The Pollies will play The Basement in Nashville on Thursday, April 13, opening for Boys Club for Girls. The Shoals-based band recently celebrated their tenth anniversary with a packed house at The Lava Room in Florence, Alabama. Jay Burgess, lead singer and guitarist, has been the constant as the band has evolved, but the members acknowledge that the current lineup is the most cohesive the band has ever been. Drummer Jon Davis was also part of the group when The Pollies recorded their first album around 2012 before they signed with their current label Single Lock Records. Although he left a while for a steady local gig, he didn’t burn bridges with the band, but just “put some duct tape on them,” and rejoined the band to tour with Dylan LeBlanc.
Of the current members, only Davis and Burgess are North Alabama natives. The band name, they say, was the result of a game of rock-paper-scissors. In 2015, the Pollies released their second album Not Here in 2015. Bassist Spencer Duncan was living in Nashville around that time, looking to quit his day job to work in music, when Burgess called Duncan’s roommate looking for a bass player. His roommate was not interested in touring at the time but suggested him for the slot. Clint Chandler, who joined the band on keys, came from Louisiana but says he knew the first time he came to Florence he was going to live there. His addition rounded out the current configuration of the band.
The members all agree that they have landed on the right formula. Chander said, “I can sit in the back of a van with these guys for months on end, and we can tell the same joke a hundred times and still laugh or not say anything and still get along.” After all, they play an hour a day and spend the rest of the time sitting in a green room or riding in the van together. Duncan added that it’s not uncommon to get home after a long road tour and find himself on the phone with Burgess for hours.
The Pollies have spent time on road with other artists, including tours backing Nicole Atkins and Dylan LeBlanc. Since all four members are vetted studio musicians, they are comfortable letting others take the lead vocal spot, so fans should not be surprised at the most recent development as the Pollies begin a tour with vocalist Billy Allen with an album release planned for late summer or fall.
Burgess recalls first hearing Billy Allen performing at On the Rocks, a local venue, several years ago. He was upstairs with Brittney Howard, in town to play the Shindig with the Shakes, when they heard a cover band playing in the space below.
“We heard this voice come on,” said Jay, “and at first, I thought it was just like a radio. Then he hit some big-ass note, and I walked around the balcony so I could see who was singing.” When Brittney asked, “Who is that?” he told her, “I have no clue, but I’m about to find out.” He asked and learned the singer was Billy Allen.
The Pollies joined LeBlanc’s tour soon after that encounter, so the band members didn’t meet Billy Allen officially until a few years later at Fame Studio. Burgess told Rodney Hall he was interested in making a record with Allen, so they recorded “Hey Jude” and Little Richard’s “Greenwood, Mississippi.”
At the time, the Pollies had an album project underway, but with the advent of the pandemic, they put that record on hold. Allen started meeting Burgess in his garage, where they started writing together.
Allen says he was pleasantly surprised by the collaboration. “I have to be honest,” he said, “I didn’t know I had that in me. I’ve always been the guy that could take a cover song and make it my own. but Jay said ‘No covers. We get in and we write.’” He admits that Burgess showed him how to harness his creative side. He says he had been performing everything from Bruno Mars to Johnny Cash, from Tina Turner to the Rolling Stones, but Jay showed him how to be Billy Allen. The experience, he said, was like another world, building a whole other planet with music, a journey he is enjoying.
Burgess believes he and Allen would have written the record together no matter what, but the timing of the collaboration was perfect. He had decided at the end of 2019 that he wanted to take time off in 2020. Around February, he heard a song he wanted Billy to record to play for Ben Tanner at Single Lock, once he realized Billy was not under contract.
“We finished the song in one day, and I went ahead and did like a quick mix,” said Burgess. He sent it to Tanner around 10:30 and heard back from him by 11:00. Single Lock picked him up, and they started writing. Within a few months, they had written twenty songs but decided to keep writing—at least until the world opened back up. This gave them the opportunity, said Burgess, “to hit on the perfect songs that would coexist together on a record.”
During the writing sessions, Jay said, some of the songs came quickly. During one writing session, Billy came in humming a guitar lick and said, “Can you figure it out?” They had a song within minutes. “Need to Know,” another single on the album, resulted from a search of Burgess’s phone voice memos. Having the first track come so easily lit a fire under them. Other times, though, they worked for six or seven hours.
Chandler recalls hearing the first riff of “All of Me,” the first track on the record and saying, “I think we’re on the right track.” He gets credit for the hook for “Invited,” a song that grew out of his introvert’s desire to avoid social situations: “I don’t want to be invited.”
Some fans of the Pollies were skeptical when they began making some appearances as Billy Allen and the Pollies. The band membes laugh about social media posts during a block party when Allen first played with the band. One fan posted his complaints, only to retract his criticism ten minutes later after hearing Billy singing with the Pollies.
Regarding the new tour in advance of their upcoming album Black Noise, Clint said, “There’s a lot of raised eyebrows when we tell people we’re still the same band, but now we have this new amazing singer. They ask, ‘So you got rid of Jay?’ We tell them we’re still the Pollies, but we’re doing this right now. It throws people off, but they like it when they hear it.”
Spencer explained why he believes this version of the Pollies has worked: “We’ve all done extensive work as side men, so we know how to back people up and understand the psychology to make other people look good.
Jay added he never wanted to be the front man. “I always liked being the side man. At many shows, I’ve said, ‘I don’t like to talk much, so thank you for coming.’”
The band’s formula is zero competition, all collaboration, even when recording, Jon Davis explained. That collaboration continues to work for the Pollies, and while some have difficulty categorizing their sound, that doesn’t bother the band at all. Their music has been described as “gritty” and “pretty.”
“Jay writes beautiful melodies,” said Davis, “and then he puts an edge to it, and whatever we, collectively, add to it.” They bring all their own musical interests from hip-hop to classical and jazz and rock and roll, and they recognize the influences when they listen to their past recordings. The band members themselves ran through a long list of possible labels for their music, veering into self-deprecating humor before returning to the topic at hand. No matter what it’s called, they are eager to introduce current fans of the Pollies, as well as future fans, to Billy Allen and the Pollies, beginning their tour in Nashville on Thursday, April 13.
http://www.thepollies.net
(photo by Abraham Rowe)