This article originally appears as the cover story in the current October/November 2019 issue of Relix. Subscribe here with code BRITTANY before Oct. 28 to get $5 off and receive this issue as your first.
Alabama Shakes’ genre-defying frontwoman Brittany Howard steps away from her band for a deeply personal solo turn unlike anything else in her already singular career.
“That’s scary, but don’t worry,” a tarot card reader says. “The devil is kind of weirdly positive, though it looks crazy.” Brittany Howard gasps when the Beelzebub card is revealed—but, hey, this was her idea. It’s a sweltering summer day on Manhattan’s Lower East Side; we’re at a new outpost of the swanky private club Soho House, not a dingy storefront, and our reader is a young Jewish make-up artist in a Queen T-shirt instead of a wizened old lady. Still, you mess with the underworld at your own risk.
I was willing to go first, and the cards offered me insightsboth encouraging (things look promising for my son’s collegeapplications) and obvious (our family cat “either withholds love orgives you a lot”—isn’t that just called “being a cat?”).
When Howard’s turn comes, the news is all good. “I see a lot offidgety energy in September,” says the medium. “You’ll be having totravel a lot and juggle a lot of things.”
Well, yes. September would see the release of Howard’s debutsolo album—the thrilling, sprawling Jaime, which marks a boldstep away from her platinum-selling, Grammy-winning band,Alabama Shakes. Let the traveling and juggling begin.
Howard gets more interested when the deck indicates that shewill be making a “deeper connection” with someone close to her.“This could be your dad,” says the reader. “You getting closer withyour dad or learning new things. There will be a lot of healing inthe way you will communicate going forward, starting to see himin a different light, and it could change the way that he treats you.”
In fact, Howard notes afterward: “Me and my dad haven’t beenclose in a really long time, but now he’s coming around more.”She believes that the personal and emotional subjects she tackleson Jaime—racism, sexuality, spirituality—might have helped himopen up to her more about their experiences as a poor, bi-racialfamily in the South.
“Maybe because I’ve been so honest and because I’ve beentalking about it more, he feels like, ‘Oh, I can talk about it, too,’”she says. “I feel like he was holding back a lot of his emotions aboutwhat our family went through, just so I wouldn’t feel them.”
Her parents both attended her performance at Nashville’shistoric Ryman Auditorium, a high-profile show where she pulledoff the risky move of exclusively playing new material more than amonth before her album’s release. “My dad was so proud,” she says.“He always has this T-shirt over his shoulder, and he was swingingit above his head, egging on the crowd. My mom and I have verydifferent political stances—me feeling very much like inclusion islove and divisiveness is obviously not—so I wondered how she wasgoing to take the show, but she loved it, too.”
Her parents’ response is especially important to Howardbecause the very title of the album comes from her own flesh andblood. Jaime was her older sister, who died from retinoblastoma, arare form of eye cancer, at the age of 13. (Howard suffered from thesame affliction but survived with partial blindness in one eye.) Thesinger insists, though, that while the title is obviously a tribute toher sister, using the name was ultimately about herself.
“This record’s about me,” she says. “There’s not any songs onthere that reference my sister or are really about her. But shetaught me how to make music, how to be creative, how to use myimagination from a very young age. She’s four years older than me,so from when I was born, she was like, ‘Oh, let me show you howto have fun in this place.’ Because we didn’t have any money—wewere in a trailer in a junkyard, with animals—she was like, ‘Go inthe yard.’ We’d imagine or write songs or draw, so that informedme. Everything I like is because my sister taught it to me.
“And when she passed away,” Howard continues, “it was kinda like ‘OK, now use all the things I taught you.’ So I feel like it’s only appropriate that I share this with her and have her name on it.Because, yeah, it’s my solo record—but it’s also our solo record, ina way.”
Alabama Shakes are one of those miraculous bands that seemed to arrive suddenly, inevitably, fully formed. The four members had met as teenagers, and it felt like they were completely ready for the spotlight in July 2011 when the Aquarium Drunkard blog posted an MP3 of their song “You Ain’t Alone” and, the next morning, Howard—then working as a mail carrier—woke up to a barrage of offers from record labels and management companies. It was a dizzying transformation for some small-town Southern kids.
“From our side,” she says, “We were playing all these shows,not getting paid, traveling around not in a van but in separatecars, and saying, ‘If I just play the best I can in front of everybody,then maybe somebody will see us play’—and that’s basically whathappened. Somebody saw us play and the rest is history.”
