Alabama Shakes' Brittany Howard

0:00This podcast features Brittany Howard and Justin Richmond.

0:30Now she's back with her bandmates Zach Cockrell and Heath Fogg for a new Alabama Shakes album, I Must Be Dreaming, their first in 11 years. And on today's episode, I sit down with Britney to talk about what it took to bring the band back together after all that time apart and what this record sounds like on the other side of it. This is Broken Record. Real musicians, real conversations. Here's my conversation with Britney Howard. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. Songwriting is all about craft and finding the right creative headspace. The G2 Boost Collection from Pilot is designed to support that process.

1:09Grounded in color science, these premium G2 gel pens come in curated packs that help fuel different mindsets. Green for balance, blue for productivity, purple for creativity, and pink for optimism. Choose the G2 Boost Collection that matches the creative moment and let the ideas flow. This episode is brought to you by ChatGPT Work. You know that feeling when feedback, notes, and data are coming in from every direction? ChatGPT work can make sense of it all, turning scattered context across the apps you use every day into docs, sheets, slides, and more. With your permission, ChatGPT work can gather context from apps and files, summarize incoming messages, rebuild decks, and help finalize high-quality documents for your team or clients.

1:55Stay in control as you move from a goal to polished work. faster with ChatGPT work. Download the ChatGPT desktop app today and take on your most ambitious work. My kids' favorite place in the entire world to visit is New York City. So much so that they're begging me to come on my work trip I'm taking there in the next few weeks. And this time they want to go to Central Park because we missed it last time. If you're planning any upcoming trips, instead of letting your home sit empty while you're gone, you could be listing your space on Airbnb, giving travelers, like me, a place to land while they visit somewhere new.

2:28It's a smart, practical way to make use of your place while you're away and earn some extra cash at the same time and now with the co-host network you could hire a local co-host to handle everything like managing reservations guest communication and even styling your space find a co-host at airbnb.com slash host all right so la two days and you out that's it does that feel good yeah yeah yeah i'm ready to go home i've been um on the road a little bit not very much but um went to red rocks immediately from like 500 feet above sea level to like 5 ,238 feet above sea level. Felt great the first day.

3:09Second day hit me. I was like, okay, all day nausea. Cool. Let's do the show. Let's roll it. Do the show. Awesome. Then we go over to Reno. And Reno, I didn't know the crowd was going to be as lit as it was. It was like amazing. Wow. Yeah, the crowd was crazy. They're like standing up in their chairs. there was a couple like slow dancing to like this really sad song we got wow yeah to one of the new songs nah it's the gemini i've never seen anybody slow dance to gemini before wow that was cool that was different it was interesting and then we came to where we go next went to berkeley played two shows at the greet how was that it was awesome yeah i love the greet that's great that's a beautiful venue like when you guys what's this how'd you guys come back together well okay so we have this buddy and he owns this bar in tuscaloosa alabama and this buddy of ours his name is bo he used to always take us in you know we show up the bar would pay us like 100 bucks between like the four of us and then he would put us up like on his couch or extra room or something he always took care of us and he was like hey since covid my bar has been in trouble can you mind like coming and helping me out just playing he was asking me and I was like yeah I'll come through but then I hit up the guys and I was like hey do y 'all want to help Bo out go do this thing everybody loves Bo they're like yeah absolutely so we get together and we're rehearsing the music and we're like maybe we should just like get together and I don't know do a tour do a couple tours or something because it's like the 10 year anniversary of Sound of Color felt like a cool thing to do for the fans and so we did that and then and then you know it progressed into like oh let's like record a single okay so we thought we're gonna record like three songs and then it progressed into like well we got seven songs let's just make some more and make an album so it kind of naturally unfolded like that it's interesting it didn't occur earlier like that like i mean if it was that it seems like it's pretty easy once you guys were like hey i always told people i was Like, look, I never shut the door.

