Music

Catching up with St. Paul

by Christiaan Mader

In an exercise of vanity, I brag about my personal relationship with St. Paul and his Broken Bones, set to play ACA this Saturday.

Janeway, center

It’s not very often that I get to take the "chatting with my old pal" approach to show previews. But given St. Paul and the Broken Bones’ remarkable run of success in the past two years — performances on CBS This Morning, Letterman, opening for the Rolling Stones, Google priority over the actual St. Paul — I’m going to go out of my way to connect my name to Paul Janeway and Jesse Phillips, the principal Birminghamians behind one of the most successful neo-soul revues to bust out nationally since Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings reminded us how good Muscle Shoals horn arrangements are.

Not doing such a good job of hiding my envy, I ask Janeway if there’s anywhere to go after you’ve opened for the Stones. Once you get that call, I contest, there’s no one else worth getting out of bed for — save a Beatles reunion featuring the reanimated corpses of Lennon and Harrison. Or I suppose just a McCartney solo show.

“McCartney doesn’t do openers,” Janeway laughs. “The one for me, and this is just God’s honest truth, is Prince. But he doesn’t do openers either. This [The Stones] might be the best opening gig you can ever get.”

I knew Janeway when. Lot’s of folks, I’m sure, can make that claim in Birmingham, but his is one of the most unusual hopscotches to success that you’ll run across. He’ll be the first to wear humbly and with awe his teleportation to Mick Jagger’s stage, and with good reason — he travels with a bus full of long-suffering musicians, not the least of which is Phillips who, by my count, has been in at least a baker’s dozen indie bands.

“It seems super fast,” Janeway tells me. “We’re in perpetual motion pushing the music forward. If I’m not doing that I’m wasting my life. I’ve played in one other band besides this one. It’s unfair for me. For Jesse and them it’s been a long time coming.”

Before strutting his tattered white oxfords in football stadiums across America, Janeway was a bank teller, an asphalt paver, a shoe salesman and shop gopher. I first met him on Phillips’ porch after a show in Birmingham. We smoked cigarettes and Janeway kept the nestled crew of underachievers rapt with his yarns. Dude was definitely captivating. And that was before I knew he could sing.

Over the phone, Janeway and I spend a good bit of time discussing the merits of paying one’s dues. When musicians get to jawing about success, invariably the kind ones deflect theirs into the sphere of good fortune. Janeway can crack a grin through a phone line, shake your hand with a dense and fluffy drawl that’s utterly disarming. Folks always underestimate the power of talent coupled with human decency, but that’s the secret to skipping the cue of struggling also-rans to the front of the rock and roll bread line.

It goes without saying that this performance is going to be special. Janeway has a rare gift for communicating his humanity to enormous crowds, to say nothing of his pipes — the disembodied ghost of Otis Redding and Al Green's sweat and cologne.

The standing room pit in the Moncus Theater is set to absorb a shot of being that is deific in quantity. Being mere feet from charisma that powerful can melt you. Make no mistake about, Janeway’s show is part soul revue, part underdog success story and wholly evangelical in spirit. His Broken Bones are fiery tongues and the sold out crowd — especially the lucky bunch in the standing room pit — are about to become true believers.