The New Yorker Radio Hour - Brittany Howard, of Alabama Shakes, Talks with David Remnick

Episode Date: September 17, 2019

Alabama Shakes started out playing covers at local gigs but quickly found a unique personal voice rooted in rock and soul. The band came to national attention, found a wide and devoted public, and soon earned four Grammys, for the album “Sound and Color.” But after that record, their second, Brittany Howard—who sings, plays guitar, and writes songs for the group—announced that she was putting Alabama Shakes on hiatus, to work on a solo album. “We sat and we talked about it for several hours; we sat in a circle,” she recalls. “At the end of the conversation, everybody was, like, ‘O.K., we understand. We get it.’ They gave me their blessing to go on and find what I needed to find or create what I needed to create.” Howard gathered a different group of musicians, including the keyboard superstar Robert Glasper, to back her up on a solo album, called “Jamie.” It’s named after Howard’s late sister, but it’s very much about the singer herself—her passions, her concerns, and her upbringing, in Athens, Alabama. Is this, David Remnick asks, the end of Alabama Shakes? “I don’t know,” Howard says, after a pause. “Wherever creativity leads my ship, I can’t force it. That’s the thing. Once I start forcing it, it’s not going to be no good, anyway.”  New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Sometimes Brittany Howard's voice is so smooth. It's just a hot knife through butter. And sometimes there's so much gravel in it that she sounds like some of her elders like Edda James and Amy Winehouse. Howard has been the front woman of the Alabama shakes for about a decade now. The group started as a cover band playing around the state of Alabama, and pretty quickly, it came to national attention and a handful of Grammys. But after two albums with the Alabama Shakes, Howard has gathered a different group of musicians to release a solo album called Jamie. The album is named after Brittany Howard's late sister, but it's very much about the singer herself, about her passions, her concerns, and her hard upbringing in Athens, Alabama.

I'd love to start out by talking about the music that formed you. I know that you listen to music at the kitchen table with all kinds of relatives. When you listen to your childhood, when you hear it through the mists of time, what music are you listening to? What are you hearing? Well, I think about, like, Jodice, I think about Usher way back when, And I think about TLC and Destiny's Child and all the pop groups. And I also think about my grandma in the kitchen, cutting onions, listening to doo-wop music. And think about Prince.

Think about Pufunk. Just that was my era of growing up. So when's the first time you picked up a guitar? To actually learn how to play it, I was 11 years old. And did you buy one? Or it just, you decided this is this is the guitar. the thing I've got to have. My sister had a guitar. It was like a Les Paul knockoff, and she had this guitar just, like, in the closet, and I started sneaking in and grabbing it and learning how to play it.

Forbidden fruit. Yeah, it was like, it was like in storage, because by this time she had already passed, so it was just like, my mom saved a lot of her things, and it was kind of like, don't touch her things. But I saw the guitar and taught myself how to play it. Your sister died when she was how old. She was... She was 13. She was 13. She was 13 of a of a very rare eye cancer, that you've survived it and she died of. And this new album is very much named for her, Jamie. And when you were growing up, that must have been a horrendous rupture in your family life, psychological life, and you weren't allowed to touch her stuff?

It was like precious artifacts, you know, because it's kind of like all we had left. But, I mean, I picked it up, and that's what I learned on. You taught yourself? Mm-hmm. Yeah. How do you do that? Just listen. One thing that really helped me when I was younger is they used to have these magazines called Guitar Player magazine. Sure.

And in the back, they got the tablature in the back. It would have the bar, and the bar represents each string. And then it would just say like five. And then eventually I started figuring out what that meant. The fifth fret. Fifth fret on this string. And at first I was playing it upside down, and then I was like, that didn't sound right. So the tablature taught me how to play chords.

And at what point did either you recognize... or somebody recognized about you, Brittany's got talent. Nobody really... I mean, sure, like, as a kid, I was really into it, but I was really terrible for a really long time. I was just trying to figure out... Just banging away at the guitar.

Yeah, just trying to figure out things, just like everybody else. I started writing songs, like, immediately, pretty much. And probably by the time I was 17... I showed my mom a CD I had made in my songs. And she was like, you can sing. She didn't know I could sing. It was like my little secret, you know, because I was just like ruminating.

