Steve Martin once said that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture”. If that’s true, then talking to Alabama 3’s Larry Love is like break dancing about the Empire State building. The Welshman was in gregarious form on a visit to Galway for last week’s Film Fleadh as he geared up for his band’s Arts Festival show in the Radisson on Wednesday, July 25.

Alabama 3’s first album Exile on Coldharbour Lane was released in 1997but Larry had been tinkering with the idea of a country/dance fusion for nearly a decade prior to that. NewJersey gangsters aside, Alabama 3 have built up a loyal following from their raucous reputation as a live band. “I could’ve done an Orbital, just me and the beats,” says the Welshman,“but I thought ‘No, I want to put a band around that’. Basically I found the fellas with the worst skin and most rotten teeth in Brixton, with smart clothes on, who could just about hold a tune down! “But they’re all impeccable players,” he adds more seriously.

“We’re a big band — there’s eight or nine of us on stage. I’m very proud of voodoo chemistry that is there.” “We can do a full on rock n roll set with the whole shebang, we can strip it down to just pure country thing or we can do a pure techno thing. It’s like father, son and the holy ghost: you’ve the mother ship Alabama 3, then the Alabama 3 unplugged, then the Alabama 3 sound system that’s the paramilitary wing!”

For those going to see Larry and co in action, it’s the mother ship that’ll be landing in the Radisson! Alabama 3 are still capable of delivering an incendiary set on Wednesday July
25. Tickets for their gig are available at www.galwayartsfestival. com, at the festival booking office on Merchants Road and by phone, 091-566577.