Proud Larrys Presents... The Family

November 1, 2026. Show: 6:00PM

$5 cash fee to be charged to all patrons under 21

ABOUT:

Dylan and James LeBlanc, Angela Hacker, and Bay Simpson are acclaimed musicians from the famed Muscle Shoals, Alabama area who have each carved out successful careers of their own. Dylan LeBlanc is an internationally renowned singer-songwriter whose work has been praised by MOJO and Uncut, with NPR saying his songs unfold with “the wariness of a social and spiritual outsider who broods his way to graceful defiance”; James is a lifelong songwriter and in-demand studio musician whose songs have been recorded by Rascal Flatts, Martina McBride, Travis Tritt, Tim McGraw, Kenny Chesney, and Sara Evans; Angela won the 2007 edition of Nashville Star and her song, “I Ain’t Easy to Love“ was a hit for Candi Staton and has been covered by John Paul White and Jason Isbell; and Bay, touted by Americana Highways as “a solo artist to be reckoned with” recently appeared as an artist on The Voice, performs with the country-rock band Outlaw Apostles, and has successful songwriting credits to his name, including Kid Rock recording his song “Never Enough.”

Beyond their personal accolades, there’s something else that bonds this quartet: they’re family. Dylan is James’ son, and Bay is Angela’s son. James and Angela met when the boys were still young, and they grew up together as musicians and as a family.

Even with their individual accomplishments, the family members supported each other’s endeavors over the years. That said, the notion of joining together in a formal capacity never occurred to them until the pandemic. Locked down with minimal musical prospects on the horizon at the time, the quartet mulled their next moves. Then Dylan had a show in nearby Huntsville and asked his family members if they’d like to join him. This was the first time they’d performed together publicly, and the idea of forming a band took shape.

Over the years, Dylan, Angela, and James shared difficult individual battles with substances and alcohol, a complex issue that affected the family as a whole. They had also grown distant as a family over the years, due to the complications of touring schedules, individual family lives, and the reduced time they had to spend together, despite their best efforts.

“Making this album brought us closer together in ways we never expected.” They shared as a collective. “We all came into it carrying different scars, different experiences, and different stories of survival, but through the music we found healing in each other. These songs became more than just a record — they became proof that broken things can still become beautiful when people choose love, honesty, and growth. For us, this album represents redemption, family, and second chances. It’s the sound of people who have walked through darkness together and somehow came out stronger on the other side. We’re grateful every day that we still get to sit in a room together, create music together, and share this life with one another. That’s something none of us take for granted anymore.”

At the behest of Rodney Hall, the co-owner and president of FAME Publishing and House of Fame Music, the quartet headed to FAME Studios to record. There were no expectations about what would come from these sessions. At a time when everything else stopped, the quartet put any differences aside and poured everything they had—not just into the music, but into each other.

“So we just started doing it,” James says. “Then we started collectively thinking about what we want to be, and who we want to be, and the songs just kind of started falling out.”

This is how the band now known as The Family formed.

The low-stakes jams started acoustically, without drums or bass. Once that was sorted, The Family enlisted Spencer Coats to engineer and Brad Crisler to co-produce. Each member brought ideas to the sessions, which served as a way to escape the torturous grind imposed by the pandemic. Once Crisler added his magic touch to the tracks, the songs started to fall out of them, and they immediately noticed that something bigger than their individual selves was taking shape. “It was so cool and amazing,” Dylan says.

Aiming to channel a bygone era with music that now mostly lives in record collections and memories, specifically a ‘70s folk-rock sound, The Family rolls back the years to create an album that is fresh and true to their artistic identity. Specifically, songs like the hook-laden, melodic rocker "History of Things to Come,” which features Angela on vocals, and the Fleetwood Mac-esque, Bay-powered “Everybody Loves You Now," which the quartet says is their favorite, stand out.

During the sessions, The Family forged a bond that shaped the album they had always heard in their collective heads.

“It is extremely fresh when I listen to it now,” Angela says of the album. “That's one of the things I think that kept us coming back to it through the years.”

Despite the overwhelming approval and support from friends who heard it, once the world started to reopen, The Family didn’t have any label interest in releasing the album.

“We've been talking about it every year, and every year we're like, ‘Man, this really needs to come out,’” James says, “And then we’d get busy again.”

In turn, they returned to their own careers, with Bay forming a new band called Outlaw Apostles. For years, they never expected that the completed record would be released. Until now.

In January 2026, Dylan shared the brooding, melodic rocker “Pick Your Poison,” which features an infectious riff he wrote, on his Spotify account. Billed as Dylan LeBlanc, The Family, the song became one of his more popular songs. Hearing positive feedback from friends and fans reinforced the idea that the album needed to be heard. Enter Jesse “Chunk” Walker, who is married to Dylan’s twin sister. A naval officer and an entrepreneur, Jesse found success with his online record store, Big Black Cow Records. Not long after the store took off, Jesse remembered that his family had recorded an album during the pandemic and proposed to release it himself. That endorsement and the subsequent excitement gave The Family the push they needed to take one more shot.

“So much of your life, you can sit around and just wait for someone to give you an opportunity, and you'll be waiting for a really long time,” James says. “So I was like, ‘Why don't we create the opportunity for ourselves?’ And Jesse was the arbiter behind that thought process.”

Nearly six years after its completion, the album is finally about to see the light of day. The Family willed this into existence, proving that the years of waiting weren’t wasted.

“We all have our individuality as artists,” Bay says. “And we all pursued the solo artist thing within our own things for all of our lives. We have our own thing, but we also have this really cool family connection. So when it comes together, it forms something really unique.”