And I was like, nobody can know until I'm good enough. And then I'll let people know. How did you teach yourself to sing? Who are you listening to these? I want to sing like that. I think your father at one point said that you sounded like Eddie James, but that's got to be much later. Don't listen, my dad. You still have that cassette of your first songs? Oh, I don't know where it is. I wish I did.

I think the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is going to want that. I don't think anybody should hear it, though. Now, like a lot of teenagers, the thing that you wanted to do was get a band together. You start meeting local musicians, and you meet Zach Cockrell and Heath Fogg and Steve Johnson, which becomes the formation of Alabama Shakes. What kind of places were you playing? Oh, not many places. It was really hard to get shows when we were doing original.

music. But at first we just did covers, Led Zeppelin, James Brown, ACDC, and I would just call around trying to get us shows, or usually other bands would say, oh, I've heard of this band. They're from Athens-Ovim, and we should let them open for us. So, you know, we weren't getting paid

anything, but... What were you getting paid? Maybe $200 for everybody. Just split. Maybe, yeah. Sometimes not that much. That was substantial. And at what point, Brittany, do you think maybe I'll be able to do this for a living. I won't have to play at night. You had all kinds of day jobs.

You were delivering mail, I think. You were doing all kinds of things. I remember having a conversation with Zach, you know, the bass player. I remember sitting on my porch and I said, you know, Zach, what if we got the opportunity to tour? Would you quit your job and go on tour and try to do it? And he was like, nah. He said, nah, you know, he did.

He said, it'd have to pay really good. And I'm just like, oh, okay. And then I never thought that day would come, but one day it did. So now, after two really big albums with Alabama Shakes, you're doing a solo album. Why did you decide so soon in your career, you're now 30, right? That I'm going to break off from the group at least for a while and pursue this and write this album and do something entirely different. I think I just creatively

that's just what was coming to me it was like this different style of music and how would you characterize it just my musical education that's the way that I would characterize it just so many things

I've heard that I've liked and then pull it together into these songs and these landscapes and I you know the reason I wanted to do it now as a solo artist is just because I didn't want to ask anyone, do you like this bass part or do you like this arrangement?

I just wanted to do my vision, you know. The album is named for your sister and she infuses the memory of her, her time on earth that infuses everything about this

record. You're getting, you know, as we all are getting one year old or one year at a time, how distinctly do you remember her And what are you able to keep of her as time goes by? When you lose someone you're really close to, they never leave. It's hard to put into words, really. I'm not a religious person, but I definitely am a spiritual person.

And I think just because someone is not here where we can touch them or hear them or feel them, it doesn't mean they're gone. So I feel like my bond with my sisters walks with me always. I feel like we're closer than we ever could have been if we were both here in a physical world. So I think about her daily, multiple times today, yeah. What runs through your mind? Oh, just when I'm trying to figure something out,

I just be like, can you help me with this? She's talking to you. I can't hear her, I'm just talking to her, really. Can you help me through this? What do I do? It's just little situations like that in my life where I need some extra strength. Yeah.

There's a song on the album called Short and Sweet. In fact, there's a line toward the end of it that you repeat. Time is going to kill it. Tell me about that song. Tell me about those lyrics. Yeah. That song I wrote when I met my partner about three years ago. And I had wrote it because, I'm not going to say,

I had bad luck in relationships. It was just kind of in several ruts. the way, the sentiment of that song is like, well, I'm falling in love, I'm getting in a new relationship, I wonder how long this one's going to last? And I was like, how nice would it be if we could just stay in the beginning part of the relationship where we're just really getting to know each other and happy and there's infatuation and there's this excitement? And I was like, it'd be so nice to stay there instead of it going into this place where it's like,

And now we're being pulled apart by like touring or just growing apart. And you know what I mean? It's like that nice beginning. I may be a to dream, but God it feels so good to dream at all. Something short and sweet. I hesitate to ask what was the result? Oh, we're married. So in the end, it's not a tragic song.

No. So far, so good. No, everything worked out better than expected. So you made it big with this band, Alabama Shakes, and you've got three partners in that band. How do they feel about you going solo? At first, when I told them, I had really been marinating it on it for a while because I was like, I was not, like, the songs weren't coming to us. And when we were getting together, it was really hard to. You felt stuck.

Yeah, it felt very stuck. especially me and, you know, me and the guys would be like, what's going on? Like, why can't we get anything done? And I just wasn't receiving anything. And is it all on you? It happened to work out that way. Yeah. After Sound and Color, you know, I think...

