Celebrating the 25 year anniversary of their debut albums ‘Exile on Cold harbour Lane’ and ‘La peste’ the band have hit the road to celebrate. I got to have a chat with Larry Love about all things music, from whats next for Alabama 3 and favourite songs to the impact of streaming and social media on independent artists.
Q: We are now celebrating 25 years of ‘Exile on Coldharbour Lane’ and ‘La Peste’. When creating these albums did you ever think that we would be here 25 years later celebrating their anniversaries?
A: Not really, we’ve kind of been on autopilot. Its like you have two kids where ones goes off to university and the other ends up in prison. Its like a weird family reunion as the albums fit quite well together. So we’re kind of mashing all the songs up in different formats. I think we’ve released about 17 albums so it was a bit of a shock when my agent called up and said we should do the first 2 albums.
Q: At your concert you’ll be having fans that have been there since the start but you’ll also have some new fans as well. When yous are planning your gigs, what is the overall experience you want your fans to have?
A: I mean nothings really changed in the years we’ve been doing it. I grew up on a ‘Son of a Preacher Man’ and D Wayne who passed away recently grew up with his father being a trade unionist and activist so we’re kind of use to the big reactions from the crowd as we try to create a big church atmosphere, so thats been our kind of big motif over the years so everything is kind of predicated on the idea of coming and being reborn through funk or whatever you want to call it, we like to put on a show so we get the crowd up and bouncing and then make them cry for a bit, to fighting each other and getting everyone holding hands and singing altogether. I mean a lot of our fans you’ll say to them ‘did you enjoy the gig’ and they’ll go ‘it was bloody brilliant but I can’t remember any of it.’ We are probably one of the few bands in the country where we might not have loads of fans but the fans we have drink heavily so the venues love us y’know the alcohol definitely helps.
Q: Yous are quite a proud independent band, is there any advice you would give to new musicians who are wanting to go down that route as it seems like more and more upcoming musicians would rather start out independent.
A: Yeah totally, I mean I would have no faith in the major music industry at the moment and I think its really interesting with what young ones are doing realising that they have to sell clothes, socks, and be really self sufficient and I think the modern music industry is really cruel and I think that Spotify is really unfair. I think the fella made around 10 million in profit and most of that goes to the big hitters who sell millions of copies, So its a very difficult market out there to get up and running. I really would recommend people have a second job but I think that whats great with technology is that there’s a kind of punk rock ethos where people can do it themselves and the kids are deciding that they don’t have to do it the same that musicians have done previously. I think its really great to see young musicians all band together. You know I’ll talk to kids and they say they’re in like 5 or 7 bands which is a really good example of how Spotify can be a good thing as it means that people can listen to all sorts of different music while being in different bands. I strongly believe that there will be a new revolution and that the youngsters will rise.
Q: Well I guess this actually ties onto my next question for you, How do you feel about the impact of streaming and social media on fan engagement and growing your fan base but also in terms of the exploitation through streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music where more and more musicians are opening up about how difficult is it to actually make money through that.
A: Oh yeah totally, its absolutely diabolical. I think unfortunately, we’re in this time where you have to be in one extreme of being like’ Oh here’s what I’m having for my breakfast, here’s what I’m having for my dinner’ and you have to be available 24/7 for commenting on everything your doing. However, I do think there is a backlash starting where musicians don’t have to be in the public eye so much and there is a realisation that this can inhibit you making music as you end up just becoming an influencer instead of a musician. That being said, I’m employing a young band who have loads of followers and I’m swapping a guest vocal on their new album and they’re going to teach me TikTok, so you know I do enjoy that interaction and humour within it. I do believe that young musicians need to be careful as the streaming services are not looking after musicians no matter what they say and that’s impacting on grassroots venues a lot as well where you now have people starting up fundraising sites to keep them going, but I do think kids will find ways to play music live but the major labels and streaming services can do way more to help and facilitate that. I think that the ticket pricing system is also a load of bollocks and is making things more difficult.
Q: You are quite a conceptual band, I was curious as to what your main inspiration and concept was with the two albums and has the way that you create music changed over the years?
