When Alabama Shakes went quiet after 2016’s Sound & Color, it left a particular kind of hole in rock music. Brittany Howard moved on to brilliant solo work, and the individual members scattered to their own projects — but the band itself, that specific chemistry, went dormant. Which is why the announcement of Alabama Shakes at Tanglewood on September 5, 2026 is worth sitting with for a moment.
This marks what appears to be a reunion performance, and for fans of the band — and there are a lot of them — that’s not a minor thing.
Why Alabama Shakes Matters
Their debut, Boys & Girls, came out of Athens, Alabama in 2012 and sounded like nothing else on rock radio at the time — raw, unhurried, soaked in blues and soul, anchored by Howard’s voice, which is one of the genuinely great instruments in contemporary rock. Sound & Color pushed further, stranger, more psychedelic, and won four Grammys. Both records hold up completely.
Brittany Howard onstage is a force. That’s not hyperbole — it’s the consistent testimony of anyone who has seen the band live. She performs like the stakes are absolute, and the band behind her was always capable of matching that energy.
The Tanglewood Setting
Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s summer home in Lenox, Massachusetts, sits in the Berkshires — close enough to the Capital Region and Hudson Valley that this qualifies as a completely reasonable road trip. The grounds are beautiful, the acoustics are serious, and a show of this weight deserves a room that can hold it.
Showtime is 7:00 PM on September 5. Tickets through Ticketmaster. Whatever this is — reunion, one-off, something larger — it’s not the kind of performance you want to have missed when the conversation happens later.