By Susannah Felts

When Paul Janeway (above, left) walks onstage, audiences snap to attention. They stand up, they get down, they holler and shake as Janeway, a bespectacled blond clad in one of his father’s old suits, and his bandmates—a.k.a. St. Paul and the Broken Bones—crank out one soulful song after the next. Janeway might pause to mop his brow with a towel or bust dance moves that have earned comparisons to none other than James Brown, the Hardest Working Man in Show Business. “A little hyperbolic,” he says. “But I’ll take it.”

Not bad for a 28-year-old UAB accounting student, who seems thrilled and surprised by the turn his life has taken in recent months.