LouFest 2014: Alanna Royale

Beatle Bob—if you’re reading this—Alanna Royale misses you.

They will be at LouFest on the weekend of September 6 and 7.

Please, please, if you feel the same way … come dance to their funk.

According to frontwoman Alanna Quinn-Broadus, funk is pretty much the original swagger. Swagger that—she’s proud to say—her six-piece band has plenty of. Maybe even too much at times, she laughingly admits. After all, they do have a total of five beards in the band, a purple lipstick- and orange fingernail-wearing vocalist and a two-part horn section, which Quinn-Broadus says is just like another voice in itself.

It was this swagger that compelled St. Louis’ well-known 61-year-old music enthusiast, Beatle Bob, to bust out his iconic arrhythmic dance moves at Alanna Royale’s last show in town. His mop-top hairdo and ’60s-inspired attire caught the eyes of the band amidst a crowd of punk-infused, gyrating fans. They’ve greeted each other jovially at music festivals since, but, to her dismay, Quinn-Broadus doesn’t know yet if Beatle Bob will be getting his groove on at LouFest.

But, gosh, she sure hopes so.

Beatle Bob kind of represents the idyllic fan for Quinn-Broadus. He knows what funk is. He gets that it’s a full-body experience, not just to be heard, but to be physically understood and expressed in sweaty, flailing, cadenced movements.

“Sometimes I look at someone in the crowd, and they’re throwing their entire body into it,” Quinn-Broadus says. “And I’m thinking, oh my gosh. They’re having an even better time than I am. Which, you know, is hard to do.”

But this Nashville-based, deliciously pop-infused soul ensemble wants to give more to music lovers than the definition of the word funk.

In its latest album, ACHILLES, which hits stores in September and was produced by, Andrija Tokic, who also produced the Alabama Shakes, Alanna Royale gave its fans its heel.

Right before they began recording, Quinn-Broadus hemorrhaged a vocal chord, which meant that stretching out her sweet and powerful vocals became the biggest musical struggle she’s ever faced. As a way of artistically coping with her temporary technical limitations, many of the songs on the album relate to the part of the human condition that can both be strong and weak at the same time. “Achilles was invincible except for this tiny little fatal flaw, which was his heel,” Quinn-Broadus says. “And once someone found out where this weakness was in his body, it was his downfall. I kept thinking about that in regards to my voice. But in the end, I wasn’t going to let that one little flaw be my downfall. I was destined to rise about it.”

Her injury is how the album got the name ACHILLES, but Quinn-Broadus says that the album artwork features her hand breaking an arrow, just like the one that shot Achilles’ heel. It’s important for her, especially in lieu of her triumph over her vocal injury, to get across the message of overcoming rather than merely accepting one’s fate. “I want people to take away from the album that stuff’s gonna get hard, but if you keep doin’ you, somethin’s gonna give,” Quinn-Broadus says.

By taking her own advice, Quinn-Broadus and the rest of Alanna Royale will be rocking LouFest this year and releasing ACHILLES in the same month.

But Quinn-Broadus would like to warn you.

If you plan on going to the band’s live performance and hope to be sitting around, texting on your phone or talking to your friends the whole time, you might be disappointed. “When you’re a new band, you gotta put up or shut up,” Quinn-Broadus says. “And we definitely always put up.”