With more soul than Sam Cooke and dance moves like James Brown, St. Paul & the Broken Bones represent the finest of Alabama’s music scene. Their debut LP, Half the City, shot to the top of the iTunes charts a mere month after it was released. I had the chance to talk to Browan Lollar, the Broken Boned guitarist, in a University Primetime exclusive.
Let’s start with the name: St. Paul & the Broken Bones. Now, I know you guys – or Paul at least – comes from the church, so St. Paul seems quite apt, but Broken Bones seems a bit more cryptic, unless it’s another religious allusion and I just don’t see it. Anyway, can you talk about the name a little?
We have a song called “Broken Bones and Pocket Change.” We were still looking for a name, so we just named it after the song: St. Paul & the Broken Bones. Also, the St. Paul thing isn’t just about the church. Paul doesn’t drink or smoke. It’s not like an ethics thing. He just doesn’t like to do it, so we started calling him St. Paul.
Forgetting everything else for a moment, I have to jump right to talking about your live shows. I actually went to see you guys on a bit of a whim because I landed a free ticket. I knew Half the City, but I really didn’t know what to expect. So everybody but Paul gets up on stage and was jamming. Suddenly, this guy walks on stage and I legitimately thought it was a random guy who was just dressed really classily, but then he opened his mouth and I thought, “That must be St. Paul.” Anyway, the show was incredible and just filled with energy. From where do you guys channel that immense energy? Who or what are you trying to emulate, if anybody or anything?
I guess it’s just who we are. It’s how we are reacting to each other. I know that Paul has a lot of energy, and I think we all kinda draw from that. It’s sort of a self-feeding machine. Then there’s obviously the crowd, and they’re really into it. The energy between the crowd and the stage is just really crazy. I don’t think it’s us trying to emulate anything. I know that soul from the early days from the 60s and 70s was a lot about feeding off that energy. The same is true for gospel music from the 40s, 30s, and 20s. If anything, I really think it’s just us having fun. It’s a great release for us to just get up on the stage and play.
I think soul music in general beckons that energy. Another thing I noted live was just the astounding musicianship from all of you. You couldn’t pick who was the most talented at their respective instrument if you tried. I was just thinking how incredible it is that you all even got together being all of the incredible musicianship. Were most of you professionally taught or do you all come from different schools? Like someone is from a jazz background and another from classical?
The horn players are very official musicians. Like they are college graduates with degrees in music. They actually just graduated last year, so they are the youngest.The rest of are pretty self-taught. I grew up playing the banjo, mandolin, and stuff. Eventually, I moved to guitar when I was 8 or 9 and that’s where I decided to stick. I know Al [the keyboard player] is the same way. The rest of us just grew up playing.
Specifically about the guitar, one thing I noticed was that you play finger style, which is much more rare in electric music, especially with the intensity that you play at. How did that come about? Was that also natural? Do you find an advantage to it over picking?
Yeah, it’s really just the banjo thing. It just felt natural to me. I played the banjo, but I didn’t use finger picks. I liked the visceral feeling of the string on my finger. It felt good. It felt like I had more control over the note.
With this band, it’s kinda unique. I’ve been in other touring bands, but there were always other guitarists. With this band, it’s kinda cool that I’m the only guitar player and can kinda control what volume is coming from the stage. I have more control over it, and finger style makes it easier to control that because I can do double stops and stuff like that. Also, with a pick you technically always hit the bottom strings after the top strings on a down stroke, but with your fingers you can get all of the strings at one time. It’s just a small thing that I’ve noticed.
Let’s get to the record, actually your first record: Half the City. Listening to it, you aren’t reinventing the wheel, but it is still an unbelievable record. I know that all of the songs are credited to all of you, but how does the writing process usually work? Does one person bring a song and the rest begin work or are all songs literally created in a communal dialogue?
Jesse, the bassist, and Paul get together and they usually flesh things out, but sometimes Andrew, the drummer, will bring something in, sometimes the horn players will have an idea for a horn line, or sometimes I’ll bring something in. It’s really just a matter of all of us getting together and throwing our different ideas into a pot and fleshing them out.
Sometimes I’ll put something on GarageBand that I like and email it to the guys. Then they’ll listen to it for a while and come back and play it. It kinda works differently for every song, but generally it’s a very communal process.
Speaking of the sound directly, clearly it is derived from the soul of Sam Cooke and Otis Redding and the hymns of the church, but where else – soul and gospel aside – do you find influence?
I, personally, am really influenced by Muscle Shoals, Stax, and soul because that’s where I was raised. There’s just a lot of history there for me. Also, Muscle Shoals music has more of a guitar slant.
Stax with Steve Cropper is something I’ve always appreciated too. Cropper would throw country licks into the soul music. He was playing on Telecaster and he almost sounded like a country guitar player, but he was playing all of this soul. I still think that’s a really cool thing. There’s this weird, special pool [of soul music] in Booker T. & the M.G.’s and Otis Redding and all of the records he plays on. It’s just awesome when you hear this Nashville, [Telecaster] lick in the middle of a soul song.
Still, it varies. Paul really loves D’Angelo. He loves like straight up classic soul stuff. I mean we listen to a lot of different stuff. We come from a lot of different places.
Now, the success of the record, at least from an outside observer, seemed pretty overnight. Was that really the case? It felt like one day I went on iTunes and Half the City was suddenly in the top 5.
That was the case. It really was. We were mentioned and did an interview on NPR’s morning edition and that really changed things for us. After that, we really started to gain traction and people started paying attention. We then shot up to like number 3 on the iTunes charts. Then it stayed there for quite a while, like a few weeks or something. We’ve just done really well.
We actually film most of our live shows now too. I’ve never been in that situation before; I don’t think any of us have. All of a sudden you are a band that people listen to [Laughs]. People show up to shows to see you, they’ve listened to your record, and it’s really cool.
I can only imagine. I was so happy when it picked up because I’d heard the record and just thought, “People have to hear this.” Luckily, a lot of people did.
We’ve got one more question here and it’s a bit of a cliché, but I’ll ask it anyway: what can we expect from St. Paul & the Broken Bones in the near future?
We’re actually going to doing a lot of touring this year. We’re doing festivals through the summertime. Then we’ll be going out again during the fall. We’re actually doing Europe again at that time. As far as this year goes, that’s what we got planned out.
We’re gonna go back in and do some writing too. We’re actually in the process [of writing] whenever we have a minute. We have some time blocked off at the end of the year to write a new record. We are all super geared to write some new stuff.
I feel like the writing process never really stops. It’s like an ongoing conversation.
Definitely. Honestly, when we were writing the record [Half the City], we didn’t want to stop writing. We got into this ritual of getting together almost everyday and working on stuff. At this time we were all working jobs – it was before we could all quit – and we would all take one day a week off and meet up at 9 or 10 AM and just write until like 3 or 4.
That’s awesome.
I know. It was like you were getting up, drinking coffee, and going to a job but you were getting there and writing music all day with friends.
That’s the dream job, I guess.
Yes, it is. It’s still what we want to do. We really can’t wait to start writing again. I think that’s everybody’s favorite thing: being in that place and being creative. It’s definitely the most fun.
Boston College Student. Wearer of Extra Medium Pants. Lover of the Key of C#m. Collector of Wishing Well Change. Writer of Your Thoughts.
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