St. Paul and the Broken Bones, a new Birmingham, Ala., band, is bringing its soulful sound to Green Bar Thursday night.
St. Paul is a six-member band that includes lead singer Paul Janeway, trombone player Ben Griner, trumpet player Allen Branstetter, bassist Jesse Phillips, drummer Andrew Lee and guitarist Browan Lololar. The band, which has been performing together for almost a year, has a very specific sound.
“We consider ourselves a soul band with influences from all around,” Janeway said.
Phillips said the band had a rocky start, but this allowed them to develop their sound more throughly.
“Paul [Janeway] and I started playing together a while ago in various other bands that didn’t take off,” Phillips said. “We played small shows and coffee shops together and caught the attention of a studio owner who brought us in, and we started toying with sounds and writing songs together. In the end, we discovered we should play music with a R&B, soul, gospel feel.”
The members’ backgrounds also served as an idea pad for the mixing of genres, which Green Bar manager David Allen described as “soul music, but definitely not a throwback.”
“Paul [Janeway] is a serious record collector, and soul/R&B music is his favorite genre,” Phillips said. “He also sang in church as a kid, so parts of our music has gospel roots as well. I, on the other hand, got into R&B music as I got older, and I am a fan of folk and rock music. Our sound is a combination of the genres that we like the most.”
Though it is a relatively new band, St. Paul is no stranger to performing in Tuscaloosa. Soul crooner Janeway and the band have performed at Green Bar once before, as well as at the Tuscaloosa Amphitheatre.
Gaining popularity, the soul sextet will continue to perform throughout the Southeast this summer.
“We’ll be performing throughout the region, with shows in Atlanta, Athens, Birmingham and several more places,” Janeway said.
To go along with its infused sound, the band decided on a name stemming from one of their inside jokes about Janeway.
“I don’t drink or smoke or any of those things, so the guys started calling me St. Paul,” Janeway said. “The Broken Bones thing came from us being a group of rag-tag guys from all over coming together to form a band.”
St. Paul and the Broken Bones won’t be performing alone for its set at Green Bar. DJ Shake, a vinyl-only soul DJ, and fellow Birmingham, Ala., band Downright will also be playing.
Downright is a musical trio that combines elements of soul, funk and psychedelic rock with instruments like the string bass, guitar and Hammond organ to form its sound.
The group has previously opened for Widespread Panic, Rod Stewart and the Nappy Roots and has also performed at every music festival hosted in Alabama.