You're the person people know. Well, just like creatively, it's like usually the way that things went is I would have ideas and we come in and rehearse them, but I wasn't getting any ideas for this. And some of the ideas I had. it wasn't the right like ingredients it wasn't working out so eventually I mean probably after like a year

and a half of this I was like guys you know I think I'm gonna do my own record and at first it was met with like a lot of confusion and disappointment but then we sat down Were they angry? I'm not sure if they were angry I think they're more like surprised

but we sat down and we talked about it for several hours we sat in a circle and I was just like you know it's been hard Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no. And it was like, well, I'm just going to go do this. And at the end of the conversation, everybody was like, okay, we understand we get it, gave me their blessing to go on and find what I needed to find or create what I needed to create.

Today in the back of their minds, or do you get the sense that they felt that was the end of the Alabama shakes? Probably, yeah. Is it? I don't know. Wherever creativity leads my ship, I can't force it. That's the thing. Once I start forcing it, it's not going to be no good anyway. Now, you came up with some new collaborators and some remarkable collaborators,

like Robert Glasper, who's in fact been on this show, whose talents range from, well, all over the place. He has an album of Miles Davis covers, and he's worked with some of the biggest people in hip-hop. And now with you, why bring on somebody like Robert Glasper? What did he give you, or Nate Smith, who's also a jazz musician? I have been watching Rob since he made that Miles Davis tribute record. I was like, wow, this dude is so cool. He did a song with Eric Badoo that I really, really like. And I was like, I'm going to watch his career because that's what I do with musicians.

I really respect musicians, and I think their careers matter. I think musicians just, they matter. Where does Robert Jasper fit in? Where's his influence most powerful on this album? What songs? 13th Century Metal, funny story behind that one. So before then, Rob, I was just kind of telling him, like, yeah, right here in this section, you know, you can do like this and right here in this section, I was thinking more like this. But on 13th, you know, he walks into the key room and just starts playing.

Sean Everett, engineer, hits record. And I'm going, what is that? They just jammed. Like, Nate Smith joins in, and they just jammed. It was incredible. One take. and improvised. So I took it and I cut it up and I put that

mantra over it. Tell me about that mantra. It begins, I promise to think before I speak to be wary of who I give my energy to. It's a really interesting song lyrically as well, even though it was generated by that first musical experience. Tell me about the lyrics to 13th century metal.

I know exactly when in 2016. That's when I wrote it. Because we got a new president. I heard that. And I had some I had some feelings. What were your feelings? I guess I wrote it all in the mantra.

The world seemed like it was like it's just turned upside down and full of darkness. You can feel like the whole world's in a funk, you know? Do you think that your music or anyone's music can have an effect on the political world in some way? I do wonder, I mean, there's James Brown.

He had an effect on a political world. And then there's someone like Bob Marley, and then there's people at John Lennon, So I think history would say so. That it can. Yeah, I think so. Britton, your dad is black, your mother is white, and in one of your songs, Goathead, you asked this question, who slashed my dad's tires and put a goathead in the back? What was that all about?

That's a true story. Tell me about it. About 30 years ago, about 30 years ago, my dad came home from work, was visiting my mother, who was living in these pretty poor apartment complex. And the apartment complex was next to a co-op. So there's, of course, like tons of goats over there and stuff, chickens and little cattle and that kind of stuff. So my dad comes over there, stays in the house. night, wakes up the next morning, and someone had taken one of those goats, who dismembered it,

put it in the back of his car, and bashed his windshield out, slashes tired, rode all over it, don't come back here, you know, all that stuff. It was, you know, blatantly because he was black and they didn't want him seeing my mom, but, you know, she had two little brown babies. And they didn't like that either, and that was not that long ago. You said in an interview before you were asked this question, inevitably, how much racist you encountered as a kid, and you said, I didn't really encounter that. Here's the thing.

I did, but I didn't really know it. I mean? Because I didn't know why I couldn't go to so-and-so's house. I didn't, you know, my... You weren't as aware of the reason. My parents really protected me because they didn't want me walking, especially growing up in the South,

they didn't want me walking around being scared of people or feeling like I couldn't go fishing over here or feel unsubesely. safe in my own home. So they sheltered me from ever thinking anything about being black or white. Was the town or the neighborhood mixed? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, where we lived, it was kind of like more, you know, I grew up in a trailer park. So you got all kinds of people in the trailer park. You know what I mean? White, black, Latino, uh, everything. Drugs, no drugs. Church goers. You got everybody in there. So we definitely, my father and my mother definitely taught me, like, we're all the same, like, for sure, for sure.

