IN CONCERT
What: St. Paul and the Broken Bones with Impulse Response
Where: Royal Theatre, 805 Broughton St.
When: Thursday, June 28, 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $53.50-$68.50 at rmts.bc.ca or the Royal McPherson box office (250-386-6121)
St. Paul and the Broken Bones were performers with something to prove during their infancy, and with the skills to do it. The soul-revival act, bursting with electricity, took on all comers in concert.
“When we first started, it was full-on all the time, like a punch to the face,” singer Paul Janeway said during a tour stop in Portland, Oregon. “That’s what it was.”
Fans who see the band from Birmingham, Alabama, in concert tonight are getting still getting the real and raw deal — albeit with a touch more subtlety to the band’s set. “I learned to pick my spots,” said Janeway, who speaks with a soft southern twang. “If you punch people in the face for an hour and a half, there’s no nuance. There’s no peaks and valleys to the show.”
Once the eight-piece outfit put some miles on their tour bus, the accumulated stage experience enabled them to flex new musical muscles. Janeway embraced with a bear hug the band’s growing maturity, growing from a constantly contorting ball of energy into a frontman with the occasional coiled-spring outburst.
“I couldn’t sing the way I did on the first record for the rest of my life,” he said with a laugh.
“I became a better singer. There’s definitely spots where I’m kind of crazy, and I get to have a moment, then I leave it alone.”
The bookish-looking singer, who accents his Buddy Holly visage with a rotating wardrobe of sharp-cut suits, got his start singing at age four in his neighbourhood church in Chelsea, Alabama. He thought seriously about becoming a preacher, and even made plans for a career in accounting.
That changed when he met bassist Jesse Phillips at a Birmingham studio. Janeway and Phillips (from Fernie, B.C., of all places) paid dues in another group before settling upon their current sound — an amalgamation of Otis Redding and Al Green, complemented by some funky horns and southern boogie.
From the jump, music came pouring out of Janeway, Phillips, guitarist Browan Lollar, drummer Andrew Lee, trumpeter Allen Bransetter, and then-trombonist Ben Griner, who has since been replaced by Chad Fisher (saxophonist Jeronne Ansari and keyboardist Al Gamble round out the group). The band self-released their first EP, 2013’s Greetings from St. Paul and the Broken Bones, before they had played live. Their first full-length album, Half the City, arrived less than a year later, in 2014, with production by keyboardist Ben Tanner of Alabama Shakes.
Though highlights during the tour to support the recording included two dates with the Rolling Stones, Janeway said he almost doesn’t recognize the group that wrote and recorded Half the City. “The first record was that way because that was our past, and we had only been a band for three months when we recorded it. You’re going to go with what you know.”
Their second album, Sea of Noise, broke the group worldwide in 2016, thanks to the band’s expanded sonic palette and Janeway’s inward-looking meditations on faith and family. What started as a “live” band, according to Janeway, has now become a dual-pronged beast, both in the studio and on stage.
“The live show is our bread and butter. There’s no two ways about that. I roll around on the carpet and basically set myself on fire every night. But the recording process has become something I genuinely enjoy. It’s part of the DNA of trying to understand us.”
Janeway was careful to repeat his belief in their abilities. Fans expecting the from-the-pulpit, fire-and-brimstone chaos of their early performances won’t be disappointed as the band makes a rare foray into Canada tonight — not by a mile.
According to Janeway, the group has found a balance between the live setting and the studio, without sacrificing its dexterity. “Sometimes [in concert] it’s about hitting people over the head. With the record, you can tell a story. That has changed over time. Initially, it was about seeing us live. I enjoy the recording process almost more than I do the live process now, and that was probably not the case when we first began.”
Young Sick Camellia, the band’s third album, will arrive on Sept. 7 with yet another stylistic shift. The band worked with hip-hop and R&B producer Jack Splash for the new record, whose experience on recordings by Kendrick Lamar, Diplo and Alicia Keys rubbed off on the group, Janeway said.
Retro-soul, a tag once inconspicuously attached to the group, has become less of a talking a point as time passes. It could become irrelevant by the time Young Sick Camellia is released. “It was a fair term for the first record, because that’s what it was,” Janeway said.
“But for us, it was pigeonholing. That’s not all we did. It’s not that it bothers me, the problem is that if someone hears that and is expecting that, they are going to be disappointed. And I don’t want anyone to be disappointed.”
For a band that has covered everyone from Radiohead to Sam Cooke in concert, fans would be wise to adjust their expectations about St. Paul and the Broken Bones. Janeway — who calls his time on stage “an hour-and-a-half of therapy” and “me trying to release some sort of demons” — has been toying with his onstage persona. He’ll bring the fire and rain when the lights go down, but he’s hoping to make the sun shine a little bit brighter, too.
“It’s important to expand your horizons. Don’t lose who you are or the essence of you. I think we learned as long as my voice is on it, it’s always going to be us. We’ve got some weird stuff on this record, and we’re going to stretch that boundary a little bit.
“While I love the Otis Reddings of the world — and I do love Otis Redding — I also love Portishead and David Bowie and Kendrick Lamar. It would be disingenuous to continue making soul records. I don’t think that would be true to our nature.”
