St. Paul and the Broken Bones revive soul

Souls are not meant to be smooth. Souls are rough, welded together and torn apart by the collision of beauty and chaos. The core of soul music, real soul music, is the embodiment of that collision. Decades of porcelain-smooth production and Top 20-tailored songwriting have chipped away at the raw, dynamic sense of emotion immortalized by Motown and Stax Records. St. Paul and the Broken Bones intend to bring it back.

The seven-piece soul revivalist outfit has seen a staggering amount of praise for a group performing in a dormant genre. “Soul music has gotten to the point where it’s stagnant and that’s probably because of artists like Teddy Pendergrass who were trying to get slick because everything else in the ’80s was getting slick,” says guitarist Browan Lollar. “That’s why good, dirty, gritty soul got lost — soul music needs to be captured live.”

Growing up, Lollar was steeped in one of the most creative, and contentious, landscapes known to soul music. Most members of St. Paul and the Broken Bones hail from Alabama, home of the profoundly influential style known as the “The Muscle Shoals Sound,” named for the eponymous recording studio beloved by everyone from the Staple Singers to the Rolling Stones.

“I’m from Muscle Shoals, Ala., and soul music is a huge thing there,” Lollar says. “I always wanted to be in a soul band but you can’t be in a soul band without a singer.” After making his name in more traditional rock bands such as Jason Isbell’s the 400 Unit, Lollar finally found his soul singer.

He effortlessly recalls the first time he heard Paul Janeway sing. Lollar was sitting down for dinner, food already on the table, when he received a rough track from bassist Jesse Phillips’ new project. Lollar had heard the song before, but this time the vocal track was unmuted. He listened to that demo four times before he decided to join the band. “His particular talent is one you don’t hear much anymore,” Lollar says. “And he just sings like that, too. He isn’t putting on a show, if he sings a Beatles song he sings like that.”

The “that” Lollar is referring to is Janeway’s mammoth vocal delivery, passionate and powerful enough to raise a packed congregation to its feet, a superpower not earned by coincidence. Janeway netted the “St. Paul” title not only for his abstinence from drugs and drink, but because he was once training to become a preacher.

That rough track Lollar heard was eventually included on St. Paul and the Broken Bones’ first EP, Greetings from St. Paul and the Broken Bones. The EP was released to quiet fanfare last year, but 2014 brought an exponential rise in the group’s prominence. The group’s debut, Half the City, released in February this year, attracted heaps of acclaim from national music outlets, reached No. 62 on the Billboard charts, and launched the Broken Bones on a tour daunting enough to deter the most seasoned musicians. “I think the hardest part is trying to keep up the pace we’ve been at on the road and with the life we have at home,” Lollar says. “I’m married, our keyboardist is married, and Paul’s getting married this week. This year has been insane in a good way.”

Perhaps the group’s greatest achievement came when Rosanne Cash sent out a tweet after attending a performance earlier this year: “I have seen the future of music & the name of the band is St. Paul & the Broken Bones.”

The group made a conscious effort to bring the grit back into soul when it recorded Half the City. In contrast to the dense and finely tuned multitracking of radio-ready soul, St. Paul and the Broken Bones tracked everything live in the studio to capture their ferocity on record. “We cut everything in a room until we had the right take, something that felt alive,” Lollar says. “I think that helped us because we walked into the studio and tried to actually play as a band.”

Despite the life-affirming tweets and record label-pleasing sales, Lollar believes the band hasn’t truly captured the rawness of soul on record. The seven members went into the studio with eight shows performed together, only a blip compared to the 300-plus shows they’ve performed together since. “I think it was a matter of getting the best takes of the songs we could,” he says. “Now we’ve matured to the point where we can tear those takes apart and do them even better.”