Single Lock Records co-founder John Paul White
If a record label can serve history by documenting a scene that is defined geographically, it can also make the kind of history that travels beyond state lines. For Florence, Ala.’s Single Lock Records, the pursuit of tradition produces music that is both ultra-modern and grounded in the past. The label, started in 2013 by The Civil Wars’ John Paul White along with Alabama Shakes keyboardist Ben Tanner and Muscle Shoals businessman Will Trapp, showcases its roster of soul, country and rock artists — including White himself, Nashville soul singer Nicole Atkins and legendary Alabama songwriter Donnie Fritts — with concerts Saturday and Sunday in Nashville. Single Lock is a pragmatic, postmodern avenue for ambitious artists who need the capital outlay and loving care that a small, focused label can provide.
The business model White, Trapp and Tanner have devised has produced innovative records that stand out in a sea of Americana-style soul, country, rock and pop releases. Single Lock — named by Muscle Shoals native Tanner for a lock on Florence’s historic Wilson Dam — supports Big Star-style power pop on the band Belle Adair’s new full-length Tuscumbia, which hits stores this week. Meanwhile, the label facilitated the release of one of the finest records made by a Nashville artist last year, Nicole Atkins’ soul music collection Goodnight Rhonda Lee.
White, a Shoals native who grew up in nearby Lawrence County, Tenn., settled in Florence in 2013 after making waves as half of the Grammy-winning Americana duo The Civil Wars. “Starting out, Ben and Will came to me,” White tells the Scene from his home in Florence. “The Civil Wars had just went on hiatus, and I was really not looking to work at all. I didn’t want to walk across the street to play a song for anybody.”
Single Lock tapped into the Shoals’ geography and well-documented recording and performance history — the area is the home of storied soul music recording studio FAME, as well as Muscle Shoals Sound Studio and Quin Ivy Studio — with the release of Birmingham retro-soul band St. Paul and the Broken Bones’ 2014 full-length Half the City. The record got substantial press support, and the band’s live show, which spotlights singer Paul Janeway’s fervent vocals, is compelling. As the record began to take off, Single Lock brought Nashville entertainment management, marketing and distribution company Thirty Tigers on board.
“When [Thirty Tigers] came in on St. Paul, they were pretty much staffing the label,” says Reed Watson, who manages Single Lock’s day-to-day operations. “I mean, it’s hard to look at it any other way. You can think of Single Lock at that point as an A&R company that happened to make records.”
Watson, a 32-year-old Tuscaloosa native who moved to Florence in 2011, also plays drums in Belle Adair. As Watson says, Thirty Tigers provided invaluable help to Single Lock, which found itself with a hit album that would go on to sell 150,000 copies. Single Lock and Thirty Tigers parted ways in 2016, when White released his solo record Beulah.
The label’s ability to recontextualize the tenets of old-school record-making are exemplified in Atkins’ Goodnight Rhonda Lee. Atkins, a Nashville resident since 2015, cut the album at Niles City Sound in Fort Worth, Texas. “It’s funny,” she says with a laugh. “I moved to Nashville to make a Muscle Shoals- or Memphis-sounding record in Texas.”
Atkins shopped Goodnight Rhonda Lee around to little enthusiasm before signing with Single Lock. Atkins had played 116 E. Mobile, the venue the label operates in Florence, not long after she had moved to Nashville. “I had one label tell me that I needed to AutoTune all my vocals,” she says. “That was a new one for me. No one had the enthusiasm. [Single Lock] did.”
Tanner remixed Goodnight Rhonda Lee for release, and the result is a masterpiece of modern soul that retains the idiosyncrasies a more doctrinaire label might have vetoed. In similar fashion, Single Lock has done its part to advance modern country by releasing Nashville avant-garde country singer The Kernal’s 2017 full-length Light Country, a post-countrypolitan record of staggering originality.
Single Lock, which has learned the lessons of creative capitalization and quality control, has contributed to the storehouse of well-produced records, but White understands the dynamics of the music business of the future. “We definitely started realizing that we make records to get people to shows instead of the other way around,” he says.
White speaks the truth. Single Lock enables artists to work at full potential on record, but the reality of the business lies on the road, in real time, where records — as much as we love them — just don’t matter as much.
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