They don't dance to techno any more
What is a seated, acoustic gig with country/acid house hell-raisers Alabama 3 like? Tripe + Drisheen visited De Barra's of Clonakilty on the first of the band's five Irish dates to find out.
Larry Love’s gravelly voice and its counterpoint in the form of wailing harmonica might be the two things that come to mind first about Alabama 3.
After The Sopranos, of course: their breakout hit Woke Up This Morning featured on the soundtrack of the hit HBO show in the late nineties, paving the way for a career that spans a great many albums, with the most recent being last year’s Step 13, the first since the untimely 2019 demise of band co-founder Jake Black, AKA D. Wayne Love.
But tangled amongst Alabama 3’s thirsty transatlantic roots in blues, gospel and country, there extends a deep tap root slurping vigorously from the vein of techno and acid house.
Indeed, the band’s origin story involves Rob Spragg, AKA Larry Love, walking into a party and starting to sing a Hank Williams song over the techno the DJ was playing. This formed an immediate bond with Glaswegian Jake Black, who also grew up listening to country music.
The ensemble, almost never numbering three and not from Alabama, have been forcing a happy collision between acid house, delta blues, gospel and country ever since…..so how is it going to work without the beats and samples in the mix? What’s it going to be like without Jake Black? And why would they be ditching the formula that worked for them for so long, the genre-bending blend they got so right?
An acoustic set by Alabama 3, then, is an irresistible curiosity.
The Brixton-based band’s short five-night “unplugged" style Irish tour kicked off in Clonakilty Wednesday night with a seated gig in De Barra’s.
Or it started seated, at any rate.
When a band does a stripped back tour, there’s always the sneaking suspicion that the reasons are financial. Four musicians and minimal gear on the road: the venues might not be as big, but the cut is bigger and the overheads lower.
That’s probably a wee bit cynical though. And cynicism was not in evidence amongst the crowd of happy fans in Clonakilty, who had a particularly warm welcome for the four piece.
One woman recalled seeing the band in a different incarnation in a hotel in Clon the last time they were here, where they lifted the roof off and a wild night was had by all. And there was a strong sense that that’s why many were there: they remember when the band cut a swathe through Ireland with their partying last time around, even though that was over a decade ago now.
The set list started with Whacked, a single from their 2021 album Step 13: the song’s unabashed druggy hedonism was diluted by the absence of those aforementioned beats. It’s pretty poppy and upbeat in its studio version, actually, and very danceable, and the unplugged version didn’t do it justice.
Of course there was Woke Up This Morning, but early in the set list, with a little skilled slide guitar from Rock Freebase, Larry Love joking that in Ireland, they play their biggest hits early so that people can get down to the heavy drinking.
He wasn’t sticking to sitting on his stool in faithful MTV unplugged fashion: a consummate showman, he was on his feet, egging on the crowd. There was none of the hushed, reverential atmosphere some such sit-down gigs foster. And probably no bad thing.
A few songs in, the momentum picked up after U Don’t Dans 2 Tekno, fittingly enough, with heads bobbing along in the seated section while more exuberant dancers animated the back of the packed room. Sister Ese stole Bulletproof with her beautiful gospel infused voice and then the set took a bit of a dip again.
A curious fact about harmonica player and vocalist Harpo Strangelove (Nick Reynolds) is that he is the son of Bruce Reynolds, the man who engineered The Great Train Robbery in 1963.
So they played Have You Seen Bruce Reynolds, in honour of it being Nick Reynolds’ 60th birthday. Maybe the stools and the gentler pace mark a practical turn towards less energetic gigging, towards forging something that can sustain these showmen into old age?
Refreshments still arrived onstage in the form of a round of Tequilas: maybe they’re not quite at the stage where they’re giving up on hard living just yet.
D. Wayne Love was missed, of course, and not only for sentimental reasons but also for the way his higher voice could offset Larry Love’s bassy growl.
Come encore, the crowd was nicely warmed up, and roared the band back onstage to sing along with older songs, Peace In The Valley followed by their John Prine cover The Speed Of The Sound Of Loneliness.
The verdict? A mixed bag, really: some of the songs worked well played in this pared back form and some just…..didn’t. But it was fun, and there was a lot of love in the room for Alabama 3, proving De Barra’s a wise choice of venue for the first night of this Irish tour.
Tickets for the rest of Alabama 3’s Irish tour dates in Derry, Sligo and Dublin on October 28, 29 and 30 are available here.