How did you originally meet?
Shawn Everett: Probably through Blake Mills. You'd heard Blake's solo record, right?
Brittany Howard: I heard Break Mirrors, and I was like, "Whoa, there's a lot of attention to detail here. I think that's the guy I want to work with, because he sounds like he put a lot of work into this." Then Blake was like, "My dude is Shawn. You gotta work with Shawn." That's when we first met. Shawn is super detail-oriented, and so am I. We got along famously.
SE: I was lucky to have worked on Break Mirrors, so I ended up meeting you [Brittany].
BH: Everything happens for a reason.
What was it that made you decide to work together again?
BH: With Shawn, not only do we get along personably, but Shawn also speaks my language. I did not study music, and when I want something I'm literally like, "Shawn, this sounds a little bright. We need to bring it back down to magenta territory. It needs to be darker." Shawn is like, "Yeah, I got you. I know exactly what you're saying," which is crazy.
SE: Sometimes the analogies are even more colorful than that. More than just magenta. You go deep.
What's an example?
SE: I can't even remember, but I remember you saying some left-field stuff, and I was super into that. It was some beautiful poetry, and I loved trying to find the sonic color in the poetry that you'd sing.
Why did you decide to release this as a solo record?
BH: The reason I put it under my own name is because I'm telling my own stories. To me, it's kind of a reflective record. There's not really one main purpose. It's not very mysterious. It's like, "I want to do a record and tell my story." It was cathartic. It was scary to go out on my own, but that's something I've always wanted to do.
What's behind the name of the album? [Jaime]
BH: That's my sister's name. She passed away when I was 8 years old. When she was 13, she had brain cancer. She taught me everything about being creative, drawing, being artistic, making music, and being in love with that realm of creativity. That affected me for the rest of my life. I feel like that was the right title for it. I can't really take all the credit for myself. She was my teacher.
How has the process of making a solo record been different from making a band record?
BH: Well, less chefs in the kitchen! It's a little bit scary when you don't have nobody else's opinion, you know what I mean? It's up to you. If you do something stupid, you did something stupid. It wasn't a group decision. You don't have anybody to bounce it off of. I always respected my boys' opinions, and they always had great ideas, but it's also really exhilarating, really exciting to be like, "If I mess it up, then I messed it up." It's exploratory. That was really exciting and really liberating.
Were there ever moments of disagreement where you had to put your foot down and say, "Wait a minute, fellas, this is my record!"? Or was it always wonderfully peaceful?
BH: Wonderfully peaceful. Even better than peaceful, they inspired me by being excited to be there. Nate Smith is a great drummer. As soon as Nate Smith shows up, I start having more confidence in myself, because I realize, "Oh, these songs sound really great once you have a real drummer." Then Zac Cockrell shows up, and he's on time with the actual feel of a bass player. Then I'm getting excited, and then we have someone like Robert Glasper or Billy Buchanan come in, and I'm like, "These songs are actually happening!" I did all the songs on my little laptop, just using a little Universal Audio box with one microphone. Once they came in, I was like, "Whoa, this is actually going to be a record!"
Did you guys make an intentional effort to sound different than >Sound & Color, being that that was a band record and this was a solo record?
BH: I feel like we tried to sound like the demos, like the idea of the demos.
SE: Yeah, on her demos, the first time she played them for me, it blew my mind. The only thing I felt about Sound & Color is that people seemed to like the sound of it, so I needed to make sure that this sounded as good or better. That was my only concern. I was really being hard on myself about some of it.
BH: We tried some crazy stuff to get some sounds. At one point, I was playing with the faders on a mixing board like notes on a keyboard, so here comes the A, and making chords with my hands. It's like an analog tape loop keyboard?
SE: I found this company... it's not even a company, just one guy who makes this special contact microphone that's not even a contact microphone. It's almost like a laser that you have to really crank, and it picks up electromagnetic interference. So, we were picking up the air conditioning unit in the studio. We were moving it around the room, because it picked up different electromagnetic interference. We found a place where it really hit with this air conditioning unit, and it had this crazy electromagnetic frequency that sounded really cool. We put it on a piece of tape that was looping around the studio, and then we would speed up and slow down the tape machine to get different pitches from the electromagnetic interference from the air conditioning unit. We basically generated a synthesizer on a tape loop from speeding up and slowing down the tape machine. Then we put all of that together and put it on a tape machine so she could play it like a synth.
BH: Then I don't think we even used it!
SE: No, we didn't use it. [laughs] It was fun.
BH: It was very cool. That was like half a day?
