During various points in his musical upbringing, you could find Brother Wallace teaching in the classroom or directing a 100-person choir. At Friday’s Studio Milwaukee Session, he took us all to school … and church.
The soulful Georgia native educational and parochial bona fides are legit, having spent time as a K-12 music teacher and getting the mantle of choir director thrust on him at the tender age of 14. As he explained to a room full of Radio Milwaukee members, both were necessary stops on his way to the stage: the choir for a lesson in leadership and teaching to show how much intention goes into success.
“With the background of teaching vocals at an early age, I never thought about myself as a singer and as a performer. I was always just in the mindset of training other people,” he said. “So when I went into education, that's what I did — I trained other voices. But in training them, I was training myself.”
After hearing the result of that training in our space Friday, it’s almost unfathomable to imagine Wallace’s voice confined to bouncing off the cinder-block walls of Any School, USA. It’s an instrument that demands to be shared with an audience — preferably one ready to bring a little bounce and sway to their day.
The members in our performance space were more than ready, although Wallace has the kind of sound that makes resistance a futile endeavor. From the opening chords of “Electric Love” to the sinister-tinged strains of “You’re the Man,” Wallace transmits a feeling he verbalized during the mid-set interview with HYFIN program director Element Everest-Blanks.
“One word: passion,” he began. “We've lost passion. And we need to go back to people who are not singing for the money, but singing because of the passion. Because it's like you said — it's in them.”
Brother Wallace’s debut album, Electric Love, gets its release May 8. A few days before that, he’ll join St. Paul & The Broken Bones for a May 3 show at The Sylvee in Madison.
Studio MKE: Brother Wallace set list
- “Electric Love”
- “Gone With the Wind”
- “Who’s That”
- “You’re the Man” (non-broadcast performance)