5:11Never saying never. It's just going to happen when it feels right. And that just happened to be the catalyst. And it felt like the right time. Coming back together, did it feel like it feels like I was trying to explain to my friend Ben here, who works on the show with me, that the album feels it feels in some ways like you guys didn't miss a beat. Like you guys went back to where you were. but in some ways it feels also like i can hear i don't know where you know necessarily everything you guys been up to in that time away you've had a couple of solo albums and i and i feel like i i can also hear um that there's a difference there's something else that would have been going on for like 10 years so i don't know if they've been playing other places listening to different things you've definitely been on your own journey musically and so it does feel like it feels like a really good uh summation of like probably exactly where you guys are at which is you guys have a certain chemistry together but then you've also probably grown substantially in a decade i didn't think it had been a decade but yeah a decade right yeah i i think our tastes have grown i think we're wiser as people you know we're older and we have more life experience we know what we like we know what we don't like i think it was kind of like getting back in the studio we had to reintroduce ourselves to what we were into which is funny because i was into mostly like instrumental composition stuff there's like no singing now yeah yeah that's just kind of what i've been getting into it's nice sometimes to make up scenarios in your head without the lyrics guiding you sometimes you know that's been nice and then you know the guys have been into all kinds of other stuff so we were like okay let's let's figure this out how do we meet in the middle and it's kind of the same thing as you know boys and girls when we first met first put out that first album it's like okay how do we make music together coming from all these different backgrounds but you guys but i guess the difference would be by the time you make that album you guys had had years together just in terms of just being around each other forever day to day right like yeah true yeah true i mean like yeah you know zach came on tour with me for the britney howard project stuff and so like making this album was you know me and he talked over texts and phone and stuff like that but we hadn't really hung out physically for like probably i don't know years a while so it was cool being back in a room together again and you know it's it's kind of like we all got sweeter like everybody just is that true yeah it's like we're all just i don't know we're just nicer human beings than we used to be we used to be crazy like wildcats like in what like why oh i mean i won't get into it.

7:50We're just a party lifestyle. Let me quit talking. Nah, keep talking. Nah, you know, we're just young. We've never been anywhere before. All of a sudden, we're like in Europe and England and Spain. We're just going out and having fun. Like, you know, everybody thinks like metal bands. Oh, they're so crazy. They party too hard. But soul bands are the ones that actually party hard. Is that okay? Yeah. You know how shocked I was when I read Aretha Franklin's memoir and I realized there's a quote like pretty early. Billy Preston's like, like you think you if you think like pop and rock artists. It's like it's soul and gospel artists for the wildest.

8:24You gotta look out for them. But that's not us anymore. We're just like I said, we're just a bunch of sweeties now. So hold on. So it was kind of like early on, it was a stereotypical, like you were being introduced to. We were living. A whole new world and lifestyle. Yeah, we were living. You know, no regrets. Like we were sweeties. We were just like, you know, I don't know, just having fun. We were young, but now we're older. What were some, What stands out from those early years? Not even necessarily in a bad way, but what was even some of the more charmed experiences? I mean, that record, you got that, especially Sound of Color, that record got so big.

8:58It did, yeah. And so I know there must have been some real pinch me moments. One of the pinch me moments was probably just like meeting Bill Withers was really cool. He hung out with us after the show. He hung out with us and Michael Kewinuka's group. And that was awesome. That was really cool. You know, that's somebody you hear ever since you're a little kid. And now there he is in the flesh talking to you, smiling at you. And I remember, like, I used to smoke cigarettes. I don't know more. But I remember being under the staircase, like, hiding from Bill Withers because he had already reprimanded me.

9:35He was like, you got to quit. And I was like, okay. And then, like, it was my grandpa or something. I was like, let me hide under these stairs. He found me. What did he say? He was like, he was pointed at me. And he's like, I see you. and I was like, oh my God. I got to pinch myself. Bill Withers is over here like, you know, trying to help me out. You got to take that advice. I mean, look. I did. Eventually. Eventually. Whatever Bill Withers, I feel like you kind of. Yeah, I know. And I knew then too. Yeah. I was being hard-headed. Yeah. That's amazing. Meeting Bill Withers is phenomenal because.