A: Not really, I mean we are quite blessed as we have a studio and a club in Brixton which we can play our music in. We all kind of met in an Irish club that use to have loads of Jamaican old fellas playing dominos and stuff like that so we’ve always been very stimulated by our environment. A lot of us still live in brixton and are very much inspired by getting out and about, there’s so many good venues that are just about hanging in there that I quite regularly attend. The best inspiration I get is from a Pub thats round the corner that does community karaoke and its honestly brilliant with a mix of people from different cultures and that kind of joyfulness and multicultural mix very much inspires Alabama 3.
We started with a very strange configuration of acid house dance music and blues and country which no one else was really doing so we’ve always kind of looked outside of the mainstream for stimulation and I suppose the Sopranos as well has kind of given us an in with the kind of criminal end of Rock n Roll which has made us well looked after and I feel like we now kind of cover all camps for inspiration. I couldn’t really ask for any better inspiration than what is going on with the world right now, we’re not living in a particularly pleasant time right now which is good if your a Blues band, couldn’t really imagine being in one of those happy bands right now.
Q: So you previously mentioned about how you fuse together a lot of different genres within your sound, would you say that there is becoming more of a blurred line with genres and do you think its a good thing that we’re starting to move away from these strict genre categories?
A: Oh totally, I think its really interesting. When Lil Naz X and Billy Rae Cyrus came out with their track and Beyonce coming out with Cowboy Carter I think its amazing. Music only really started to become categorised because of capitalism but know we have a lot of musicians coming through and breaking those barriers down and because so many young musicians are able to play in so many different bands I think it shouldn’t be a surprise to see this happening when we have young talent playing in jazz bands and also metal bands at the same time. So yeah, I definitely do enjoy the blurred lines, not the song of course, that was a bit too far!
Q: You have quite a large discography, around 17 albums I think you mentioned earlier. I’m curious about the creative process and how yous decide what will make the final cut and if there’s any that didn’t make the cut that you with had been added?
A: oh yeah there’s loads, there’s 9 of us in the band at the moment all of whom are all individually really talented so we end up kind of chucking 30-40 songs in the pot and see what comes through. There’s definitely a lot that have slipped through the cracks which we then rediscover 5 years later. Cause we’ve been in the business for that long, its like kids you haven’t particularly looked after well and come back to remind you that your still their parent, like a song that’s been left on the sideline for ages and you have to go ‘alright I love you just as much as the other songs, come into the fold now.’ I’ll easily have a song waiting in my head for 10 years for some attention and then you work it through like that. We work a lot with a really good engineer so we’re able to work stuff out quite quickly since the bad is quite talented.
Q: Out of all of the songs that you perform live, what is your favourite?
A: It changes over tours and stuff, probably one of the favourites is a song called ‘Hypo Full of Love’ which is the last song we do before the encore and its the one that I always use to judge whether we’ve got the crowd jumping. I also really like it when we strip the band down and do some nice acoustic songs, we’ve got a song called ‘Old Purple Tin’ which is a kind of slowed down ballad, we really like to take the audience on a sort of trip where we have the pumping acid house tunes to the country blues. We also do a sort of twisted dubstep version of ‘Hotel California’ by The Eagles which we’re really enjoying right now but it definitely has a weird kind of vibe to it and although it’s a cover we definitely have made it our own.
Q: So whats next for Alabama 3? Do you think we’ll be celebrating the 50 year anniversary of these albums?
A: Yeah I think so, I can see us going on and on and on, I’m only 60 and as a country-western singer you only really get good at about 75 years old and as a blues band we can go on for years, we’re in talks at the moment with a crew as we have just gotten funding from Vancouver and L.A. for a documentary thats getting made about us. We’re also doing some music for Dave Courtney and 50 Cent is sort of involved in that as well so we’re keeping ourselves busy. Of course we’re working on a new album as well and using AI to bring back members of the band that are no longer with us, so we’ve definitely got plans in the making!
As the band set off on the road, keep your eyes peeled for our review of their Edinburgh show!