright 2016 by Marquee Music, Inc Calendar..................................................................................................... ... Open Mics, Picks, Jams and Sesssions.................................................. ...Page 57 www.marqueemag.com 7 @Marqueemag alabama shakes the multi-Grammy winners to headline Vertex Colorado’s newest mega festival By Brian F. Johnson On the ethereal and spacey funk-rock of the song “Future People,” Brittany Howard effortlessly belts out words of advice. “Children/Take a living/Gotta keep up/You got to give a little, get a little,” she sings. Then, just a bit later, she adds, “Listen to teachers/Imagine a sound/Listen loud and they’ll reach the top.” Advice that sound doesn’t flow from the mouth of most Grammy-winning artists these days. In the era of a poten- tial pre-Trump presidency sometimes the deepest lyrics on the radio are verses like “I got a dirty mind. I got filthy ways.” (Thanks, Kanye.) But Howard, her band Alabama Shakes and their soph- omore album Sound & Color hasn’t grabbed three Grammys, more than a half-dozen nominations, and an almost universal critical acclaim by adhering to the mod- ern definition of a role model. Howard is a paragon pre- cisely because she’s the antithesis of so many pop stars today. Simply put, she’s real. “It’s really cool, because I get to be a different type of role model,” Howard said during a recent interview with The Marquee. “I’m a real person that someone could be instead of this intangible super model that must have this and this to be considered pretty or successful. I never had role models like kids today. My role model was my grand- mother who is a real person, who could make good deci- sions in hard times and things like that and I appreciated that. So I don’t know, I think it goes a long way for me too. It definitely keeps me self-assured.” Howard and her bandmates were grounded from the very outset. The band, which formed in Athens, Alabama in 2009 never had any intention of touring, or really doing anything beyond playing local shows.Alabama Shakes: See Page 9 8 The Marquee • August 2016 Facebook.com/MarqueeMag Alabama Shakes Continued from page 8 Howard was a mail carrier for the U.S. Postal Service when the group first began to take shape. The daughter of a mixed-race couple, who had lost a sister to a rare cancer called Retinoblastoma (and herself was treated for the same disease) was an awkward trouble maker at a young age. As a teenager she was bored by her simple, small town roots and felt isolated from her peers. Eventually the boredom caused her to pick up her departed sister’s old guitar— Howard can’t recall exactly what kind it was, other than it being a cheap J.C. Penney Les Paul imitation. “All I know is it started with an H,” she said. (Most likely, it was a “Harmony Beginner Electric” which was found in the Penney’s catalog in the late ’80s and the early ’90s.) She immediately began writing songs, and soon started seeking out other local musicians to collaborate with. At a party she discovered her high school class- mate Zac Cockrell who worked at an animal clinic and played bass. They found drummer Steve Johnson who was driving trucks for Fed Ex, and Athens guitar play- er Heath Fogg, who had played in what Howard once called “the best band in our high school.” “We thought when we toured it would be like, ‘O.K. we’re going to go up to New York and come back down and work really hard because we just lost a lot of money.’ We thought that’s what it was going to be,” Howard said. But alas that realistic albeit somewhat cynical take on touring wouldn’t actually happen. In April of 2012 the group released their debut album Boys & Girls and within no time the band skyrocketed from obscurity into critical darlings. Boys & Girls would go on to be nominated for three Grammys and earn the group spots at SXSW, Bonnaroo, and a show at the White House with the Obamas front-and-center. Then in 2015, the band came back with Sound & Color and took the retro, revivalist soul rock of Boys & Girls and completely flipped it around into an almost futuristic vision of rock and roll. NME wrote “whereas their debut was cast in sepia hues and down- home earthiness, its follow up is a more kaleidoscopic affair.” That same reviewer, Barry Nicolson, said quite poetically, that the only issue with album number two is that “you’ll never be able to hear Brittany Howard’s voice for the first time again.” “It’s strange because to me where we started in 2012 and where we are now — I’m pretty much the same person,” said Howard. “So, of course, I love playing those shows I love the idea of playing a show to somebody who doesn’t know who we are and I love the idea of having to prove myself to an audience that doesn’t really have any expectations and I miss that and I feel like most musicians would. But at the same time now when we play to these people they’re com- ing here for a reason they’re coming here for emotion- al reasons to see us and it’s connecting with them in a different way than playing to people you’re trying to impress, you know? It’s a different beast, but I’m still the same person.” But while Howard and her band may be the same people, the music is certainly different, and for a while after the release of Sound & Color it almost seemed like the group was distancing themselves from the sound that brought them initial acclaim. The group even played some shows without touching on their break-out hit “Hold On.” “For a while it was like we were just giving our- Alabama Shakes: See Page 10 www.marqueemag.com 9 @Marqueemag Alabama Shakes Continued from page 9 making the commercial. “It was like being in a play- selves a break from the song,” Howard said. “It’s a special ground and we got to sing this song from my childhood song to a lot of people and I don’t want to be trapped in that used to play on the radio all the time and I already that cage of trying to make everyone else happy, you knew all the words to it. I didn’t need to learn up at all.” know? We have a lot of love for our fans and our fans Well paying endorsements and Grammy accolades have a lot of love for us and you know it’s important that aside Howard remains grounded. The singer, who said we respect what we do. It’s very near and dear to us and that the most extravagant luxury that she’s treated herself it was kind of not even a decision not to play ‘Hold On’ it to since her success is the automated Roomba vacuum, just kind of happened.