10:09Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He's a cool guy. He's kind of everything you think he would be. Wise. You know, he's just got one of those voices when he speaks, you just listen to him. And, you know, yeah. Did he hear you? Did he watch you guys play or hear the record? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Was he effusive? Yeah, you know, he was very excited about the whole thing. You know, he was just like, I think I remember him saying like, you know, you're going straight to the moon. Something like that, which is, I can barely say it out loud because I'm, you know, I'm still trying to digest that. Because it's just, I'm just grateful for an opportunity like that.

10:51So something like that happening is crazy. And, you know, also there's like meeting my peers finally, like, you know, Tyler the Creator, Childish Gambino, Solange. And just meeting those people and talking music with them. People I respect, I'm inspired by as well. So that's always cool. You just really never know who you're going to run into. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. it's funny because you it's funny you bring up them as peers because they definitely are peers um both creatively and also just like in terms of uh were sort of like the artists who broke kind of around when you guys broke but it's like it it's funny because at the time you guys broke there was soul music but the soul music was like kind of like retro soul music was either like uh not disparagingly because there's some great artists but like charles bradley like in Sharon Jones rest in peace who was phenomenal but it was sort of like in that sort of vein of thing or like the Mark Ronson whatever right?

11:54and rock bands weren't really breaking so you guys really like broke the mold you guys got or slipped through or broke the mold or transcended or went to the moon you were destined to go to the moon for Bill Withers I actually don't know how that happened myself I still think about that like you always get that feeling of like why us and why not somebody else because you know we were listening to all that dapton stuff we loved Charles Bradley we love Sharon Jones yeah we love Minahan Street Band we we loved all those groups and we were very studious of these groups we loved how tight the rhythm sections were and it's something we strive to to be like um but you know we also had all these other influences too and and wanted to experiment just a little bit more and i don't know to me that feels natural just to do something a little bit other uh just to see what can happen and um especially bringing all of our music tastes together i felt like that's just where that's where we had to end up you know yeah we couldn't go full retro this way because i don't know if that style would jive with all of our like style of playing you know yeah yeah so i think we just did something a little bit more garage rock like a little more aggressive because it felt good it felt good to especially as a woman it felt good to front a group and be aggressive and not i don't know just any stereotype yeah just throw it to the side and just be full of i don't know whatever rage or whatever it is yeah that i embody when i do my thing just feels good feels cathartic that felt like the right thing to do it felt honest Did you always have like that, I don't want to call it punk rock aggression, but it was like that, you know what I mean?

13:38Like that rock sort of. Yeah, I'd say like from the get go, because we were listening to like MC5. We were listening to Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath. I was listening to groups like Converge, American Nightmare. Wow, Converge is a throwback. Yeah. They don't even get talked about much anymore. No, I like that shit, though. So, like, that's, that's, it was just, like, whatever I could get my hands on or my ears on, rather, when I was coming into music and learning how to play. Like, if it had any, like, I don't know, if it stuck out to me, I'm listening to it. I like it. I'm learning from it.

14:15And from the get-go, it's like, this is something I like. ACDC. I like the way he plays guitar. The Kinks. Is that why the SG? No, that just happened by accident. I actually didn't have my own guitar. that was our guitar player's guitar and he let me borrow it so i could play guitar i didn't have one yeah but then it just felt good yeah it looked good too yeah it was it kind of became my thing but it's it's just happenstance i kind of like you know just whatever sounds good is what i'll play yeah and to this day that's how i am i don't really stick to this or that and new guitars can be cool sometimes sometimes not i just play whatever whatever I find really.

