Interview: Alabama Shakes on the Creation of “Sound & Color”
The band gets experimental, yet stays rooted in traditions they love
Back in 2011, Alabama Shakes took the world by storm with their bluesy, soulful brand of Southern rock. Singer/guitarist Brittany Howard was a force to be reckoned with, to be sure, but her bandmates — guitarist Heath Fogg, bassist Zac Cockrell, and drummer Steve Johnson — were equally powerful with what they brought to bear. Together, Alabama Shakes were magic. And, to no one’s surprise, their raw and ragged debut album, Boys & Girls, ended up with three Grammy nominations and half a million records sold. The band traveled the globe, and everywhere they went, they blew people’s minds.
As their sophomore set Sound & Color drops, Alabama Shakes are ready to do it all over again. The new album is staggeringly bold, pulling threads from soul, prog-rock, blues, heavy metal, punk, and more to weave a sound that is absolutely singular to Alabama Shakes.
Cuepoint: That first van tour in the Fall of 2011… I know it was Brittany’s first time outside of Alabama. The highway must have felt like world of possibilities rolling out in front of you.
Brittany Howard: We’d never seen anything. We’d never seen the desert. We all saw the desert together — we saw the sun go down in the desert, the red mountains and the sky. Seeing the beaches in California, seeing the palm trees — I’d never seen a palm tree before, the big tall ones. All the different wildlife… We’d never really been anywhere, so things like that stuck out to us — different birds and the way they sound. Everything. The way people dressed, the way people talked. It was cool.
Heath Fogg: That was definitely not my first time out of Alabama, but some of those early tours were definitely my first time to go to a lot of places in the country… out West and things like that, I had never been. We covered a lot of ground in some really short amounts of time and it was pretty special. Looking back, those are still some of my favorite tours.
Not a whole lot of any artists get gold records these days, especially on a debut. What do you think it is about the Shakes that resonated with fans?
HF: I guess it’s just Brittany and the way she really captivates people — as a performer, as a writer, and vocally. There are things — some of them are generalizations — but there are things people really latched on to about Brittany. She kind of became a hero for a lot of people. It’s just hard to deny her ability to captivate as an entertainer. She’s really got a special talent, a special gift, and she knows how to use it. I think that’s what the majority of the people who latched onto the Alabama Shakes caught first. I think there are other qualities about Brittany and the band itself that are more interesting, but I think that’s what the masses latched onto.
I was talking to a radio guy who loves both your records, but he said he felt like this new one is sort of a transition record for the Shakes — stretching out and trying on some new musical clothes and such, going from where you were to where you’re going to be. Does it seem that way to you guys?
HF: Maybe so. I think that’s a great compliment. We definitely weren’t thinking of it that way when we were making it. It’s just a good representation of where we are as musicians right now. But I think, in all the interviews and all the press we did for the last album, we tried to be really clear about how the next album we put out isn’t going to be Boys & Girls II. It’s not going to be “Hold On Part II” or anything like that. The songs that were developing at that point in time and the songs that had been cut from the album before were all so different. We’ve always known each song we cut is going to be different from the last. Probably the same will be said for each album.
BH: Everything is a transition all the time. This record is the here and now. It’s an interesting comment because I’m not sure what he means by a transition because I’m not sure what’s going to happen. I’m not sure what the fully formed Alabama Shakes is. I don’t know if it’s now. I don’t know if it was then. Actually, the fully formed Alabama Shakes is always going to be the here and now. Wherever we are as players is where we are. It’s hard to make a comment like it’s not fully developed.
What’s the trick to getting just the right sounds from your head to the tape? Because this thing is chock full of cool sounds.
HF: Just having fun and experimenting and having the right mindset to do it. And being able to afford the time to do it. Also, the people we chose to work with were really interested in that. Blake Mills, who co-produced the album with us, and Sean Everett, who engineered the record, they really wanted to scrutinize tones as much as we did and explore all the options before settling on one. So we had a lot of fun doing that.
What did Blake bring to the group that wasn’t already there?
HF: Blake is extremely dynamic, in terms of being a musician and a producer. He’s rooted in a lot of tradition. He knows how to do things properly and he also knows when to break the rules in a very dramatic way. That’s something we’re interested in and he helped us do that. I’d say, in addition to that, he just has an extreme attention to detail that I guess some of us in the band may have — not necessarily myself. But he has it in the most extreme form. It’s also his ear. He’s just really tuned into things. He can hear things that I can’t hear. He can really pick things apart in a way that are good from a sonic, technical standpoint. But then he also brought out a lot of confidence in us. It helped us to be expressive and be experimental, and at the same time still be rooted in traditions we love, and be true to ourselves.
BH: We never worked with a producer before and we all understood it was going to be a co-production because we have a lot of opinions ourselves. A lot. We consider our music like our baby — you can’t just put your baby in anybody’s hands. So we didn’t go for someone that was obvious. There were a lot of producers we could’ve worked with that would’ve said, “Oh, yeah, we’re going to make you like this and we’re going to have this as a hit.” That’s not really what we’re interested in at all. So we went with Blake. We had a meeting with him and he seemed pretty cool. We had a lot of like-minded ideas, as far as details and tone and really taking the time. That was going to be different this time — time was important to us. We wanted to do something that we’ve always wanted to do. So we went into the studio with him and I’d say the greatest thing he brought to us was just letting us be ourselves. And nurturing that. And knowing that we were more capable than we thought we were — which is pretty incredible for someone to bring into a group.
He also had the tech expertise to get you where you wanted to go.
BH: Absolutely. Absolutely. You could talk to him and try to describe this radical idea you have and he’s already on the same page as you.
You could say, “I want it to be more purple,” and he knew which button to push to get that.
BH: Oh, yeah, he totally gets it. And also the tiny details, the minute details were the most fun part to me working with him, because he doesn’t mind sitting all day and scouring through things. He doesn’t mind at all. He has all the patience in the world.
As a guitar player, he must’ve spoken the same language.
HF: A little bit. There’s the English language, then there’s varied versions of the English language. He’s an amazing musician. I’m a big fan of a lot of the thing he does. But sometimes it’s hard to communicate. He’s just around really great musicians all the time and he’s such a good musician that he knows theory and things like that in a way that I just do not know. I guess he’s good at bringing it down to my level and making it to where I can understand it.
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