SE: Yeah, it took a while. It sounds sick though. It didn't work for the song, but you could make a record with that synth.
Going back to the demo process, did you use Apple's Logic?
BH: Yeah, I used Logic X.
SE: It's super fun the way that she built it. She would build these demos in Logic, but to try to create a real-world sound that was the same version of that was so fun.
BH: It was really fun because obviously I have some really great key players on the record, but on some of the pieces, because of the touch of how I wanted the performance to be, I had to perform it. I don't really play keys, so we had a really interesting solution to that which was like taping the notes, color-coordinating the chords on this real instrument and then performing them. I kind of became an instant keyboard player based on colors and numbers. It looks insane.
Were the demos just you alone, or were these people brought in after, the other musicians who came in?
BH: I did the demos alone at different times. I definitely knew that I had to get actual musicians to perform it. I always prefer the sound of a real musician. Especially with Shawn. The way he's mic'ing it, the attention to detail and care he takes, like putting contact mics on the Celesta on a song like "Stay High." It has this super-woody feel. As a listener, if I didn't know what was happening, I'd never be able to figure out how it sounds like that. I did the demos by myself and wanted the best of the best to play it.
Shawn, I'd like you to talk again about the process. When she bought the demos to you, what was your reaction? How much of the original demos did you keep, or did you replace everything?
SE: The demos legitimately blew my mind. I was crazily stoked to be working on the record when I heard the demos. She could have released the demos and it would be a sick record. When you already know that you have crazy material to be working on, it's kind of nice in some ways, because sometimes I feel like there are different roles that I take when I'm working on a record. By hearing the demos, I knew that the role I could take was to fully concentrate on how to make it sound good. I'm not spread thin. I'm just working on one aspect of it, which is nice because you can concentrate. Every aspect of the record you can get infinitely deep on, be it a lyric or anything. You can go down a wormhole of infinity on everything. If my one role is to try to bring more sonic something to the demos that she had already created, then that's fun. I can concentrate on one infinity, one aspect of infinity.
BH: One infinity is enough!
SE: I'd go through the studio and see all the different equipment and the instruments and try to find the thing that would most represent the thing she'd already done in the best way possible.
BH: The hardest thing was the hi-hats on "Tomorrow." I had to use a keyboard, so I put some crazy hi-hats on there, like a typewriter, which is easy to perform with your hands and cut-and-paste and make a rhythm. But then it came time to actually track those hi-hats...
SE: I went down a wormhole with the hi-hats. I wanted to figure out exactly rhythmically what she was doing. I don't know what it was, I was just being a nerd.
BH: He was counting it.
SE: I was nerding out musically about the rhythmic information of how you count that hi-hat part.
BH: It was pointless.
SE: It was wild. But I got really deep with it.
BH: What we ended up doing was recording it section by section. I'd listen to it and be like okay, tickety-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick. I would do that and then we'd move forth to get that sound. It was really hard. I wasn't so sure about it at the time, but I always trust Shawn. The drums on "Tomorrow" make it sound like I'm a sick drummer.
SE: The same section that has those hi-hats there's crotales. We drove two hours to get crotales for four bars of crotales.
What are crotales?
SE: Very thick, tuned cymbals.
BH: Like a xylophone, except cymbals. We drove to the dusty, dusty mountains...
SE: [laughs] Yeah, we went on a real journey just to get a four bar crotale part.
BH: Then we brought them back, and it was like [singing notes]. Done! Worth it. Worth it.
How did you form the cast of musicians?
BH: I started with the drummer first. I knew I was going to work with Zac again, because Zac's my boy. We go way back to childhood. I really didn't feel like forming a new relationship like that with another bass player, because in my opinion I've already got the bass player I want to play with. That was pretty simple. Then as far as drummers go, I wanted a drummer who had his own unique voice who could play with soul and personality and purpose. I had been following Nate Smith on Instagram and Facebook for a couple of years. To me, he's like the baddest of the bad dudes right now. I like the personality, the voice and the expression he has. When he plays, I'm entertained. I don't need any more music. Lloyd Buchanan played with the Shakes. I wanted him to play with me, and don't nobody know this, but Lloyd is like the sickest organ player. He has so much emotion and so much good taste when he plays. He knows where to place certain things. I needed him on the project. I played all the guitar parts. I needed to do that, you know what I'm saying? I'm going to be doing all this goofy stuff, because I don't actually know how to play guitar. I don't take lessons. I don't even know all the chords, dog. "Can I make a D7? I don't know!" But if you play it for me, I'll be like "Oh yeah, that!" I know what that sound is but I don't know the names of stuff. It's kind of cool not knowing and figuring it out. I'm laying on the guitar and then Robert Glasper came in, and I'm so glad he did. Because Robert Glasper came in and Nate Smith was in the studio, we got the song "13th Century Metal" which was just Robert going in and doing a quick sound check. What was that thing called?
