Flashback: Brittany Howard and Jay Burgess are cashing out their tabs upstairs at Florence watering hole On The Rocks. Some lead vocals kick in from downstairs. The vocals sound crazy good, and for a second Burgess thinks “it might have been the radio or something.” He walks around to the balcony. Looking down, Burgess sees a singer fronting a small combo playing in a corner near the stairs.

As Burgess watches the singer in awe, Howard – a vocal dynamo herself, in town playing a show with her then-band Alabama Shakes – walks up behind Burgess.

She asks, “Who’s that?”  Burgess replies, “I have no clue but I’m about to find out.” The singer’s name was Billy Allen.

Five years or so after that, Burgess, singer/guitarist with standout Florence band The Pollies, and Allen finally met. Soon, they were talking about Allen and The Pollies possibly collaborating.

The musicians reached out to Muscle Shoals’ storied FAME Studios. They asked general manager Rodney Hall if they could come in and cut a couple tracks, to see if there was chemistry between the two acts.

In 2012, Allen’s talent had taken him far on TV singing competition “The X Factor.” The Pollies had released three strong albums of small-batch Southern power-pop. The Pollies also toured the U.S. and Europe as the backing band for acclaimed singer/songwriters like Nicole Atkins and Dylan LeBlanc, as well as backing acts in the studio.

During Allen and The Pollies’ feel-it-out FAME sessions, they did Wilson Pickett and Duane Allman’s version of The Beatles gem “Hey Jude.” They also cut a cover of “Greenwood, Mississippi” a swampy rocker previously covered by both influential guitarist Travis Wammack and rock legend Little Richard. It sounded hot, so they kept it going.

In 2020, as Billy Allen + The Pollies, they dropped an excellent single, “People, Turn Around,” a sanctified redo of a great unfamous song by indie band Delta Spirit. To date, their version has been streamed more than 600,000 times on Spotify.

Since then, Allen and The Pollies — whose deft players include bassist Spencer Duncan, drummer Jon Davis and keyboardist/backing vocalist Clint Chandler – have been carving away at an album.

They deepened their chemistry by playing live shows together. Most notably, opening folk/rock superstar Jason Isbell’s show at Huntsville’s Orion Amphitheater. On Orion’s big stage and beneath Isbell’s Pink Floyd-worthy lighting, Billy Allen + The Pollies turned heads.

“It was amazing, it was big, and it all happened so fast,” Allen says from behind dark shades during our recent video interview, recalling the Isbell gig. “I remember us talking about it and it taking forever to get here and thinking, OK, what am I going to wear? What are we going to do? What is this and all that. And then boom, we’re on that stage, and it was all over. I didn’t get to take in the moment.”

Beforehand, Allen was told there likely wouldn’t be many people in the amphitheater when their set began. The audience would still be making their way into the venue, getting drinks, buying merch and all, before finding their seats in time to hear the direct support act, outlaw country princess Margo Price, and finally Isbell’s headlining set.

But when Allen walked onstage, the Orion Amphitheater’s floor section was already full. Seating in the amphitheater’s bowl sections were filling in too.

Burgess says, “I’ve played some of those shows before where you’re the opener in this massive venue, and it’s almost like it’s almost like you’re elevator music. Nobody really pays attention to it. But when we walked out, you could hear them cheering as soon as we took the stage and there was a lot of people there. So I give the Huntsville folks credit. It was pretty wild.”

That night opening for Isbell and Price, Billy Allen + The Pollies played a seven-song set. They opened with their original tune “All Of Me.” Burgess riffed away on a custom Flying V guitar made by Huntsville guitar builder Tommy Sheppard.

Last week, Billy Allen + The Pollies released “All Of Me” as the first single from their debut collabo album. The release is via Single Lock Records, a Grammy-winning Muscle Shoals indie label celebrating its 10th anniversary.

The track finds Allen’s hot R&B vox pirouetting over The Pollies’ paisley-fuzz tapestry. Burgess does a Yardbirds-y guitar break, punctuated by Allen’s “Ugh!” exclamation on the mic.

The seeds of “All Of Me” were sown when Allen was at home watching a recording of a live Brandi Carlisle show. Inspired by the performance, he sat down at his piano and worked out some ideas. Later, he brought those ideas to The Pollies. Burgess and Chandler threw new curves on it. “I think it took maybe a half an hour to write,” Burgess recalls.