14:54But you were saying ACDC, Kinks. Yeah, the Kinks. I like Dave Davies because his solos are always just so emotive. It's not really, it doesn't always have to be technical to get your point across. And yeah, I just was pulled to that. I was like, I can do that. Yeah. Yeah. Was that a surprise to your parents? Like that in your family? I know you have a sister too. Like was that like, Like, were you like an aberration in your household? Or was that like what everyone in your household was kind of? Well, okay. So I have an uncle. And he was kind of like a metal guitar player. But he also knew some Jimi Hendrix.

15:32And when I was a little girl, he would play us songs like Guns N' Roses and Jimi Hendrix and whatever he knew. And we thought it was like amazing, you know. And so I knew from a very early age, I want to do that. And then I had this other, he's my great uncle. He played like bluegrass music. so he turned me on to you know like classics like Elvis and and what else I don't know he liked Elvis like the animals he liked kind of this stuff and so he had this woodworking shop and I remember staying up late one night and they were practicing their bluegrass band and I came in there and they gave me the microphone and I sang wild thing and I was singing what was I singing um I don't know some Elvis songs and I remember looking at all these grown men and and And the way that my little voice affected them, and they were just shocked and smiling and laughing.

16:23And I sang until, like, I think my throat was bleeding. Until my great aunt came in and was like, Bryn, you got to go to bed, you know? But I love that feeling of being amplified. And, you know, maybe it goes back to just being heard, being seen or something like that, maybe. But, you know, it was those moments that I was like, I think this is something that I really would like to do. yeah okay but everyone i think not everyone but a lot of people like having a microphone and a bully pulpit and being heard but you know it's like having a voice like that though to have that in tandem with i mean you know that's what everyone's not blessed with yeah well i didn't know i could sing until maybe i was like 15 how old were you there in that moment oh i was like four or five and it didn't occur to you then like based on the reaction like oh man maybe i i can't they like what i was too little too little yeah but when i was like um when i was 11 i saw a band play for the first time and it was just like in my high school band uh high school gym and there was just like some high school kids playing and i was like that is what i want to do because it was so shocking to me that those kids i go to school with have like this secret and the secret is they can play these instruments and have this effect on these people and and it was almost like slow motion like i looked at the people dancing and i looked back at the guitar player and i was like that's what i want to do wow and turns out that guitar player was albama shakes guitar player heath no way yeah he later became our guitar player yeah and i remember recording my own demos i was always teaching myself instruments because i wanted to be in a band so bad i was just like I got to practice everything because I don't know if I'm going to meet a drummer.

18:10I don't know if I'm going to meet a bass player. I don't know if I'm going to meet a guitar player. So I'm going to be ready to play anything. So I was practicing. I was borrowing instruments. And I remember making a demo. I was using this app, well, the software called Audacity. You can just record a line at a time. I made this little demo and I burnt it on CD. And I remember putting it on my mom's dresser. And she had taken it to work with her. She had listened to it, came back from work. And she was like, I didn't know you could sing. and that's when I was like oh maybe I maybe I can sing and because I didn't really know wow and so I just like you know I practiced it I didn't just show up singing you know I had to practice and I practiced by singing along to albums and just trying to get the the voice straight not shaky all right so what what albums would you sing to back then it was like a lot of queen because I really liked Freddie Mercury's harmonies so I was like try to I'd go through the song over and we were going to pick a harmony and learned harmonies.

19:07And at the time, I think Red Hot Chili Peppers, by the way, came out. That's still one of my favorite albums. It's a great album. Yeah. And I would sing all of those songs. And yeah, it was Third Eye Blind. I had a Third Eye Blind CD. I would sing all those songs. And it was just getting my voice ready. And eventually, I found the right group of guys. And I was able to be the singer and start a band. So how did you reconnect with Heath? oh well so me and zach so i so i had another demo and i knew zach was a bass player because we know we went to school together so i brought a cd to zach didn't really know him but he had like cool band shirts he had like a at the drive-in shirt on and i knew who that was and i was like oh that that guy must be cool yeah so i gave him my cd and i was like hey man like i play instruments too uh this is this is what my music sounds like you know let me know if you ever want to jam so he took the cd he had like a little honda civic and i mean we both went to the honda civic he listened to the demo cd which is like very vulnerable to sit there and listen to your demo with somebody but he's like oh yeah this is cool yeah we can jam and i was like oh cool so we started getting together like not every day but just about every day after school and um we started writing music together and eventually we found a drummer to play with and that drummer knew some of Heath's buddies.

