"I don’t know when this started,” says Pablo van de Poel, “but a couple of years ago we started seeing every album as an adventure.”
Beneath their veneer as retro-rockers par excellence, DeWolff – Pablo, his drumming brother Luka and their organ-playing best pal Robin Piso – have made a virtue of fearlessly experimenting with how they make, and release, music. Tascam Tapes (2019) was recorded on tour with a vintage four-track recorder. Last year’s Love, Death & In Between tapped into gospel music, with its backing singers and horn players. Nonagon Marathon, an epic nine-concert live video, was released on – would you believe – a USB memory stick.
Continuing that horizon-expanding tradition, DeWolff’s latest musical leap took the band (and touring bassist Levi Vis) from Maastricht in the Netherlands to Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Named after that fabled city, Muscle Shoals is their grooviest work to date, by turns soulful, bluesy, fuzzy and gritty, but always rooted in their signature vintage rock sound.
Sitting on the swampy banks of the Tennessee River, Muscle Shoals holds a unique place in American musical history as home to two legendary recording studios. Founded in 1959, FAME created the definitive sound of soul and R&B, where Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett cut one hit after another.
In 1969, four members of FAME’s in-house band, nicknamed The Swampers, split off and opened Muscle Shoals Sound Studio across town, attracting the likes of the Rolling Stones, Bob Seger and Lynyrd Skynyrd, all seeking that indefinable Muscle Shoals magic.
Then, in 2024, DeWolff became the first Dutch band to record there
The way Muscle Shoals happened, Pablo says, was “kind of weird”. They had planned to record album number 10 with Black Crowes guitarist Chris Robinson as producer, but their respective schedules couldn’t be aligned. Pablo had visited Muscle Shoals while on holiday in 2019 and toured both recording studios. The experience planted the seed of one day bringing DeWolff to Muscle Shoals Sound, where Boz Scaggs recorded his self-titled 1969 album – something of a lodestar for the sound the band wanted to capture.
Then in November 2023, Pablo saw country artist Dylan LeBlanc in concert. Chatting with the singer after the show, Poel mentioned his nascent notion of recording at Muscle Shoals Sound. “He was like: ‘Yeah for sure!’” Pablo says. “But you also have to record at FAME, because FAME has been an operational studio for the past sixty years and it’s a really good vibe, and you should do it with Ben Tanner.’”
But Poel wasn’t completely sold on the idea of FAME. “I wasn’t super-impressed when I did the tour,” he recalls. That’s where Tanner proved vital to the album’s genesis. Born and raised in Muscle Shoals itself, Tanner began his music career as FAME’s chief engineer and studio manager. While his production discography leans towards Americana and country artists such as Jason Isbell, he jumped at the chance to work with the Dutch rockers. And he wanted to take them to his old workplace.
“Ben said: ‘We should record the biggest part of the album at FAME, because anything you want to do at a recording studio, you can do there.’ And [at] Muscle Shoals Sound the options are way more limited,” says Poel. “Also, the sound is weird. The first time we heard our music being played back through the speakers at Muscle Shoals Sound we were like: ‘What is this? What are we listening to?’ It sounded all weird and small and boxy. FAME doesn’t have that. FAME really wants to provide you with the best possible recording experience.”
Although FAME has a long and deep association with soul music, that wasn’t the vibe that DeWolff were looking for – although the influence of their surroundings undeniably seeps into the seductive soul of Winner (When It Comes To Losing) or the deep bluesy feel of Snowbird. “It wasn’t the plan to make a soul record, and I’m very glad that we didn’t pursue that idea,” says van de Poel. “This is what DeWolff sounds like when they record at FAME and Muscle Shoals.”
Indeed, the history of the city is equally rich in rock: “I think FAME is more the soul place,” he continues, “and Muscle Shoals Sound is more the rock’n’roll place where the Stones recorded, Willie Nelson, Leon Russell. The grand piano that Leon Russell recorded Leon Russell And The Shelter People on was still there. Man, every time he’d walk past the piano, Robin would play the intro to [Russell’s] Of Thee I Sing, and I’d laugh. This is the instrument and the room where it was recorded.”
Despite those early misgivings about using two famous (but very different) facilities, Tanner’s intuition proved right.
“I’m very glad we did both studios, because I wouldn’t have wanted to miss that experience, but for me personally FAME was the best recording experience I have ever had,” says Pablo. “I think it is something in the air. It has such a classic vibe. You hear all these stories, and you’re confronted with the history constantly, but you really feel there is some magical vibe in that room.”
While warming up at FAME, the band started playing the songs for their album, before they segued into jamming on tunes that they knew were recorded right where they stood.
“I get goosebumps talking about it now,” says Poel. “We looked at each other: ‘Oh my god, we’re here and it sounds like those recordings!’ Little Richard was there, Wilson Pickett was there. We walked through Studio B and there’s a picture of Duane Allman, Berry Oakley and Jaimoe having the first-ever Allman Brothers rehearsal there in that little room. It’s something else.”
In Muscle Shoals you can literally hold history in your hands, as Poel learned during a break from recording, when DeWolff took a tour through the rest of the building. “There were all these original Duane Allman tapes from 1968/69. We went through [studio owner/producer] Rick Hall’s office upstairs, and I played this acoustic guitar,” says Poel. “Then Spencer, the assistant engineer and tour guide, showed me a picture with that same guitar in the hands of Otis Redding.”
“It’s totally crazy,” he continues, recalling that powerful moment in their Alabama adventure – that sense of themselves, the studio’s first Dutch recording artists, making their own piece of history. “Spencer, he’s been working there for many years, and at one point he said: ‘You guys being here, recording this music in this room, that’s the idea, that’s what it’s supposed to be like.’ I started crying. I was completely overwhelmed by how special it was that we were there. It’s one of the highlights of my life, really.”
Muscle Shoals is out now via Mascot Records
