A native of Monroe, Louisiana, Albanie Falletta was in their formative years exposed to the local music of Louisiana: the sounds of cajun, zydeco, blues and gospel musics at festivals and backyard parties. After relocating with their family to San Marcos, Texas at the age of nine, Albanie began taking guitar lessons. They began their love and study of early American Jazz when hey were exposed to the Parisian Romani guitarist Django Reinhardt. Listening religiously to recordings of Reinhardt, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Fats Waller, and other such great figures of jazz, they developed their feel for swing. Soon Albanie was performing alongside mentors Slim Richey, Django Porter, Ray and Linda Sriro, the Jazz Pharaohs, and other players of the Austin scene where they lived and performed in the years after high school. Between 2008 and 2013, they led their own swing/early jazz band, Albanie and The Fellas, and was a member of several groups including the Thrift Set Orchestra, Guy Forsyth and the Hot Nut Riveters, Ivy Divey (a swing trio featuring three part harmony singing with Emily Gimble and Katie Shore), and others.