Why Brittany Howard put Alabama Shakes on hold to make a wildly ambitious, fearlessly honest solo debut
— who met in high school, broke through with 2012’s “Hold On” and went on to win four Grammys — would not be recording a follow-up to 2015’sanytime soon. Instead, Howard would be making a solo album. “It was like, ‘I’m going to do this record by myself,’ ” she says. “I knew that I needed to be in control of everything: the music, the arrangements, all that stuff.
This time, thinking back to the trailer park actually helped her write. She moved into a house in Topanga Canyon, California. Working on her own, she felt more comfortable writing about her own experience growing up the daughter of a black father and a white mother in Alabama.
For “He Loves Me,” where Howard proclaims that God still loves her even though she drinks and smokes too much weed, she broke up her verses with portions of a sermon by a Houston preacher, Pastor Terry K. Anderson, whom she found on YouTube. She’s similarly honest on “Georgia,” a sweet, soulful ballad “about being a little gay black girl and having a crush on an older black girl.
Throughout the album, Howard sounds relieved at the chance to speak her truth. “If people like the record, that’s amazing,” she says. “I’m just proud that I made the record.” She plans to tour with the people who helped her make it, including keyboardist Paul Horton and Shakes bassist Zac Cockrell, “because to me he’s, like, the best bass player.”
As for the band that made her famous, even Howard isn’t sure what its future is. “We’re a family,” she says. “Those are my bro-bros for life. But right now they’re just letting me do my thing. If I did the same songs and the same everything, I’d be so miserable. I’d be so bored. I wouldn’t care about heaps of cash, swimming in a cash swimming pool. It does not matter to me.
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