In an opposite mood, I remember watching, it was a performance at the White House, and you were at the Obama White House up on that stage. It may be a very different spirit. What was that experience like for you? You know, the one thing I remember the most about that experience was taking my dad to the White House to meet Barack Obama. And I'm all like tearing up. because it made him so happy. And I'll never forget the big smile on his face. He was so proud. Sorry.

Yeah. Just like a little boy, just beaming. I've never seen him smile that big. And that's the one thing I remember. And it still makes me emotional. Even talking about it right now, still makes me emotional. Did he get to meet Obama or just see him from afar? Yeah, he met him.

He was worrying me to death about meeting. I was like, Dad, you're going to meet him. It's okay. relax and he's like but I gotta get his autograph and I was like but my dad approached him shook his hand and handed him a little piece of paper and he's like we signed that for me and uh barak took it but my dad never got it back and he was just losing his mind about that little piece of paper so about a week goes by and my dad gets a letter in the mail and it was from the white house my dad opens it and barak has sent him this beautiful piece of stationery and

wrote his name. Oh. It was, ah. It was amazing. So you speak of your dad, your dad, at one point you were talking about the possibility of making a few dollars or becoming famous. And you said, you know, this is when you were 26. I'm 26 years old. What do I need $5 million for?

Maybe I'll buy my dad a truck. Yeah. Did you buy your dad a truck? Yeah, I bought him a truck. What'd you get him? Oh, I got him a 2018 giant truck. I can't remember the rest. The 2018 giant truck.

It's a mouthful. It's the best model. Yeah, it's the one that costs the most. That's what I got it. I asked him, I said, Dad, do you want a new house or do you want a truck? And he's like, I'll have a truck, please. He don't care where he lives. He just loves cars.

You know, you just remembered your dad meeting Barack Obama and being moved by it then and moved by it now. The same country that elected him, elected Donald Trump, and they were going through something radically different. right now. How do you experience the Trump moment, particularly when it comes to race and racism? If I'm being honest, there's part of me that's scared. I don't feel as safe as I used to. I have my reasons. You know, I traveled America last year just for the leisure, looking for a new place to live. So we stop in this little town I'm not going to say the name of the town Don't want to give it a bad rap

But we pull up in this little town in Wyoming And get out Me and my partner She wants to take a picture of the post office This old post office I was like okay So we're just standing on the side of the road Here comes this big old white truck

Pulling up And they throw fireworks at us And they pull by They got a Confederate flag on the back I'm just like wow I mean I didn't know how to I mean, I was angry, but then I was like, what am I going to do? Can't do none of them boys, you know what I mean?

I don't even know where I am. And I was so angry. Started crying. I was just sitting there trying to eat my steak for dinner, and I couldn't even eat it. I was just so upset. And that's kind of how it feels. It's like, it feels dangerous. It is dangerous, actually.

Having a man like that in office is very dangerous. I mean, look around, man. It's just inciting people to do all kinds of things. They think they have an excuse. So we happen to have a guy who just doesn't watch what he says And doesn't think about consequences of words So What can an artist do about it?

Inspire other people I think there's the most important things To be light, to be a beacon of light Because it is a dark time in American history And it's not all the President Trump's fault It's not all his fault It's a long time coming to be honest with you Because there's always been these little groups

these little cells of people who want to go back to the good old days. And now they're just exposing themselves because they feel like they have permission to do so. So I think I'm going to try to be positive here and say that I think this was a necessary evil to maybe get to the next place where we could fix some ruptures in our own society. Brittany Howard, thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you so much in all things. Thank you so much for having me. Brittany Howard's solo album, Jamie, comes out this week. I'm David Remnick, and that's The New Yorker Radio Hour for today. Thanks for listening. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tuneiards

with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Carrillo, Riannon Corby, Jill Duboff, Karen Frillman, Kalalia, David Krasnow, Caroline Lester, Louis Mitchell, and Stephen Valentino, with help from Meng Fei-Chen and Emily Mann. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.