The Boys & Girls album was a Top 10 hit, powered by the single“Hold On,” and the Shakes’ bluesy rock and soul sound earnedthree Grammy nominations. They toured relentlessly, opening forJack White and lighting up Bonnaroo and Coachella, and Howardbecame recognized as one of rock’s brightest rising stars.
“I lived in my dad’s trailer for the first two years, in the backbedroom, because I was touring so much that there was no point inliving anywhere,” she says. “After a couple of years, the album cyclewas over and I got back home and went, ‘Oh, my God, I wonder ifI made any money?’ I hadn’t had time to spend any money. It wascrazy—‘Now I can just go to the grocery store, buy groceries and nothave to worry about putting anything back?’ It was so different.”
The more expansive, kaleidoscopic Sound & Color followed in2015, giving the Alabama Shakes their first No. 1 album. This time,they won three Grammys and solidified their place as modern rockstandard bearers.
“Brittany has an innate style that permeates everything—her playing, her writing, her singing and also her influences,” says Blake Mills, who was nominated for a Grammy for his production work on Sound & Color. “She’s an avid and inspired listener of all kinds of music, and things may find their way in, but I think that—because her sound and identity are so immovable—the final result is unmistakably a ‘Brittany Howard’ piece.”
“My first time hearing Brittany was on the song ‘Don’t WannaFight,’” says the acclaimed jazz pianist Robert Glasper, who was akey collaborator on Jaime. “I could tell then that she was fearlessand she didn’t give a damn about what people thought.”
Along the way, Howard also seemed to fill a necessary culturalslot. She became a go-to for significant public musical moments,performing at the Obama White House, appearing onstage withPaul McCartney and inducting Sister Rosetta Tharpe into the Rockand Roll Hall of Fame. As a black woman guitar hero, inarguablyprogressive and cool but rooted in tradition, she embodies multiplemeanings during a fractured time.
“I don’t really think about that,” she says. “I don’t even thinkabout stuff I’ve already done, really—I just keep doing stuff andseeing what happens next. I do still think about going to the WhiteHouse because it made my dad so happy. I’ve never seen him sohappy. It made total sense to me why they came to me for SisterRosetta Tharpe—I would have been upset if they hadn’t come tome for that! And the Grammys were cool, but what I rememberwas that my feet hurt because my shoes were a little too small. It’sfunny the things you remember from stuff like that.”
But when it came time to work on the band’s next project, Howard found that she was struggling. “Creatively, I wasn’t really receiving anything for the Alabama Shakes,” she says. “When we were trying to get together to rehearse and write, nothing was coming to me. For a year and a half, no songs were being written and it just felt like it wasn’t moving along.”
She was also staring down her 30th birthday and worriedabout getting too complacent and sticking with the path of leastresistance. “So I thought, ‘OK, I’m gonna take a break from allof this.’ And that’s when I started receiving songs that were notAlabama Shakes songs. I thought I’d try to steer solo and see whatcame to me. What really drove me was following the muse.”
In the interim, she also worked with her side bands,Thunderbitch and Bermuda Triangle, which contributed to herambitions for the tunes that would become Jaime, along with hercertainty that they would require other musicians. “It was prettyobvious, it was just so different,” she says. “When you try to cooka certain recipe, you can’t just throw any old ingredients in it, andfor what I was trying to do, it needed different players. I just knew.It wasn’t exactly going to work if I stayed in the same situation.”
She had a bunch of musical bits and scraps of songs squirreledaway in her Nashville studio, all given temporary titles becauseher software required it. One of those recordings was “HistoryRepeats,” a skittery, funky ball of confusion. “I had just made it forfun and I really liked it,” she says, “but I knew there was no way wecould perform this—it’s just too far out—so I put it away and didn’tthink about it.”
In search of inspiration, Howard drove across the country toTopanga Canyon for a change of scenery. When she eventuallywent into engineer Shawn Everett’s studio in Los Angeles torecord, she only had a handful of finished tunes.
“In my brain, I’m thinking, ‘I didn’t make my deadline, I don’thave a record,’” she says. But, during conversations over lunch withher musicians, crazy coincidences started happening—phraseswould come up that reminded her of the songs she had stashedaway back in Nashville.
“When you try to cook a certain recipe, you can’t just throw any old ingredients in it and, for what I was trying to do, it needed different players. I just knew. It wasn’t exactly going to work if I stayed in the same situation.”
