Alabama Shakes
| Alabama Shakes | |
|---|---|
Alabama Shakes performing in Santa Monica in 2014
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| Background information | |
| Origin | Athens, Alabama, United States |
| Genres | |
| Years active | 2009–present |
| Labels | ATO |
| Associated acts | The Revivalists |
| Website | alabamashakes |
| Members |
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Alabama Shakes is an American blues rock band formed in Athens, Alabama in 2009. The band currently consists of lead singer and guitarist Brittany Howard, guitarist Heath Fogg, bassist Zac Cockrell, and drummer Steve Johnson. The group rose to prominence in the early 2010s with their distinctive and soulful roots rock sound.
The band began their career touring and performing at bars and clubs around the Southeast for two years while honing their sound and writing music. They recorded their debut album, Boys & Girls, with producer Andrija Tokic in Nashville while still unsigned. Online acclaim led ATO Records to sign the band, which released Boys & Girls in 2012 to acclaim. The album had a hit single, "Hold On," and was nominated for three Grammy Awards. After a long touring cycle, the band recorded their second record, Sound & Color, which was released in 2015 and debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, and won four Grammy Awards.
Howard grew up interested in music, filling notebooks with lyrics and teaching herself to play drums, bass, and guitar. She met upperclassman Heath Fogg in junior high when he played guitar at house parties. She met classmate and bassist Zac Cockrell in a psychology class some time later, and they soon began to spend time listening to their favorite music together and writing their own. After graduation, Howard hosted twice-weekly jam sessions at her great-grandparents' former home. Drummer Steve Johnson, who had heard Howard singing at a party years prior, began attending the jam sessions at the suggestion of Cockrell. They began making music together and recording homemade demos having little else to do in the small town.
The group made its live debut in May 2009 under the name "The Shakes". Fogg, by this point a guitarist in the Tuscaloosa-based Tuco's Pistol, invited the group to open for his band at Brick Deli & Tavern in Decatur. The band was nervous to perform for an audience, as they felt "vulnerable." Their set included covers of Led Zeppelin, James Brown, Otis Redding, and AC/DC. The show went over well, and Fogg soon joined the group. During this time the band members held other day jobs: Howard as a fry cook and then a postal worker, Johnson at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant, Cockrell at an animal clinic, and Fogg painting houses. For much of their early years, the Shakes performed shows on weekends at "sports bars and country dives." They also began recording their debut album at Tokic's Bomb Shelter—the home of producer Andrija Tokic—in Nashville, funding the recordings themselves. The band chose Tokic's over other studios because they record mostly live to tape, and they believed it would spur a livelier performance. The band would complete arrangements in their hometown and drive an hour and a half north to Nashville to record in intervals over the course of 2011.
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