20:31So we had another demo and he showed it to Heath's buddies and Heath was like, oh man, you guys should open for my band. And I was like, cool, we'll open for you if you help our band by playing guitar. And he was like, yeah, no problem. And I was like, I got him. Because I had been trying to get Heath in the band. I didn't know how to approach him. He's older than me. I thought he was cooler than me because he already played a bunch of cool songs. Yeah, you had that experience of being almost like a fan of him yeah i know and so then he joined us and it was just it was just on after that wow yeah it's so funny those dynamics when you're that age just like how how how large people can loomish it's true yeah i thought he was unreachable yeah i was like this guy's playing prince this guy's playing david bowie this guy he's playing the kinks he's playing all kinds of cool music and i'm i was like he's out of he's out of our league but he wasn't he's pretty savvy though i'll say if you just that list you just ran down especially at that time to be you know yeah um because i would have been like what early 2000s i guess right like yeah maybe oh four yeah so who's playing like prince simpoli and the king's name especially in north alabama and especially strange yeah and i would sneak out and go to these house parties just to watch the band you know i wouldn't drink or anything like that i was just like i wanted to go see them play and I was trying to calculate like okay how do they do this how do they do that where are they getting this PA equipment because I was like I'm gonna do what they're doing yeah I'm gonna have house shows and I'm gonna do all this stuff you know I was plotting yeah and I never thought he would actually be in my group but that's how it worked out that's great man I mean you guys's music was ever you guys were touring everywhere yeah I mean it kind of happened And we became this unit.

22:14We were writing songs, but we didn't have anywhere to play the songs because in North Alabama, they honestly wanted you to play four hours of covers. It was kind of rare back then to find a place where they wanted original music. There's this one place, never would call us back. And I was the booking agent. I was the manager. I was putting everything I had into it. And then Heath was like, oh, we should go down to Tuscaloosa. They let bands play original music there. cool so tuscaloosa is probably like i don't know like two or three hours away from where we're from so we all hop in the car get our gear go down there and set up at this little bar called egan's and that's we started playing our songs and people loved it they responded to it went back again went back again went back again um and we also started playing this place called the brick which was in decatur alabama and we have fans like we have fans you know people liked it and then um we recorded a cd it all kind of starts from actually recording your music and sharing it like it really does yeah that's how everything starts and so yeah we had this demo and we recorded like i remember we went to this place called pegasus records and it was like during a festival called wc handy festival is in florence alabama it's gonna be recorded and we're gonna get to keep the recordings and put them online and this whole thing and i'm like awesome we perform and there's this fella there named patterson hood he's a singer drive by truckers and we looked up to them because you know some of them guys were from north alabama and they were able to get out and tour yeah and to us that was the goal like if we could tour like we're made you know they were really doing it yeah they're really doing it of course of course yeah and so he saw us and called his managers and was like you need to come check this band out and that's what happened and i feel like from that moment we were able to open up for them i quit my job like i quit my job as fast as i could where were you at i was delivering mail for the united states postal service and you know at that job they're working hard i only just discovered recently like how crazy some of the demands are yeah it's crazy like you have x amount of seconds per house like because you have to get around the block in x amount of minutes and if you don't then that's like oh yeah let's talk about it i didn't know any of this yeah that's real yes it's real i was delivering mail in tornadoes not one tornado but several tornadoes they had me out there and i called my supervisor and i was like hey um i'm gonna come back and she's like no no no no you can't come back go deliver the mail just faster and then come back faster before more tornadoes show up i was like man no like that's not i'm not trying to think rain hail sleet snow tornado yeah that's not in the that's not in the slogan no i was not trying to die for nobody's mail so that's wild yeah and and luckily you know we had that opportunity to go tour open for the truckers and then we started you know more people started hearing about us and then we went and did the cmj festival and then journalists started writing about us and we were It just kind of like built, you know, and we had been around writing music and doing our thing, especially me as accents like 2005, 2004.