“We’re talking about politics,” she says, “and somebody says,‘Yeah, history repeats, don’t it?’ I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I totallyforgot about that song!’ That kept happening and, all of a sudden,I had a record. It was divine; it really was divine. How else could Iexplain that?”
Glasper adds that Howard had a clear sense of what she wantedbut still left the door open for her collaborators to explore. “Sheallowed the musicians to be who they are and wasn’t necessarilyforcing anything,” he says. “Leaders that trust their musicians andgive them room to be who they are will always be the best leaders.”
Howard says that there was only one song on Jaime that gave herpause, that felt like it might be too personal to expose. When shewas a baby, her father woke up one morning to find the family carwith its tires slashed and a goat head placed in the back seat. Herparents didn’t tell her about the incident until she was a teenager,but it was perhaps the most violent expression of the hostility herblack father and white mother faced.
“I felt like that wasn’t necessarily my story; it was my parents’story,” she says, “but the way it affected me, I definitely wanted towrite about it. ‘Goat Head’ is talking about my juvenile experiencegrowing up in the South and all the things I was learning about,like colors. I was asking these little simple questions—‘What’scotton?’ and ‘Why are these tomatoes green and these ones red?’and ‘Why is Jesus white?’ And ‘Why did someone cut off a goat’shead and put it in the back of my dad’s car?’
“When I was writing, it really came out of nowhere—that’s a fucking crazy story. Just to make sure, I went to my mom’s house and I sat down with her and was like, ‘Mom, I need to make sure I got this story right because I think it might accidentally be a bigsong on this record.’ And she confirmed everything for me—‘Yeah,that’s what went down.’ My little brain never forgot.”
Her father hadn’t heard the song until she played it at theRyman concert. “I was so nervous, I couldn’t even look at him,” shesays. “And he loved the song; he was like, ‘That was a good one; thatmight be my favorite.’ Really? This doesn’t incite anything painfulin you? ‘Nah, I guess not.’”
The song “He Loves Me” tracks her evolution from the religion of her childhood—“I kinda learned that God was trying to send everybody to hell, that if I fuck up, I’m going to burn for eternity”—to reaching a state of peace with her maker. (“I know He still loves me when/ I’m smoking blunts,” she sings.)
“It took a long time for me to find my own relationship withwhatever it is—spirituality or whatever,” she says. “But now it’s abig part of my everyday life; it gets me through everything. I wantedto write a song that tells people: Nobody can tell you how to love it,whatever it is, and nobody can tell you how it loves you. It’s really avery personal thing, your relationship with your creator. That’s allthe song is about—that you don’t have to be ashamed or be doingsomething you don’t necessarily believe in, because I also see alot of people that would claim to be good Christians doing a lot offucked-up shit.”
While putting together these fragments, figuring out songs inthe studio, extending her sound bigger and smaller and noisierand sparer, it didn’t occur to Howard that what she was makingwas such an intimate statement. “It wasn’t until it was done that Ilooked back on it and saw, ‘Oh, this is all about me, about my life,’”she says. “I didn’t think of it at the time. It didn’t seem so cohesive;it seemed all over the place. From my point of view, it was justgrabbing things and going, ‘I like that.’”
What she discovered that she really liked was working as a leader rather than as part of a band. “It was so much quicker than being in the studio with the Shakes, where everybody has their opinions,” she says. “It’s like four chefs in the kitchen, so it takes a while. This was like, ‘Oh, yeah, that sounds great, stay there.’ And if I don’t like it then, later, I’ll change it. That’s how creativity flows—you don’t want to stop it. I didn’t have to worry about anyone wanting to change or take away or add. It’s just exactly how it needed to be for my vision.”
The 15th annual Afropunk festival at Brooklyn's Commodore Barry Park, tucked away under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, is like a universe unto itself. A celebration of alternative black music and culture, the gathering showcases performers ranging from old souls like Leon Bridges and Gary Clark Jr. to futurists including FKA Twigs and Death Grips. And the crowd is simply magnificent, filled with face paint and green Afro-Puffs and full beards matched with tulle dresses.
Howard takes the stage on Sunday night, as the event is nearingits close. “This is my favorite festival I’ve ever been to!” sheexclaims. “The vibe is so good and the people are so beautiful!”She plays through a set made up exclusively of material fromJaime, plus a raucous version of Nina Simone’s interpretation ofThe Beatles’ “Revolution.”
