Naperville native brings heart, and soul to Brandi & the Alexanders

A Naperville kid and reluctant flutist who didn't sing in a choir until her sophomore year of high school is now the lead singer of a New York City-based band that just signed with a record label.

That's Brandi Thompson's story in a sentence.

But in between her slow-building musical beginnings and her new singing career were stops at journalism school, a marketing firm, a news radio station, a university president's office and a number of small clubs and cafes where she took the stage.

“It was a long time coming,” Thompson said about her band, Brandi & the Alexanders, signing with the label Red Parlor Records. “A lot of work and practice and playing for half-empty venues.”

Now those experiences can fuel the sound of the “rock and soul” band Thompson leads with fellow band members Nick Fokas, Eric Gottlieb, Ethan Simon and Eric Wendell. The sound is infused with classic rock, pop, funk, and rhythm and blues - all of the music Thompson said she listened to while growing up and attending school in Naperville and Aurora.

“If you take Alabama Shakes and put Aretha Franklin as the lead singer, that's how I kind of envision our band,” Thompson said.

In high school at Waubonsie Valley, where she graduated in 1999, Thompson largely bowed out of band, playing flute only in the pep band during sports games, she said.

But as a sophomore, she joined two choirs and sang for theater productions. In her junior year, she went to a state competition for choir and her senior year performed in a musical at a state contest. Thompson says these experiences gave her a love for singing she never lost.

But first, career-wise, she pursued her love for journalism.

Thompson attended the University of Illinois, then transferred to New York University, where she studied journalism and joined an a cappella group.

This was “pre-'Glee,'” she says, referencing the TV show on Fox about a high school singing group that ran from 2009 to 2015. So for a cappella, this was “way before it was cool,” she said. But the group gave her New York City musical connections she kept hold of, even as her career took a non-singing direction.

After graduation, Thompson said she worked in marketing for a year, then joined WCBS 880, the New York counterpart to WBBM Newsradio here in Chicago, where she stayed for six years.

She then “got bitten by the event planning bug” and worked in that field for the Columbia University president's office for another several years. But that was when her singing chops came out of dormancy and her a cappella connections started paying off.

Thompson said she started singing backup vocals for a few performers whenever they would stop in the Big Apple, which snowballed into musical gigs like the ones she maintains today - singing in a wedding band, doing freelance vocals at a cafe, performing with a gospel group.

Five years ago, Thompson, now a married mother of nearly 1-year-old twins, said she joined a country rock band that wanted a soul singer. Soon the group took the name Brandi & the Alexanders and began to take up more of her time.

She quit her event planning job in 2014 and has been a professional musician ever since.

Steven Goff, general manager of Connecticut-based Red Parlor Records, said Thompson's “warmhearted personality” is part of what drew him and the label he runs to the band when he saw the group perform in February. So was the variety the group's sound could offer, with tracks such as the funky “How Do You Like it?” the powerful vocals of “Jealousy,” and others including “Pulling Me Down,” a soulful R&B track; “Love Song,” in a rock style; and “Bad Love,” following the classic rock sound.

“We're not a genre-orientated label,” Goff said. “We look for high-level musicianship, originality and music that's sung and played with heart and soul.”

Brandi & the Alexanders fit the bill, he said. The label felt like a fit to the band, too.

“I'm definitely the first black lead singer on their label,” Thompson said. “It's going to be very interesting to pioneer forward with the band.”

Red Parlor is producing the group's first album, recorded over four days in April. Thompson and her bandmates are preparing for its launch in September and then for a tour to support it. The tour might make the rounds through the national festival circuit next summer.

“Hopefully we'll make it to Naperville and do Ribfest,” Thompson said. “That would be like my dream come true.”