25:33Yeah. And it kind of all just started happening. Like the dreams were happening. Couldn't believe it. It's like it's like someone spoke into existence, you know, and yeah, started there. We'll be right back with more from Brittany Howard.

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26:36AMU provides the support you need to take the next step wherever life takes you. American Military University, made for what's next. Learn more at amu.apus.edu. Before you jump back in, you know that feeling when feedback, notes, and data are coming in from every direction? ChatGPT work can make sense of it all, turning scattered inputs into ready-to-review work. With your permission, ChatGPT work can gather context from apps and files, summarize incoming messages, rebuild decks, and help finalize high-quality documents for your team or clients. Stay in control as you move from a goal to polished work faster with ChatGPT work.

27:20Download the ChatGPT desktop app today and take on your most ambitious work. It sounds like you were the one who was motivated to, you know, as the booker, etc., to get things to the next level. But if you had really thought about it, it's not like there was really a place for an act like y 'all at that point you know what i mean like a like a at a fest like you know drive-by's truckers even as big as they were so i don't think my memory serves they weren't getting like booked at like a coachella or you know at the big festivals like that you know because i don't think they were thinking of roots music or music that had that lilt to it as being like hip at that time you know yeah i guess you know our heroes were the things going on at Daptone and also the music we grew up on like Otis Redding, The Supremes, you know, Led Zeppelin, all the stuff I named before.

28:12It's like that was what was that was our guiding light. We never imagined other people would respond how they did when we kind of mix these things together. And I don't know, I guess when I think about it, I knew a lot of groups that were kind of doing what we were doing. I think it was just like everything had to line up like divine like everything had to line up for it to work yeah you know we had to have the right people behind us too like anybody could have took our sound and managed it incorrectly and none of this could have happened that's true we had to have the right booking agent that was putting us in the right spots with the right people and and those things worked yeah but i mean i never would have imagined like us from Athens, Alabama, which back then was a small town.

29:01You know, we had like a, we had like a sheriff's rodeo. That's kind of what we had going on. And now we're like playing Coachella. Like we're headlining Coachella. Like, you know, I'm still like pinch me to this day. Cause it's like, I can't believe the trajectory our lives took. It's wild. I mean, your voice is a huge part of it because in that time, if I went to a festival and you guys were on the bill, there'd be a moment invariably that happened at least a few times where I'd be walking from one stage to another, hear your voice, you'd be like, damn, all right, they'd just pull you in, like, I'm gonna go that way.

29:41I didn't even know they were playing right now, but here I go, I'm following this sound, you know? Yeah. Because your voice just goes. Yeah, it's loud as fuck. yeah for sure certainly um why why why's she laughing i don't know it is it's yeah i you know it's something i didn't discover i could do until i got with the guys because we were practicing in my house and we didn't have one of them pa systems so i just had like this little practice amp to sing out of so in order to sing over all the instruments i just had to really push yeah and i didn't know i could sing like that until i started playing with them it was kind of like a discovery and i was like oh i'll just do this yeah yeah have you ever wrecked your voice not often really no it's just like it's just made that way wow yeah it happens like from overuse and also i wasn't taking good care of it so every once in a while i'll lose a voice but most most most of the time at my shows like i could i could still do it yeah wow yeah let's play something from the new album yeah let's just listen to a bit of uh the first track tea time kind of struck me when i when i when i first put it on

31:16If I had an Oh, I'd watch them back home. And to the rivers, the wildflowers and so. I'm building a kingdom in my soul.

