By Sam Wise.
You may not think you know Alabama 3, but you probably do. Anyone who has watched The Sopranos is familiar with Woke Up This Morning, the churning, rumbling monster of a theme song that catapulted the band into the public eye. Personally, my favourite thing about Alabama 3 is that there are 8 of them (“yeah, terrible at maths, aren’t we” says Rob), and they’re from Brixton, or at least, that’s where they met. Rob Spragg, or pseudonymously Larry Love hails from Merthy Tydfil, and the late Jake Black (The Very Reverend Dr. D. Wayne Love), from Glasgow, met at a rave in Peckham, and through a series of unusual conversations, arrived at the idea of blending acid house and southern blues and country, to create something ground-breaking. I wonder how many Americans realise that the intro to their mafia drama is sung by a Merthyr man?
Jake Black passed away in 2019, but Alabama 3 continues, and ahead of a Southampton date on March 28th at The Engine Rooms, Rob Spragg, raw boned, spare and every inch the aging road warrior, gave us a bit of time to talk music. I wondered what drove a Welshman and a Scot to start a band with a dark country edge?
“I grew up in Merthyr Tydfil. I was the son of a preacher man, my parents were Mormons, so I heard a lot of gospel music around the house, and there were a lot of working men’s clubs around. I remember it was like ‘Dai Evans plays the hits of Waylon Jennings’, and Jake grew up in a similar way in Glasgow, hearing showbands, but they were playing a lot of old blues songs. So when acid house came along, we went digging around for samples in our old Alan Lomax collections, but it took a long time to get going. I was touting the demos around from about 1993, and Jake and I met in Brixton, where you can’t but appreciate the wonders of multiculturalism. I’d be drinking in an Irish bar with a Jamaican sound system outside, and it seemed quite normal for us to be mixing genres up. We just took it a stage further, put together a whole band rather than just samples, and we were definitely seen as a novelty band. The NME gave us 1 out of 10, said we were a monumental waste of time [I suggest that this should be on a t-shirt on their merch stand, and Rob admits that it’s been given serious consideration]. Our timing wasn’t great, the height of Britpop, and we’re all pretending to be from Alabama, but I was always impressed with the longevity of country artists. Like I think when I get to about 75, I’ll just be starting to sing good, you know?”
Alabama 3’s career trajectory has been an unusual one, with Woke Up This Morning coming to the Sopranos from their very first album. I was curious as to how it felt from the inside.
“It’s been a rough and rocky road, and we never expected anything less. I always liked the idea of being cult outsiders, but the Sopranos gave us an immediate entree into everyone’s homes, whether they liked it or not. So that’s been bubbling away in the sidelines, which has been great for us; during Covid, everyone was watching box sets, and the most watched box set was the Sopranos. So yeah, we’ve lost about 4 members along the way; we’re getting a bit like Lynyrd Skynyrd, there’s only the bass players girlfriend left.”
I wonder about how it feels to have a song like that following Rob through his career; does it feel like an old friend, or is it like Thom Yorke with Creep, something that he’s stuck with and wishes he could leave behind?
“Noo, I love it, she’s a child like any of them, she might be a bit more beautiful than the rest of them but yeah… I’m proud you know? I’ve got a band that plays blues, if I had an indie band like Thom Yorke, being in your 50s and playing a song about your anxieties as a teenager would be a bit galling, but hopefully Alabama 3’s oeuvre lends itself to longevity. Like I’m always nicking off of the fucking greats, you know? If you nick off those motherfuckers with a serious history, you’ve got to feel pretty positive about your chances for longevity. It’s certainly not an albatross or anything, we play it pretty early on, we’re not like some bands who save their biggest hit for the encore. We want to get it out there, and then you can leave the room if you want.”
I’m interested in the blend of country and dance music; it seems to lean different ways on different records, and also live. I ask Rob whether that has been deliberate?
“Some songs will start as straight country tracks, acoustic, we’ll put drum machines to it. But then a lot of times we get old blues samples, stack ‘em all up on the computer and see what kinda noises come out. Some of them end up very techno, some of them very raw and country, and I’m proud to say I’ve got a band that can make that work without sounding too cringey.”