SE: An Orchestron.
BH: Yeah, Orchestron. He was like "Let me go check this thing." He starts doing this bad stuff. Nate was already in the drum booth, and they started doing it and playing it. We were in the studio and were like, "Don't stop them!" I was like, "Whatever we do, I've got to do something with that because it's crazy." Later on, me and Shawn edited it to where I could put a melody and some lyrics on it. I already had the lyrics in my phone. I was like, "All right, let me go in there and see what I got." Shawn was in there thinking I was doing it off the top of my head, which would have been amazing.
Did you have the timing worked out though? It lines up not completely, but it lines up a lot.
BH: Nope.
SE: I think that was take one.
BH: It was take one.
SE: She just did it.
BH: I knew what I wanted to do, and because we had edited everything together, I knew where every moment was. At the end, I knew I kind of wanted it to be like a vamp-out, because I love vamp-outs. They're my favorite. I sat down here one day and layered on some crazy guitars, and that is pretty much the song.
So, you've got this crew of musicians, what was the approach? Was it very much everyone playing together, like sit in a circle and figure stuff out? Or was it kind of piece by piece?
BH: The thing that took the most time was the drums. We spent hours on them drums.
SE: I feel like it was my fault sometimes, because I would hear her demo, and then I would want a different drum set.
BH: There's no fault in it. That's why I worked with Shawn. Shawn's got the detail-oriented mindset. So, a song like "Stay High," I did the drums on the guitar, so he sets up Nate with some chopsticks!
SE: We'd basically set up a drum set for him. He's a ripping drummer who has a sick drum set, and he kills it. So, I always felt a little bit self-conscious, because I was setting up this goofy contraption for one of the world's best drummers. I was like well, "I've set up this horrible drum set for you, and I think it might be sonically cool for this album, but I'm sorry because it's extremely difficult to play and hell on earth." He'd be like, "What the hell is this crazy shit?"
BH: And then play the shit out of it.
SE: He'd be like, "What is this?!"
BH: Every day.
SE: I don't even remember how the demo sounded, but it was something that triggered my mind.
BH: It was bopping on a guitar, an acoustic guitar.
SE: For whatever reason that made me think that it should be all snare drums. The studio we were working at is called Vox. They had a wall of snare drums, and we got out all the snare drums and set up a drum kit with just snare drums. The kick drum was a snare drum, the toms were snare drums, the snare drum was a snare drum. Everything was a snare drum. We built a drum set out of snare drums, and then he comes in and was like, "What the hell is this drum kit?"
BH: Then Shawn's like, "Here's some chopsticks to play it with."
SE: Chopsticks! [laughing]
BH: He played it with chopsticks.
SE: Yeah. That actually goes back to Sound & Color, because when we were doing it, Blake had this thing with Steve where he goes, "You've got to be quiet." I always remember dialing in drum sounds and Blake was super into getting this quiet drum sound. I thought how interesting the drums were sounding because of how quiet he was playing. And so I've taken that with me since then. You can make them sound like the biggest stadium drummer in the world, or you can make them sound like this tiny thing. But there's so much tonality to someone who's playing quietly. Sometimes by giving somebody a pair of drumsticks that are chopsticks, they are naturally going to play really quietly, even if they're slamming it in a way that they'd have no control over. Sometimes giving someone chopsticks brings out an interesting quality in the drums.
BH: It adds a lot of breath. You can have so many more details because you're not squashing it.
SE: Yeah. The room isn't choking. It's got a cool sound, you know? Kind of the only way to get it is to just either play hyper-quiet or to have a stick that is so delicate that as hard as you hit it, it's always going to give you that quality. It brings out something that wouldn't work live, but in a studio, you can play with it and screw with it. I think it did bring out something interesting, even though he wasn't stoked.
BH: He wasn't stoked, but I think he was excited to come into the studio after a while.
SE: To say he wasn't stoked is the wrong thing. I think he was intrigued, but he's a joker, you know. He's like, "Are you playing with me, or is this going to be cool?"
BH: The first day Nate came in, he had five bass drums hooked up to one bass drum. He had walked in and ordered a certain kind of kick, because he thought he was walking into a certain kind of thing. He had five bass drums going out like this and about 65 microphones all over the place, you know what I'm saying, but it works! You get the coolest drum sounds that way.
What was the five bass drum sound like?
