There is a particular kind of voice that doesn’t translate to a recording — you have to be in the room when Brittany Howard opens her throat and lets it go. For nearly a decade, that was a memory. Alabama Shakes went dark after 2015’s Sound & Color, Howard scattered into a brilliant run of solo work, and the specific gospel-soul-garage alchemy that made the band one of the best live acts of the 2010s went quiet. It is back. On Saturday, September 5, 2026, Alabama Shakes bring their reunion tour to Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts — with the legendary Mavis Staples opening.
If you’ve spent any time in the Berkshires, you know that pairing is almost too good. This is soul music handed across a generation, on one of the most beautiful stages in the Northeast.
The Reunion Is Real
After roughly eight years away, Alabama Shakes returned to the road in 2026 with founding bassist Zac Cockrell back in the fold — a full-band reunion, not a Howard solo project wearing the old name. The tour kicked off in April in Richmond, Virginia and has rolled through festival stages and amphitheaters across the country, with European dates folded in over the summer. By the time they reach the Berkshires in September, this band will be deep into its stride.
The catalog earns the hype. Boys & Girls arrived out of Athens, Alabama in 2012 sounding like nothing else on rock radio — raw, unhurried, soaked in blues and soul. Sound & Color pushed stranger and more psychedelic, and won four Grammy Awards. Both records hold up completely, and live is where they fully detonate.
Mavis Staples Opens
This is not a throwaway support slot. Mavis Staples is a civil-rights-era icon, a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, and one of the great living soul voices — the through-line from the Staple Singers to everything Alabama Shakes does. Getting both on one bill, in one night, is the kind of lineup you build a road trip around.
The Tanglewood Setting
Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s summer home in Lenox, sits in the Berkshires — close enough to the Capital Region and Hudson Valley that this qualifies as an entirely reasonable Saturday-night drive. The grounds are gorgeous, the acoustics in the Koussevitzky Music Shed are serious, and the lawn is its own institution. A show of this weight deserves a room that can hold it, and Tanglewood can.
Showtime is 7 p.m. Whatever this night turns out to be — a victory lap, a one-off, the start of something more — it’s not the kind of show you want to hear about secondhand.
Get Alabama Shakes tickets at Tanglewood
For more on the venue — parking, the lawn, getting there — see our Tanglewood guide.
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