31:50When the fires first burst Let flowers grow

32:02You liked that drum roll. There's still an analog feel to this where it still feels real, like you guys were in a space moving air around. and that. But, there's something about that that almost feels like Mad Lib-ish, J Dilla-ish in the, like the... There's a little, there's a little hanging back from the beat. Yeah. In order to make that bass line work. Okay. Yeah, that was, that's, hey, that's Zach. That's our bass player, that's Zach. He showed me that and I was just like, hmm, this'll do. You know? I couldn't wait to cook something on it. I couldn't wait to do something with it. You know?

32:44and a lot of times on this album that's where it began zach zach's bass and he would just start playing something crazy that i've never really heard anything like you know especially coming from him and i was just like wow i'm very excited to write something for this there's a lot of moments like that oh if you had to speak for him like where where does his gene where does his genius lie like how is he hearing these things i mean if you know what i know about zach is he's like an encyclopedia he doesn't forget things that i feel like a normal person would just forget like he remembers not only obscure albums he also remembers everybody who played on that obscure album and then he'll go find that bass player and see everything else he played on and then he'll be like oh like this guitar player it's like a it's like a web and he can remember all this stuff so his references go so deep and i think also you know he's a he's a huge fan of mad lib mf doom he's a he's a friend he's a fan of hip-hop so he kind of puts it all together and you know that's something both he and i relate to and it was just another example of like okay let's take something like this and mix it with something like this this is something i've kind of never heard before that's exciting and that's kind of how we got there yeah yeah how early in the was that one of the songs that was going to be part of that initial few records like the single Maybe.

34:07Maybe. It was kind of one of those things where we were just going in and seeing what sticks. Like, what can we complete? What's exciting to us? Yeah. Yeah. I'd say it was one of the ones that was like early on. Yeah. Yeah. And not a lot of guitar on it. Just a little bit. Just a little bit. Where would there be room for guitars? It's like, there's a little guitar. There's a little bit. But it's more like we could tell that this song was going to be like the melody, the bass line, and the slack drums. Yeah. Yeah. That's what made it stand out to me, though. It being the first song back that you hear.

34:42I mean, I guess I heard the singles first, but when I'm like, I'm going to put the album on and listen to it. For that to be the thing that I heard, I was like, wow. It's what made me feel. It's like this is a little the same, but also pretty different. It was a bold move. Oh, yeah. I am aware that there's going to be fans of Hold On that are going to hear that and be like, you know what I'm saying? I'm just like different now. but i'm i'm open to opening people's minds so let it be the first track okay yeah do you think both those things bands can exist together oh for sure yeah oh for sure yeah still room for that absolutely i mean think about groups like pink floyd and how much that music has changed you can even think about les zeppelin and if you go from their first album to their last album how much has changed and developed it's like it touches on these things that are the foundation of the group but it i feel like they were still able to go into new territory and explore and i feel like that's why that group lasted so long it is striking because i i don't i tend to stick to the early zeppelin albums lately i've been going back to the newer ones that were later in their career yeah and i'm like wow yeah they really were very because they're still so forward thinking early like early on it's still so like fuck this is pretty out there but yeah yeah they even take it they do take it a notch further oh yeah which is wild like black dog compared to dancing days is kind of different you know um but i respect that and i can say the same for like someone like david bowie yeah or even prince someone who just kept exploring and kept doing their thing and they were very focused on what they're very focused not on like what the public was going to say they were more just focused on like how do I keep myself interested and and I think that's what's special about those artists and why they're so iconic I'd say the same thing about Bjork too there's like all this exploration um and reinvention yeah that I think always makes them interesting and um yeah I just respect that do you think about that for yourself is that a part of your calculus, I guess.