Dressed in a gold-sequined robe, she only picks up her guitarand shreds a few times, mostly singing without an instrument andconjuring rock-gospel-swamp grooves like a funkadelic dream. Bythe end of the set, she is barefoot, stomping across the stage andswinging the mic cord, preaching and testifying through the album’schurning incantation “13th Century Metal.”
It’s “the dark ages of fear,” Howard intones, so her cause “is tospread the enlightenment of love, compassion and humanity.” As theband grinds and wails, Howard says, “I speak for those who can’tspeak/ I pick up the newspaper or turn on the TV and I don’t seenothing but bullshit/ I’m not going to take it anymore/ Bring out thehumanity you wish to see in other people.” There’s a blaze of strobelights and a scream of feedback as she scrapes her guitar’s neckagainst the mic stand, and then she’s gone.
“That song really affects people,” she says. “At first, it starts offand they’re like, ‘Oh, spoken word, OK.’ And then they start digestingwhat I’m saying, and they respond in really different ways—they’reeither sitting there listening or they’re standing up with a look ontheir face like, ‘I’ve been wanting to say this! This is how I feel!’ Andthen we walk offstage and the crowd goes crazy. They’re like, ‘Whatthe fuck just happened?’”
Howard had been added to the Afropunk lineup just a fewdays before the festival, and she was visibly excited about the gigand the opportunity to play to a mostly black crowd. “I’ve alwayswanted to play Afropunk, but it never worked out,” she says. “AndI always felt kinda left out—I feel like I haven’t been in contactwith that side of myself as far as through music. What I’m sayingis not really true; there are people of all different races who cometo Alabama Shakes shows, of all different shapes, sizes, ages even.We got the largest demographic of fans, and I love that. But goingon BET, like I did yesterday—I used to watch that as a little kid. Sodoing Afropunk makes me beam; it makes me smile. I feel like I getto be accepted or something.”
Another aspect of identity that Jamie, and this chapter ofHoward’s life, touches on is her sexuality. She has stated that thetrack “Georgia” is “a straightforward love song to another woman,which is something I never confronted until I was older” and, in aRolling Stone interview, she matter-of-factly referred to her youngerself as “a little gay black girl.” These remarks have been so casual thatit’s clear that she doesn’t want to make the topic the focus of her story.
“Your sexuality doesn’t really define who you are,” she says, “soI didn’t want to be one of those artists who, when someone seesyou, they go ‘gay artist’ or they ask you, ‘Will you play a gay festivalbecause you’re gay?’ There’s so much more. I don’t want to be underany blanket of anything. When Lil Nas X came out, that was a bigdeal. Maybe that’s something that he’s always wanted to do and berecognized for and be proud of. It might be a big moment for him,and that’s wonderful. But for me, I’ve been doing this for years. It’sno big deal.”
Howard is careful to refer to her partner without name or gender,though it has been reported that she married Jesse Lafser, one ofher bandmates in Bermuda Triangle, last year and that they now livetogether in New Mexico. (She didn’t blink, however, when the tarotreader pulled a card indicating marriage.) She does, however, giveimmense credit to the effect that her relationship has had on her lifeand her work.
“My partner changed me as a person,” Howard says. “I’m a betterperson from meeting my partner. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have reallystarted working on myself as much—emotionally—or started beingaware of why I do what I do. I don’t think I ever would have gone intothat, but I sure am glad I did because then that [led to] thinking aboutmy family and where I came from. I feel like that was a big catalystfor the album.”
By digging deeper into her own experiences for the songs onJaime, and embracing the pressures and responsibilities that comewith a solo career (“I’ve become an even bigger character onstage,”she says, “which I didn’t know was possible”), Brittany Howard hasmoved closer to her musical ideal. Paradoxically, in committing toher own pure vision, she ends up striving for the universal.
“In our household, you didn’t just listen to black music or whitemusic—you could just listen to anything,” she says. “We’d listen toElvis Presley and then we’d listen to Prince, and I learned early onthat there’s no set way to listen to music. Which is funny because,when I’d go stay with my cousins, they’d say rock was white people’smusic. I’m like, ‘What are you talking about? This is good—this isBlack Sabbath! You don’t know nothing!’
“That just didn’t occur to me at all. Music’s music. It’s for everybody.”
This article originally appears as the cover story in the October/November 2019 issue of Relix. For more features, interviews, album reviews and more, subscribe below.
