Dallas
Alabama Shakes
Tuesday, March 12, 2013 (8:00 PM - 2:00 AM) | 
Palladium Ballroom 1135 South Lamar Dallas TX
Alabama Shakes
with Michael Kiwanuka
and Sam Doores & Riley Downing
Alabama Shakes
with Michael Kiwanuka
and Sam Doores & Riley Downing
Alabama Shakes
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The story of the Alabama Shakes begins in a high school psychology class in Athens, Alabama. Brittany Howard, who had started playing guitar a few years earlier, approached Zac Cockrell and asked if he wanted to try making music together. "I just knew that he played bass and that he wore shirts with cool bands on them that nobody had heard of," says Howard.
They started to meet up after school and write songs sitting on Howard's floor. "It had that rootsy feel, but there was some out-there stuff," says Cockrell. "David Bowie-style things, prog-rock, lots of different stuff. We started to come across our own sound a little bit, though it's evolved a lot since then."
Steve Johnson worked at the only music store in town, and Howard knew he played the drums. She invited him to a party where, she says, "he met everybody from our side of the tracks." The three young musicians began working together, further expanding their style and approach. "Steve is kind of a punk-metal drummer," says Howard, "so we embraced that edge he brings to everything he does."
The trio soon went into a studio in Decatur to record some of the songs they were working up, and this proto-demo found its way into the hands of Heath Fogg, with whom Howard had been familiar because he had been the lead guitarist in what she describes as "the best band in our high school." Fogg, who by now had graduated from college, asked them to open a show for his band, which they agreed to do—on the condition that he play with them. The response was immediate: "That first show was really explosive," says Howard.”
Though they had been focusing on original material ("It's just more fun to write than to learn someone else's music," says Cockrell), as the band—newly christened the Shakes—began playing out, they added more cover songs. They played classics by James Brown and Otis Redding, but also by Led Zeppelin and AC/DC. "We had to find music we could all agree on and figure out how to play together," says Howard, "and that had a lot of influence on how we play now."
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Tuesday, March 12, 2013 (8:00 PM - 2:00 AM)
Palladium Ballroom 1135 South Lamar, DallasTX
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