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BRITTANY
HOWARDFAST FACTS
HOT ROCKHoward had trouble
writing the LP — until a 104-degree
heat wave came. “Whenever I’m
uncomfortable, things come easy.
When I did [2012’s]Boys & Girls, I
lived in a haunted house.”
OBAMA-APPROVEDHoward sang
“Heaven Help Us All” for a thrilled
President Obama at a White House
Ray Charles tribute concert in 2016.L
AST YEAR, Brittany Howard
called a meeting with her
bandmates and told them
some news they probably didn’t
want to hear. Alabama Shakes —
who met in high school, broke
through with 2012’s “Hold On”
and went on to win four Gram-
mys — would not be recording a
follow-up to 2015’sSound & Color
anytime 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.
And when am I going to do it if
not now?”
Howard’s solo debut,Jaime,
is her most ambitious record-
ing ever, full of synthed-out
psychedelic funk, druggy soul
ballads, hip-hop loops, and lyrics
grappling with her past, includ-
ing sexuality, family tragedy,
religious guilt and more. It’s a
powerful record: Howard recalls
a recent listening party where
“one lady cried. I’m used to hear-
ing it, so I’m always surprised
when people hear it and their
general reaction is like,
‘Oh, boy.’ ”
At the time of the band
meeting, Howard had already
proved she was creatively restless
by starting two side projects,
Bermuda Triangle and Thun-
derbitch. Writing for Alabama
Shakes was more difficult. “It’s
just a labor to get the songs out,”
she says. For her, writer’s block
is tangled up with some of her
oldest memories. “When I grew
up, we didn’t have much money,”
she adds. “We lived in a trailer
park. There’s always this part of
me that’s like, ‘I donot want to
go back to the trailer park.’ I still
have that belief system, so when-
ever something is not coming
easily, I start having those poor
thoughts: ‘Oh, this is it.’ ”
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.
On the haunting “Goat Head,”
Howard lays into all of it: “Mama
is white and Daddy is black/
When I first got made, guess I
made these folks mad,” she sings,
before asking a question she’s
been asking since she was 13:
“Who slashed my dad’s tires and
put a goat head in the back?” “It
felt really vulnerable,” Howard
says. “But if you’re gonna be
honest, you can’t be just a little
bit honest.” She thinks turning
30 last fall helped push her to
that place. “I had more to say,”
she says. “It was me giving myself
permission to tell the stories that
I don’t ever talk about.”
One of those belongs to her
older sister Jaime, the album’s
namesake. “She taught me how
to write a song, taught me how to
draw, taught me about art,” How-
ard says of her sister, who died
at 13 from a form of eye cancer.
“I’ve always been connected to
her spirit. This [album] was kind
of my way of doing something
together.” Howard thought about
her sister’s tape collection, where
Elvis stood next to the Supremes.
Howard also listened to Brazil-
ian artist Jorge Ben, who makes
music “where there’s literally,
like, 18 different things happen-
ing in the song.”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.” In the
album’s press release, Howard
discusses her struggles with ques-
tions of identity growing up:
“In a small town, like where I
come from, different is bad — I
never wanted to be different.
My greatest wish was to be like
everybody else.”
Throughout the album, How-
ard sounds relieved at the chance
to speak her truth. “If people like
the record, that’s amazing,” she
says. “I’m just proud that Imade
the record.” She plans to tour
with the people who helped her
make it, including keyboardist
Paul Horton (who has toured
with the Shakes) and Shakes bass-
ist 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.”Howard at the
Rock Hall of Fame
induction last year
in Cleveland