Some artists spend their whole lives getting ready for the moment the world finally hears them. Brother Wallace is one of them. Today, the West Point, Georgia-bred singer, pianist, & soul revivalist announces his debut album, Electric Love, out May 8 via ATO Records. It’s a bold 1st chapter from a voice that feels less like a “new artist” and more like a force that’s been building quietly for years. Raised in a small rural town where the church was both community and classroom, Wallace began singing early and started formal piano training at six years old. By 14, he was directing a 100-member choir—leading not from ambition, but from instinct. Music wasn’t extracurricular; it was identity. Still, his path didn’t follow the typical industry arc. Wallace built a life at the intersection of art & service, becoming a K–12 music teacher and shaping young voices day after day, even as his own kept growing into something undeniable. Over time, that “teacher” story expanded into something bigger: including sharing the stage with gospel legend Kirk Franklin performing at Madison Square Garden. But it wasn’t until a chance meeting sparked a creative partnership—one that stretched across years and continents—that Brother Wallace’s vision began assembling into the album it was always meant to become. That partnership was with Dan Taylor (The Heavy), who became not just a collaborator but a catalyst. Recorded at Real World Studios (the legendary facility founded by Peter Gabriel) and produced/co-written by Taylor, Electric Love captures the breathless immediacy of Wallace’s performances—engineered and mixed by Bob Mackenzie (James Blake, The 1975, King Krule, SAULT) and Jim Abbiss (Adele, Arctic Monkeys). The result is soul music that feels alive in your hands: gritty, radiant, and built around the kind of vocal that turns rooms silent before it turns them inside out. Across its 13 songs, Electric Love is less a debut than a revelation—a body of work fueled by gospel roots and classic soul lineage (Sam Cooke, Little Richard, Southern soul greats) while refusing to live in nostalgia. Wallace writes in lived-in scenes and hard-earned feeling: heartbreak without defeat, joy without naïveté, vulnerability without apology. Brother Wallace will bring that world to the stage supporting St. Paul & The Broken Bones on his first-ever tour—an ideal match for a performer whose voice and presence were made for big rooms, shared air, and nights that feel like revival.
I had the chance to catch up with Brother Wallace ahead of the May 3rd show with St. Paul and the Broken Bones at the Sylvee. Not only did we get a chance to talk about what the people in attendance can expect from him and band, we learn who the players with him are, but the New alum Electric Love drops may 8th. We dive into the story behind the album from how it went down to the feeling of it about to be in the world in its entirety. We get the true story of how he got to be a [part of working with the Heavy – yep – he took a call at the mall and we do share a little educator banter about our ways as well. Before I let him go, I of course wanted to know if he had to air a track as part of building a set on the radio from the new record, which does he go with and why. This question is almost always interesting and often leads me to new artists…but his setlist included some classics.
