Shaking All Over

For Brittany Howard it’s all about the sister who isn’t there any more. When the Alabama Shakes singer was seven, her older sibling died of a brain tumour. She left behind a guitar. The week after she passed on, Brittany went into her sister’s bedroom, took the instrument off the bed and strummed a note. She’s been strumming ever since.

“I’d watched her play, “ she says, licking her lips to ward off the dryness. “It was cool. I thought, ‘Hey, I can do that too!’” She falls silent, running a hand through her hair. “Yup,” she starts up again, almost to herself. “That’s how it started.”
You expect Howard to be all sass and diva-tude. That’s certainly the persona she presents on record. As frontwoman of Alabama Shakes, she rollicks and sways, singing from the bottom of her boots, the murky tidepools of her soul. She is Amy Winehouse fronting The White Stripes, a young Aretha Franklin in a blizzard of blue-collar rock.
In a cramped pre-show dressing-room, however, Howard couldn’t be further removed from her onstage caricature. Slumped against the wall, lost in a vast under-grad hoodie, she is demure, almost painfully shy. Eye-contact is a chore. When a question isn’t directed specifically to her, she lets guitarist Zac Cockrell do the lifting. Were it possible, you suspect she’d slip behind the couch and wait until Hot Press had left.
“The attention has been kind of a distraction from time to time,” she admits. “We’ve been trying to finish our record and holding down day jobs. Until recently I had to work weekends [she’s just quit her position as a mailwoman]. And suddenly we’re getting offered all these little tours, across America. It’s fantastic and exciting. At the same time, we wanted to get home, to finish the album.”
If at the start of the year someone had told you the most thrilling new rock act of 2012 was going to be an awkward garage blues band from the butt-end of Alabama you’d probably have choked on your Doritos. But it’s true: from properly humble origins – up until last November the lead guitarist had never flown on a plane – Alabama Shakes have seized the blues and indie scene by the scruff and held on for dear life.
“We come from a small town where you have to find things to do ‘cos there’s not a lot going on,” explains Howard. “That’s how people get into music. It’s a hobby. The only hobby.”
Hometown is Athens, Alabama (not to be confused with R.E.M.’s stomping ground, across the state line in Georgia). With a population of 22,000 and a church on every block, it’s a place for which the handle ‘god fearing’ could have been minted.
“I guess it’s a nice place,” says Brittany. “Everyone there is certainly pretty decent. The question, I suppose is, are they good ‘cos they want to be good or because God told ‘em to act that way? I’ve never been able to work it out.”
“Everything that’s happened since, it’s kind of wild,” chips in Cockrell, a smiling, bearded chap who, though absolutely sober this afternoon, emits an air of stoned insouciance. “You get used to it. Then you stand back and think ‘Wow, this is actually kinda crazy!’”
On its release in May, their debut album Boys & Girls – the one they took forever finishing – roared to the top of the international charts (it hit number five here, number three in America and number two in Britain). Slap it on and you’ll understand immediately why audiences have found the group’s soulful brew so enchanting: Howard & Co. are rough-hewn at the edges but with a sound custom crafted for dinner parties and coffee table chillaxing. If you’re still puzzled why Norah Jones had to go all kooky and edgy and are awaiting Duffy’s return, you’ll go wobbly at the knees for Howard’s bluesy ululations and slick key-changes.
Their big break arrived eight months before the LP saw daylight. In September, having only lately changed their name from ‘The Shakes’, the quartet were invited to perform at New York’s CMJ Music Marathon. The event has previously ushered into the spotlight such glittering prospects as Vampire Weekend and Sleigh Bells. Alabama Shakes, however, were largely unaware of its vaulted history. So far as they were concerned, it was just some New York festival they’d been booked to play.
“We hadn’t realised it was as big a deal as it was,” recalls Cockrell. “We’re from the South. CMJ isn’t the sort of thing you know about or go to. It was new to me. After we played, it felt weird to start attracting so much attention, especially intentionally.”
They started out performing in small college towns around Alabama. Being in a band in this part of the US isn’t easy. There aren’t many venues, much less ones people under the age of 21 can gain entry to. You end up with two choices: hit the same rooms over and over or go further and further afield in your quest for a fanbase. Without having sat down and planned it, Alabama Shakes found themselves taking the second option.
“We got a pretty big following early on,” says Cockrell. “We’ve played all over. We did a tour with Drive By Truckers. And we have a following in Huntsville. That’s a pretty big place. They have an military arsenal there, so there’s some employment.”
The South, they will allow, is god fearing and conservative. But it isn’t as redneck or racially divided as outsiders assume. In Alabama nobody blinks twice at Alabama Shakes, a multi-racial rock band fronted by a black woman. They’re asked about this a lot, even in other parts of the United States. Some people can’t get Mississippi Burning and all that boilerplate out of their heads. Believe it or not, says Howard, some folks in Alabama might even consider voting Obama in the Presidential election.
“People have a lot of stereotypes in their head,” he reflects. “I think they haven’t checked in with the South in a long time. Things aren’t like they imagine. Not by a long way.”