After 40 years of making music, selling millions of records and performing for fans all over the world, ALABAMA will embark on a brand new tour to celebrate their very first concert at The Bowery in Myrtle Beach, SC. The Back to the Bowery Tour will launch in South Carolina and run throughout the year, making stops along the way in Alabama, Canada, Connecticut, Georgia, Miami, New York and more. Additional dates are expected to be announced soon.


Fan Club and email list member pre-sales for Myrtle Beach, Rama, Westbury, Atlanta, Orange Beach, and Hinckley are Weds. Feb. 13th. Regular on-sales for those dates are on Friday, Feb. 15th. Emails will be sent to the email mailing list and fan club members with more details on the pre-sale. Fans can also still sign up for the email list for pre-sale info at the top of the website. For more information on how to purchase tickets and fan club memberships, fans can visit www.thealabamaband.com/fanclub. More info to follow for on-sales for the remaining dates.


Also be sure to check out our special VIP packages at www.cidentertainment.com/alabama. For a full list of tour dates, please visit thealabamaband.com/events.


“I’m so excited to celebrate 40 years since our first show at The Bowery,” says ALABAMA front man, Randy Owen. “We still love one another, have played music together all these years, and are blessed to still be around. Most importantly, we are ever grateful for the fans, many having been with us since we used to play for tips, so to be able to go back out and play for them will make this a very special year.”


The Back to the Bowery tour marks the first time ALABAMA has announced an extensive run since 2002. To commemorate this special occasion, they have chosen to perform in smaller, more intimate rooms in an effort to create special up-close-and-personal memories for their fans.


4/5/13 Myrtle Beach, SC Alabama Theatre

4/6/13 Myrtle Beach, SC Alabama Theatre

4/26/13 Wallingford, CT Toyota presents Oakdale Theatre

4/27/13 Rama, ON, Canada Casino Rama

5/1/13 Westbury, NY The NYCB Theatre at Westbury

5/17/13 Atlanta, GA Fox Theatre

7/5/13 Orange Beach, AL Amphitheater at the Wharf

8/30/13 Highland Park, IL Ravinia Festival

8/31/13 Hinckley, MN Grand Casino

10/4/13 Minot, ND Norsk Hostfest

10/5/13 Minot, ND Norsk Hostfest

10/12/13 Thackerville, OK Winstar Casino

Alabama 40th anniversary back to the bowery tour

As most of you already know the long time Bounty Hunters drummer, Ron Emory Smith, suffered from a stroke last month. While he is home with care, he is currently undergoing physical and occupational therapy to regain his speech and skills as simple as walking on his own. We will be hosting a benefit on November 4th at the Bowery to help support him financially during this difficult time. We will begin around Noon and feature local bands and Bowery alumni performing on stage all day long as well as food, raffles and auctions throughout the day! Please come help us support our long time friend Ron Emory Smith and enjoy a day of music and fun!




Here is a link for those who cannot attend the benefit, but would like to donate.
Thank You and God Bless!

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=GKR4NTHY94CES

Join this event on FaceBook: http://www.facebook.com/events/282878188490766/

The Bowery, a downtown Myrtle Beach honky-tonk, is one of the Grand Strand’s legendary institutions.
Its patrons have been enjoying cold draft beer and live music through World War II, the carefree ’50s, the turbulent ’60s, 14 presidents and countless storms. In the 1970s supergroup Alabama got its start there playing for tips and working on songs that would lead the band to the distinction as the best selling group in country music history. Which band might be the next Alabama? Lee Travis and The Bounty Hunters, with fiddler Philip Swaby as its featured soloist, wouldn’t mind being the next.
Customers walking up and down Ocean Boulevard and the recently completed Boardwalk are drawn in by the live music from The Bounty Hunters, a band Bowery owner Victor Shamah manages. One of the band’s newest members, since July 2007, Philip Swaby, is a curious sight in this rebel-flagged-bedecked unashamed redneck Mecca.
Swaby, 46, is from the Washington, D.C., area and is of Jamaican descent. He’s a classically trained violinist, who’s been playing the Charlie Daniels’ hit “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” almost since the tune hit the airwaves in 1979. “I’ve been asked to play that song thousands of times,” said Swaby, who is tall, rail thin, eloquent and an intellectual who knows he’s in an unusual position as a black man playing country music in a South Carolina honky-tonk. “I realize how unusual it is to be an anomalous musician,” he said, “but I’ve never had any problems.” Shamah agreed. “The crowd reaction is fantastic,” he said. “People love him.”
How does a classically trained violinist from D.C. end up in Myrtle Beach? “Mom was a vocalist and a pianist,” said Swaby, who remembers music as a part of his life since his earliest recollections. “I was trained classically very young, but heard jazz fiddle on my parent’s shortwave radio and realized the extent of what the violin could do. I met Victor while I was on vacation here, and kind of asked politely to sit in with the band one night. We played ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia,’ and a few other songs, got such a positive response that they asked me on the spot to join the band. I thought about it for about two seconds and said ‘yes.’
“Myrtle Beach reminds me a little of Kingston, Jamaica, and old Georgetown in D.C.,” said Swaby, “I like it.”
Article by GrandStrand Magazine

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. — Alabama guitarist Jeff Cook can describe the Bowery in two words — “redneck heaven.”

