Alanna Royale and Brassville Bring the Heat to Exit/In

Halfway through her nearly 90-minute set at Exit/In Saturday night, soul singer Alanna Royale laughed before introducing yet another new song to the crowd. It was her first in-person show since an Exit/In gig in February 2020, and she had a slew of new tunes to debut.

“I’ve been sitting on a record for a long time,” she admitted. “This is like a record-release show with no record! But I’m doing it, I don’t give a fuck.” 

The audience in the crowded-but-not-packed house cheered with approval. After opening with fan favorites “Cruel Cruel World” and “It’s Not Yours,” both from 2018’s So Bad You Can Taste It, Royale and her glove-tight band switched gears. Instead of easing their way back to the stage with the relative comfort of crowd-pleasers, they turned the evening into something like an episode of VH1 Storytellers. The new songs played a key role in sustaining her during the past 16 months, and she shared the stories of how they helped her get here.

Royale talked about how some of the final words Judy Garland spoke onstage, which she heard in a documentary about the legendary actress, inspired the crawling, midtempo R&B song “Forget Me.” She opened up about mental health and the weight of isolation in “Imagine,” which includes the relatable lines: “Something is killing me / A devil I can’t see / It’s just my imagination.” She also shared the good news that she got signed to Ohio soul label Colemine Records even during the “fucking pandemic” — seldom has an epithet been deployed more appropriately. The full-length should be out next year.

As much as the past several months have been professionally victorious for Royale, she also recognized that there are a lot of things that remain Not OK in many ways. Opening act Brassville was a fantastic party starter who promised and delivered “a whole lotta brass with class for your ass!” The eight-piece brass band blared through uplifting songs about waving goodbye to your haters and “shaking your brass,” and a horny (ahem) rendition of OutKast’s “So Fresh, So Clean.” The crowd, about 90 percent white, loved it more by the minute, leaving Royale to wonder where we’ve all been for past Brassville shows.

“Brassville’s amazing, and I want you all to know something,” she said as her band quietly vamped on the intro to her next song. “Last time I went to see Brassville, I was one of like three white people there. We’re gonna have a talk real quick, Nashville, because I’ve lived here almost a decade and the fucking segregation at shows across musical communities, that shit don’t stand with me. I’m fucking sick of that shit. I go to see Brassville, they’re playing a sold-out show at Acme and there’s [almost] no white people there. I’m sick of that shit. So everyone get their fucking phone out right now and follow Brassville on Instagram and follow five more people that they follow, and y’all get your white asses to see Brassville and support real Nashville music. There’s shit poppin’ off in this city all over the place and I can’t tell you how much we’re all missing out on because we’re so fucking separate. I don’t want it to be like that, I’ve had it.” 

The crowd roared and one of Brassville’s players threw back the curtain at the back of the stage and cheered. I could see several folks in the audience open their phones, maybe to follow her instructions. Royale said the quiet part out loud. She made the show into more than a celebration of her personal achievements — it was a reminder to recognize and support local music across a wide spectrum. 

“I love the Nashville music community with all my fucking heart,” she added. “And I want to see every single one of us out here killing it, you know what I’m saying?”

Brassville plays a weekly residency at 3rd and Lindsley every Wednesday in July, with two more installments on July 21 and 28. They’re also performing at the Jefferson Street Jazz and Blues Fest — which comes to the campus of Fisk University on Saturday, July 24 — alongside artists like the Fisk Jubilee Singers and Geo Cooper and Friends of Autumn. Go. Dance. Urbaanite’s Ashley Currie, who wrote about Brassville in her collaboration with the Scene For the Soul, is not wrong when she tells you Brassville has the talent and drive to “put this city on the brass-band map.”