A conversation with Birmingham’s hometown heroes St. Paul & The Broken Bones

BY: Jeremy Burgess of Big Communications

It’s not every day that a band of resourceful hometown kids sells out the Alabama Theatre—twice.

But that’s exactly what Birmingham’s own St. Paul & The Broken Bones did last Thursday and Friday, winding down their fall tour with a tremendous hometown reception.

At Big Communications, we’ve been fortunate to work with the band on a few occasions, from building their website toAaron Gresham’s cover art for “Half the City”. So we thought we’d try frontman Paul Janeway for a quick interview on the band’s triumphant weekend at the Theatre and where they’re headed from here. We ended up chatting for half an hour Saturday evening while the band was on their way to Florida.

Here’s part one of our interview with Paul Janeway of St. Paul & The Broken Bones.

Let’s start with last week. The two Alabama Theatre shows. Perhaps one of the bigger points in the career of the band. What was going through your heads while those two shows were going on?

The first show on Thursday night—when you play close to home and you have family and friends and all these folks start showing up and wanting to get in, it can be a little stressful. But before the show, before I walked out on stage, I talked to our tour manager Billy, and I was like, “I’m a little nervous.” I don’t really get nervous before shows. And I was definitely on Thursday night. It was just really special. I’ve grown up—I saw Tom Waits there, I saw B.B. King there, I saw all sorts of folks. It’s like a Christmas tradition to go there and see a Christmas movie. Honestly, it was really just kind of surreal, and you’re kind of like, “Yep, this is happening right now.” And I think sometimes you have your routine you do, and then you do that, and there are moments in the show where you’re like, “This is real. This is happening right now.” It was honestly a dream. It really was. It was definitely a very high point for me personally that I’ve ever experienced as far as the band goes.

Was there anything surprising or unexpected that took place during the two nights at the Theatre?

I threw my shoe at the first show. My shoe kind of fell off when I was in the moment, so I just picked it up and threw it—not for any reason—toward the monitor guy that was to our left backstage. I was scared that I hit him. I was like, “Well, I got one shoe off, so I gotta take the other one off.” So I did the rest of the show with just my black socks. That was pretty wild. A thing that was really cool about it, you felt like you wanted to play the best show of your life, but you also felt like—Jesse said this—but you also feel like if you messed up, no one would care, you know? It was that kind of atmosphere. It was really special.

I don’t really get nervous before shows. And I was definitely nervous on Thursday night. It was really special.

You mentioned Thursday night that your grandmother was seeing you guys for the first time. What did she think?

She loved “Try A Little Tenderness.” She was really surprised, I think. She appreciated me making it noted that it was her first time seeing us. She’s really awesome. She was just really excited and told me that she loved “Try A Little Tenderness” because that’s an old song that was written in the 30s. That’s a little more her era.

I’ve seen some talk on social media about a live recording of the two Alabama Theatre shows. Is there anything planned for the tapes of those shows?

Let’s see. What can I say to that? …I don’t know. Maybe. We’ll see. We might have a surprise up our sleeve.

What does your upcoming tour schedule look like?

We’ve got some weekend stuff coming up, but that’s it. We just got done with our fall tour. It’s calming down as far as shows go, at least for November and December. Then we go on a west coast tour in February and do a Europe tour in March and then do a bunch of big festivals.

What are your expectations for your 2015 tour dates? Are you trying to do anything different this time around?

The set that we played at the Alabama Theatre shows is kind of the newer set, because we threw in “Moonage Daydream” and “Fake Plastic Trees” and things like that, and we’re probably gonna try a little bit more. Hopefully we might have a new song or two. We’ve just been so busy that it’s hard to write. But in 2015, we’re gonna try and differentiate some stuff definitely, just out of sheer boredom. Just changing it up for us. I’m really interested in where it goes. We’re gonna try writing in 2015. We want to write a new record next year. Trying to figure all that out. But we’re playing some really big festivals next year, so you want those shows to be as big as they can, so we’ll see how it goes. We’re gonna tweak some stuff, but there shouldn’t be any crazy changes or anything. We’re not gonna start breaking out punk rock stuff.

We’re gonna try and differentiate some stuff, just out of sheer boredom. We’re gonna try writing in 2015. We want to write a new record next year.

I think that’d be interesting to see.

It would be! I agree.

As far as the festivals, are there any names you can tell me, or are those under wraps.

I can’t! I can’t. I can’t. I wish I could. I’m so excited though. Basically, if you think of any major U.S. festival, we’re doing it.

I know you’ve done Bonnaroo already.

We did Bonnaroo. We are not doing that one yet. That one…we haven’t gotten offered yet.

You mentioned writing some songs for a new record next year. I think here in Birmingham, we’ve gotten a bit spoiled, because the record only came out in February, but we’ve been hearing the songs for two or three years. What else could you tell us about the new record?

Not much yet. I think we’re just getting to what we’re wanting to do, what we’re thinking. I think we’re gonna expand it a bit. I like our debut album, I really do, it’s just…we had to write those songs in less than a month, you know? So it’s gonna be interesting to have longer than that to write the songs. We’re really big about song craft and how melodies go and things like that, so I think we’re gonna focus a little bit more on that. Plus, I’m probably not gonna blow up my voice while recording. It’s a tough thing to do every night. A lot of nuancing type stuff. I’m really excited about the prospect of that. That’s part of what I love about this is being able to sit in a room and write songs. That’s definitely the main objective next year.

Check back later this week for Part Two of the interview.