I reflect on the dinosaur bands of my youth, bands like The Rolling Stones who have continued to tour through the 80s, 90s, and well into the new millennium without producing anything new that’s of much interest. Alabama 3 have had a long career, and some big changes, especially the loss of Jake, but they still seem like a creative force. I wonder what motivates Rob to continue? Is he still seeking something?
“Well for one, I feel perennially grateful that people would still wanna come to our gigs. For another thing, we’ve got our own studio in Brixton, and….well, it’s quite a well known fact that music has healing potentialities. It’s really kept us alive and interested, and having that wide range of musical influences around us has allowed each album to be quite different, have a different kinda slant to it. I think we’ve covered most different styles; I haven’t done a Death Metal Zydeco album yet, but maybe it’s time? I’m genuinely blessed to still have a career at this point, and I think because we’ve always been outside on the margins, there’s a different pressure on us to come up to standard, but we’ve definitely enjoyed cult outsider status, that kinda striving to be better.
“At the moment, we’ve taken the mobile recording gear with us, and we’re kinda recording bits and bobs of the band now while we’re on tour. Technology has opened up so much for us, I mean it can be a shit sandwich, but if you use it right it can be your friend. Technology has always been a friend to Alabama 3, and we’ve used it as part of the struggle to make very archaic music sound and feel modern. You got Little Naz X, Beyonce, Post Malone doing country, and the wind is blowing in our direction.
“Fortunately or unfortunately, we’re in a world where kids don’t have any boundaries about music, and I think it’s interesting. You’ve gotta give young people credit for listening to a wider variety of sounds. There’s loads of like trap hip hop coming out with weird sounds on it, old blues riffs, things like that, inner city dangerous but with a rural vibe to it, and I love those kinds of crossovers.”
Rob had mentioned that the band were working on a new album, and I asked him what he could share about it? He was a little tight lipped, but it sounds fascinating.
“Well, I don’t wanna say too much, but when we started out, we had a spoof cult that we set up, the First Presleytarian Church of Elvis the Divine, and we like to think our fans are weirdo cult freaks. So we think it’s appropriate that The Right Reverend D Wayne Love should have a second coming, so we’ve now got Dw”AI”ne love back on block, and we’re really enjoying it. So that’s probably as much as I’ll give you; it’s got more of a country rootsy futurist tip, and I’m very much enjoying the potentialities of AI, and resurrecting my dead friend. He’d have loved that, and we like to create a church vibe at gigs, and so it all plays into that Jim Jones vibe. Don’t drink the Kool-Ade though.”
Alabama 3 are currently on tour, soon to arrive in Southampton, and I ask what we can expect from the live shows.
“My agent come up with the idea, which I initially wasn’t very happy with, of doing a mashup of the first two albums, and the results have been quite interesting. We’ve not been playing one album vs the other, we’ve been mixing the two up, and it’s like one of your kids has done really well at university, and the other has been in prison, and they’re both back in the same bedroom. Even though they feel really different, they seem to work well and to speak to each other, and I’ve got 4 new members in the band, which is giving the songs new sparkle. We’ve got 3 generations of fans coming to the shows now, Alabama 3 acid house casualties, you know?
“I’ve got a bass player called Funky Al Ashton, a cool fellow from Toronto, Canada, who I found busking on the streets of Brixton, and got him involved. A drummer from Hastings, James Gulliver, who plays in like a New Orleans marching band. Devin Love’s returned to the fold, she used to sing with us back in the days, and a fella called Winston who’s doing weird electronic noises. And we’ve got 4 original members still standing.”
I’m intrigued to know where such an established band finds new members, so far down the line?
“Well, one of the things about having a studio in the heart of Brixton is you don’t have any problems. You can just walk out on the street and there’s musicians everywhere. And I do make it my business to go to the cool venues; The Windmill in Brixton, Hootenanny, and there’s a lot youngsters out there, who I’ll check out most nights if I’m not gigging. You’ve just got to go out really. You need to find people you can connect with; can you go out and get pissed til 4 in the morning, and still do the gig the next day, you know? We do live quite a rock and roll lifestyle, do what you want on the tour bus, but make sure you’re ready for the gig, 9:30 on stage prompt and don’t fall over.”
Alabama 3 will be at the Engine Rooms in Southampton on Friday 28th March. I will be there, to make sure they’re on stage prompt and don’t fall over. Join me, it’s gonna be great.
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