36:49Do you think, like, how do I keep myself moving in interesting ways and keeping myself interested and moving the audience along with us and all that? Yeah, that's definitely what pushes me forward and keeps me interested in music. There's still so much I don't know. There's still so much I haven't discovered. And also, like, music to me is such an important part of my expression. I feel like as long as I'm living, I'm going to have something to say, something to express. And it's not always going to be the same way. It's not always going to be in the same genre. To me, it doesn't have to be something that's cohesive.

37:21It's just expression. I feel like that's one of our gifts as human beings is the ability to do that. And I feel grateful that I have an audience for it, you know? Yeah. And I got to keep it interesting for myself. You know, I just don't think I could keep doing the same thing over and over again. That doesn't sound fun. A couple of years removed now from it. How did it feel doing something out on your own with your own name on it as opposed to the band name? Awesome. Did that feel different? Awesome. Yeah, it was different, of course, because, like, you know, all the mistakes were going to be my mistakes to make.

37:59If the ship sailed, it's up to me. If it sank, that's on me. It's cool, whatever happens. You know, it's just something I had always wanted to try to make what I'm hearing, what I'm feeling just like that. And and and for once, like like pretty selfishly, I just didn't want any feedback. I just wanted to do it. And whatever happens, happens, you know, and it felt great. Yeah, honestly did. Very freeing in a way. so you really were like the the the final you were the the lone like you would make something and you would be the lone critic of whether or not it was gonna oh for sure and how it was gonna work and why it was gonna work oh yeah was like was it did it feel i don't know did it feel this has got to be hard coming from a group that i mean i guess it's either easy because or feels good because you feel free or it's hard because it's a whole new thing way of working that relies solely on you it's a good scary it's one of good scaries you know you come across in life yeah it's just like this is something i've always wanted to try now it's here let's do it and whatever happens happens at least you did it you know um and i'm lucky that it worked out i'm lucky that um i had a fan base that was into it and interested and wanted to listen wanted to come back and we you know we went on a a grand tour across the world trying to introduce who britney howard is yeah it's like it was kind of starting over in a way yeah and it was also a rocky start you know like a lot of artists who were trying to release music around COVID it was like oh like this yeah but you know we didn't give up we didn't give up we went back to the studio and we made another one and you know I intend on still doing that yeah yeah why not you know I mean I'm assuming also keep the Alabama shakes going right yeah the guys want to do it for sure yeah yeah like to me albama shakes is like it's got to be something that we're all having fun doing it's got to be something that's like we want to express ourselves this way i my worst nightmare as a musician at all is having to do this because it's my job i would really want to enjoy this once it starts stressing me out too much i'm just like oh no like i'll go find something that still makes me happy you know what i'm saying because at the end of the day it's like i want to come from my honest place i don't want to just do it to make money and you know i i don't want to do it just to be someone who is famous i think like i i have um i don't know i think i had an honest approach to it where i just like want to make stuff because i don't fully understand what i'm doing and that's exciting yeah to me yeah yeah did you ever reach a point where you were feeling a bit like this isn't fun anymore yeah oh yeah i mean it was like it was like one them it's one of them good problems it's like listen we could keep touring we could keep doing this thing keep keep it going but i was just feeling really really tired and it's almost like sometimes when you're good at something the success can obviously have its downsides and the downsides like i miss my family they're getting older and i'm just gone and time goes by so fast yeah when you're touring because your schedule's laid out for you for like you know a year to two years and um i miss just doing normal stuff i miss the changing of seasons i miss birds and i'm not complaining because i realize like you know i'm blessed at the end of the day and i'm grateful at the end of the day of course but i did also realize like you know you can also steer the train you know what i mean yeah it doesn't have to be something that gets away from you and it's not something i regret either i think it was like a lifesaver honestly you know i was able to take time and just like take care of myself and also my life had changed so much and i needed to reconnect to me you know yeah yeah i mean talking about getting things getting getting away from you you guys put out the second single it's american dream that's right just listen a quick little bit of this real quick

42:38I must be The impossible I must be I must be I must be I must be I must be I must be