Hailing from Town Creek, Allen has been singing, as he puts it, “ever since I could stand.” By age three, he was singing at church picnics, weddings and local markets.

Allen says, “People would stop me, ‘I’ll pay you a dollar if you sing … And I knew that dollar would get me some candy, so I would sing. I’ve been doing it ever since I knew what singing was.”

Billy Allen + The Pollies’ album will finally come out next year. The exact date is to be determined, although summer is a solid bet.

“We don’t want to just release the music and it just sits there,” Allen says. “There’s already great music out there just sitting there. Nobody’s really giving it attention. We want the best plan possible to slowly roll it out, so when that record drops, people are getting it listening to it and it can do something.”

They do have an album title pinned down though: “Black Noise.” Burgess had been listening to David Bowie’s 1971 album “Honky Dory” a lot. One night, going down a Bowie rabbit-hole on YouTube, he came across a vintage “The Dick Cavett Show” interview with him.

In that interview, Bowie brought up a “theory about black noise and how it can be used to destroy our make a whole city or state or world crumble,” Burgess says. “When I heard ‘black noise’ and the description of it to me that’s kind of what this record does. So I sent it out to the guys, and everybody loved it.”

Burgess and Ben Tanner, Single Lock Records cofounder and ex-Alabama Shakes keyboardist, produced the Billy Allen + Pollies album. The LP’s 11 songs were recorded live in the studio. Three takes or less on each tune. Minimal overdubs.

In addition to lead single “All Of Me,” Burgess says key tracks include “Thought You Wanted Him, “Forever,” “Run Baby Run” and a cover of “Lady Luck,” a song by late songwriter/producer Richard Swift. Musically, “Black Noise” reaches as wide as rock, soul, disco and organic pop.

The sessions were so fruitful some strong tunes didn’t make “Black Noise.” The “All Of Me” single’s B-side is non-album cut “Ridin’ Wit Chu,” which stirs together rock and R&B. And that spinetingling version of “People, Turn Around”? That didn’t make the final track list either. It just didn’t fit the flow of the rest of the album, says Burgess, who checks in for this interview from in front of his recording console at his Studio 144 in Green Hill.

With Allen’s vocals and The Pollies’ indie acumen, you can hear the roots. But it isn’t overtly retro.

All part of the plan, Burgess says: “We didn’t want it to sound like a novelty throwback. And so we constantly were conscious of things that can take it in that direction. And Billy’s not doing what you would expect somebody that’s that big of singer to do. He could just go into outer space every damn time and people would be blown away by it. But he holds back. He cares more about the song than he does about showing off.”

Indeed, when Allen sings with The Pollies, it sounds like a tune. Not vocal gymnastics just for the sake of melisma.

It calls to mind the way Michael Jackson used to syncopate and sing hooks throughout a song. Besides obvious touchstones like Jackson, Allen draws from rock greats like Bowie, Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart and Tina Turner, as well as some unexpected influences, like sultry singer Sade.

Normally in The Pollies, Burgess is the lead singer. Collaborating with Allen, he’s gladly returned to his guitarist/songwriter roots. And Allen? He’s having a ball tapping into rock and roll energy – and he wears it well.

“Singing with a rock band, it’s incredible,” Allen says. “It’s freedom, it’s a relief, it’s therapy – it’s everything I’ve always wanted. I did R&B and stuff around the clubs locally and it was depressing. I didn’t want to sing about stuff that I experience all the time. I want to sing about fun, exciting things. I want to cuss. [Laughs] I want to have a good time, and just be my weird self, you know? And that’s what I’m able to do with these guys.”

SEE THEM LIVE

Billy Allen + The Pollies are part of a 7 p.m. Nov. 24 show at the Shoals Theatre, address 123 N. Seminary St. in Florence, celebrating Single Lock Records’ 10th anniversary. Others on the bill include Blind Boys of Alabama, Erin Rae, The Kernal and Pine Hill Haints. Tickets are $40 plus applicable fees via etix.com. On Nov. 25, The Pollies (sans Allen) headline another Single Lock Records 10th anniversary show, at Florence bar The Lava Room, address 116 W. Mobile St. Tickets are $15 plus fees via eventbrite.com. Other acts on the Nov. 25 show include Caleb Elliott, The Prescriptions, Space Tyger, Thad Saajid, Duquette Johnston, Speckled Bird and Exotic Dangers.