At the tender age of 4, Greg Dulli bought his first record, the Jackson 5 single “I Want You Back.” Little did he know the song would find its way back to him more than two decades later, this time as a building block for one of the Afghan Whigs’ most recognizable tracks.
On “Debonair,” from the band’s 1993 album Gentlemen, Dulli married the Motown classic with the eerie opening chords of the title theme to David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. An unlikely combination, certainly, but one that captures the musical imagination responsible for making the Cincinnati group one of alternative rock’s most distinctive (and combustible) acts.
It was hardly an isolated experiment. The Afghan Whigs built a reputation for putting their own spin on familiar material, whether covering TLC’s “Creep” or reworking the Supremes’ “My World Is Empty Without You” over the bassline of Hall & Oates’ “Maneater.” For Dulli, the boundaries separating rock, soul and R&B were never particularly rigid.
While the band shared space on indie label Sub Pop’s roster with the likes of Nirvana and Soundgarden during the 1990s, their musical vocabulary stretched well beyond the grunge movement surrounding it. The Temptations, Stevie Wonder, Al Green and the Supremes were just as influential as the band’s alternative-rock contemporaries.
“We are a compilation of our memories,” Dulli tells Orlando Weekly ahead of the Afghan Whigs’ Nov. 4 performance at the Beacham.
For the frontman, those memories begin with the records he grew up listening to with his mother, who was still a teenager when he was born. Her appreciation for soul music helped establish a foundation that would follow him from his childhood home in Ohio to stages around the world.
“Growing up and listening to music with my mother, who was a teenager when I was born, I will never forget that,” Dulli recalls.
He remembers not only the music, but his mother’s encouragement to pursue whatever made him happy. Decades later, those early influences remain inseparable from his creative instincts.
“They never go away,” he says. “And if they ever did, I would be so fucking sad.”
That attachment to the past hasn’t prevented Dulli from embracing the present. His appetite for discovering and interpreting other artists’ work continues to extend across generations, with the Afghan Whigs’ live performances often making room for unexpected covers.
“I’m constantly covering my contemporaries and people much younger than me,” he explains. “If you’ve given me something that inspired me and I want to sing your song, I’m gonna do it.”
And after 40 years, the band’s appetite for exploring its own sound hasn’t diminished, either.
The Afghan Whigs’ latest album, Soft Control, released in August through Royal Cream/BMG, found the group continuing to expand upon an identity established decades ago. Their 10th studio release, and fourth since reuniting in 2012, pulls from the familiar sonic intersectionality while reflecting a more seasoned perspective on the passage of time.
The band’s current lineup features Dulli with fellow founding member and bassist John Curley, guitarist Christopher Thorn, multi-instrumentalist Rick Nelson and drummer Bryan Lee Brown.
Recorded across studios in Joshua Tree, New Orleans, East Hollywood and Cincinnati, the album began as a collection of 22 songs, ultimately narrowed to 10. For Dulli, choosing which tracks made the final cut was about finding a cohesive collection.
“The reason why I write more songs than I need is because I need to find the 10 songs that can hang out together,” he says.
“It’s very simple and very elegant. I’ll say no more.”
Its first half leans into the band’s more immediate, guitar-driven sound before giving way to increasingly atmospheric arrangements and studio experimentation.
“I knew I wanted side two to be a bit more esoteric,” Dulli explains. “Side one would be the songs we’d play live, most likely, and side two would be the more produced sound, studio sound.”
Throughout Soft Control, familiar elements of the Afghan Whigs’ musical practice take on unexpected forms. The opening track, “Jungle Roux,” incorporates a synthesizer part born from a mistake during recording. “Duvateen,” meanwhile, began with a Keith Richards-inspired guitar riff before evolving into a sprawling arrangement that finds Dulli reaching toward the falsetto stylings of his beloved Curtis Mayfield.
Even the smallest details can become opportunities for experimentation. For Dulli, the human voice is another instrument in that process, capable of carrying emotion without necessarily relying on words.
“Honestly, I love to use people’s voices as instruments. You know, they don’t even have to be saying anything,” he says.
Take “Memphis, Texas,” which features vocalist and violist Petra Haden (That Dog, The Rentals). Her sustained backing vocals add another dimension to the track’s atmosphere, stretching into notes that seem to hover above the instrumentation.
“Petra is one of the greatest singers currently on the planet,” Dulli says, praising her ability to sustain notes for unusually long periods. “She can hold a note for an abnormally long time, like opera notes.”
As Dulli explains, those seemingly simple vocal contributions can become some of the most expressive elements of a recording.
“When you can use someone’s voice to lift a song in a wordless way, that’s magic.”
The playful backing vocals on “House of I” offer another example of that attention to detail. Even the seemingly spontaneous flourishes, Dulli insists, are deliberate.
“The doo-doo-doos on ‘House of I,’ totally intentional,” he says.
Elsewhere, brass arrangements lend additional character to the record, particularly the trumpet on “The Deepest Part of the Darkest Shadow.” Dulli even describes using his mouth to imitate the sound of a trombone, further illustrating his fascination with blurring the distinction between voice and instrument.
It’s a creative approach that traces a line back to those childhood records, when sounds from different musical worlds first began collecting in Dulli’s imagination. The Afghan Whigs have never seemed particularly concerned with keeping musical influences in their designated boxes.
But four decades of music also present an interesting challenge: How does a musician continue finding meaning in songs written by someone he no longer is?
When the Afghan Whigs reunited in 2012 after a 12-year hiatus, Dulli found himself performing material that was already more than a decade old. He knew that if the band intended to continue, it would have to make new music rather than rely entirely on its past.
Still, he understood the importance of the songs that brought audiences to the band in the first place.
During the group’s spring tour, the opening seven songs came from seven different albums, an arrangement Dulli found particularly gratifying.
“I’m singing songs of who I used to be and singing songs of who I am now,” he says.
For him, the connection between those two versions of himself has to remain genuine. Longevity, after all, is no excuse for going through the motions.
“I would never sing a song I didn’t feel like singing,” Dulli insists. “That would be dishonest to me and to the audience, and I would never do that.”
It’s a conviction he’ll bring to downtown Orlando on Nov. 4, when the Afghan Whigs kick off the North American leg of their Soft Control tour at the Beacham.
Dulli is particularly excited about reconnecting with friends in Orlando and others traveling from Daytona Beach, including a childhood friend from Ohio. There’s also the added pleasure of sharing the tour with Minneapolis psychedelic-rock band Night Moves, whose music he speaks about with considerable enthusiasm.
“They’re one of my favorite bands ever,” he says. “There’s nobody like them.”
As for the headlining performance, Dulli promises that even concertgoers familiar with the Beacham will encounter something different. The band has developed a deliberate approach to lighting and visual presentation, intended to transform the atmosphere of each venue without relying on elaborate stage production.
“Whenever a band makes the stage look different, then I’m transformed,” he explains. “Now I’m in a new place.”
What will the transformation look like when the Afghan Whigs take the stage Wednesday night? Eternal showman Dulli isn’t giving much away.
“It’s very simple and very elegant,” he says. “I’ll say no more.”
7 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 4, The Beacham, 46 N. Orange Ave., thebeacham.com, $30-$40.