That just about sums it up, except there’s so much more to the Bowery than meets the eye. A small bar nestled between the ocean and the main drag through Myrtle Beach, S.C., the Bowery seems an unlikely launching ground for one of the most successful bands of all time. The only alcohol served is a mug of an unnamed draft beer for $2.50. Live bands play every night, but there’s no dance floor.

“It’s a very relaxed atmosphere,” Cook says. “They don’t care what you wear. It’s just a good-time place. It’s a place where you can get away from the everyday grind, and in our case, it gave us a chance to make our music. We met a lot of fans there who are still fans of ours today.”

“I think it’s probably the most unique place that I’ve ever seen,” says Alabama lead vocalist Randy Owen. “That’s the big thing. It’s such a unique blend of people that would come there as fans, to drink and party. One night you might have a place full of college kids, the next night you might have steel workers. You had to be able to work for tips, and you had to be able to change songs to fit the crowd or it got really rowdy.”

Back then, the guys in Alabama would make jokes with the audience and play each other’s guitars behind their backs. Since it was billed as continuous entertainment, they only took bathroom breaks when friends would get up and sing or tell jokes. For a dollar, you’d hear your request eventually. For five dollars, it would be the next song. And for $10 or more, they’d stop whatever they were in the middle of, and start playing yours. Cook says one woman drunkenly tipped the band with three $100 bills to hear “Roomful of Roses” three different times.

“Nobody knew the song but me, so I said, ‘Grab an F [chord], boys. Let’s go!’,” he recalls, laughing.

When they started playing summers at the Bowery in 1973, Cook, Teddy Gentry, Owen and a succession of drummers were billed as Wildcountry. The bar had signs displayed for all 50 states, and when the guys instituted the Alabama sign as their stage backdrop, the name stuck. Drummer Mark Herndon completed the lineup in 1979, and the band was still gigging at the Bowery when “Tennessee River” — the first of 32 No. 1 hits for the band — debuted in 1980.

Later that year, the Bowery was purchased by 22-year-old Victor Shamah, a friend of the band who worked as their tour manager in the off-season. A native of Myrtle Beach, Shamah and his father had both owned stores on the strip. He’s quick to tell you that the constant change of people is what keeps him invested in his job, and simply put, that the Bowery is there to entertain the people.

“If we can’t entertain the people, then they get up and walk to the beach,” he says. “We’re in the tourist area, where people just drop in off the street, and once they drop in off the street, it’s up to the band to keep them there. What the Bowery did for Alabama was, it was a breeding ground to learn how to entertain the people and talk to the people on a one-on-one basis. There are no other clubs in the area, and I would say there are a few in the country, that cater to a small crowd where there’s not much of a dance floor at all, but there’s a one-on-one relationship with the band.”

If Alabama ever got a break at the Bowery, it was at 10 p.m. when the can-can girls hit the stage. One of them, April, would have a bartender lift her in the air, where she’d attach herself to trapeze cables and dance on the ceiling. Then she’d fall back into the bartender’s arms and gracefully return to the stage. By the way, Shamah says the bartender who caught her still holds the world record for varrying the most steins of beer without a tray — 34, full. A slightly creepy wax figure from Ripley’s museum
lurks behind the bar to back up his claim. April’s costume is encased in glass.

Still, that’s not why the Bowery is famous.

“When we went to Myrtle Beach, what was so unique about us going there was that we were the only Southern rock, country rock- flavored group there was on the beach,” Owen says. “We were different, and it was very discouraging the first couple of years. It really was, because things just weren’t going well as far as people coming to see you play. Then things started going crazy for a couple of years, then it got really wild, and then it got even wilder.”

The Bowery is now open on Sundays, due to a change in local liquor law. Shamah also acquired Duffy’s, the bar and grill next door, to showcase his Alabama memorabilia and to accommodate the drinkers who aren’t interested in mystery beer. A few steps from the bars’ front doors, the beloved and nostalgic Myrtle Beach Pavilion theme park has been razed, and whatever replaces it will probably be a year-round attraction. Yet, as Myrtle Beach gets more modern, with its multiple high-rise condos, Shamah is not concerned about the old-fashioned Bowery.

“As a matter of fact, it gives us a better view,” he says about the removal of the Pavilion. “Before, we were on a side street leading to the ocean, between the main drag and the ocean. Now we’re on a front street leading to the ocean and the Bowery’s exposure is there. It’s God’s way of giving us free advertisement. If they leave it down long enough, we’ll be good, but we hope that whatever they build there will help us, not hurt us. We were there before the Pavilion and we’ll be there after.”