Brittany Howard and Michael Kiwanuka

with Yasmin Williams

Doors 6:00 p.m. | Show 7:00 p.m. | 18+

Information | Tickets

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Brittany Howard

There’s a double meaning to the title of What Now, the revelatory new album from singer/songwriter Brittany Howard. “With the world we’re living in now, it feels like we’re all just trying to hang onto our souls,” says the Nashville-based musician and frontwoman for four-time Grammy Award-winning Alabama Shakes. “Everything seems to be getting more extreme and everyone keeps wondering, ‘What now? What’s next?’ By the same coin, the only constant on this record is you never know what’s going to happen next: every song is its own aquarium, its own little miniature world built around whatever I was feeling and thinking at the time.”

With five Grammy® wins and sixteen nominations, Howard follows up her massively acclaimed solo debut Jaime—a 2019 LP that landed on best-of-the-year lists from the likes of Pitchfork, the New York Times, and Rolling Stone – with What Now, drawing an immense and indelible power from endless unpredictability. Over the course of its 12 tracks, Howard brings her singular musicality to a shapeshifting sound encompassing everything from psychedelia and dance music to dream-pop and avant-jazz—a fitting backdrop for an album whose lyrics shift from unbridled outpouring to incisive yet radically idealistic commentary on the state of the human condition. At turns galvanizing, cathartic, and wildly soul-expanding, the result is a monumental step forward for one of the most essential artists of our time.

Like Jaime (whose celebratory single “Stay High” earned a Grammy for Best Rock Song), What Now finds Howard taking the helm as producer and working closely with engineer/co-producer/co-mixer Shawn Everett (Beck, The War on Drugs). Recorded at the legendary Sound Emporium and the historic RCA Studio B in Nashville, the album emerged through a deliberately free-flowing process, with Howard doubling down on the unfettered creativity that’s long defined her work. “I don’t ever plan too deeply, but usually I show up with the songs almost fully formed,” she says. “With this record there was a lot of exploring sounds on the spot, and trusting that the right thing would come to us.” Despite that highly exploratory approach, many of the songs on What Now unfold in intricate and hyper-inventive arrangements rooted in complex rhythm patterns, achieved with the help of musicians like Paul Horton (keys), Lloyd Buchanan (keys), Brad Allen Williams (Guitar), drummer Nate Smith (Fearless Flyers, Vulfpeck, Paul Simon), and Alabama Shakes bassist Zac Cockrell. “All the sounds on this album are analog, all the drums are real drums,” Howard points out. “There’s so many different structures and tones happening within the songs that it ended up being a real monster to mix, but we figured it out. In a way it’s shocking to me how it all came together.”

Anchored in Howard’s inimitable and infinitely commanding voice—a supreme vessel for channeling raw emotional truth—What Now opens on a slow-building and rapturous track called “Earth Sign.” An intimate meditation on the limitless nature of love, “Earth Sign” immediately envelops the listener in its quietly symphonic convergence of musical elements: Howard’s frenetic piano work, barbershop-quartet-inspired harmonies, otherworldly textures formed through an ingenious bit of in-studio experimentation. “We were playing keyboard sounds through a speaker, and on top of the speaker was a trash can with different metal objects attached, and we recorded the resonance of those objects to bring into the song,” Howard reveals.

A departure from the dreamy languor of “Earth Sign,” What Now’s title track takes on a potent urgency fueled by its syncopated grooves, blistering guitar riffs, and fiercely honest lyrics (e.g., “I’ve been making plans that don’t include you anymore/My heart wants to stay but I don’t know what for”). “‘What Now’ is maybe the truest and bluest of all the songs,” says Howard. “It’s never my design to hurt anyone’s feelings, but I needed to say what was on my mind without editing myself. I like how it’s a song that makes you want to dance, but at the same time the lyrics are brutal.” Next, on “Red Flags,” Howard offers up a gloriously brooding reflection on love’s darker dimensions, echoing the stormy intensity of her emotional state by continually pulling the track into strange new directions. “In my past relationships, I’ve had a tendency to see red flags as part of some parade just for me—something for me to run right through without paying any attention,” she says. “To me ‘Red Flags’ sounds very dystopian, which makes sense for a song that feels like end-of-times as far as me emotionally maturing. It’s like a big tower fell and now I have to create something new.” Later, on “Prove It To You,” What Now bursts into a more euphoric mood as Howard delivers a four-on-the-floor dance track spiked with her explosive guitar work. “I wanted to write something fun that captured the joy of a new relationship, but also tell the truth about how I always feel like I don’t know what I’m doing when it comes to love.”

An album deeply informed by the chaotic climate of modern life, What Now looks outward on songs like “Another Day”: a soulful and sublimely uplifting track preceded by an interlude in which Howard samples Maya Angelou’s reading of her poem “A Brave and Startling Truth.” “The poem talks about how as humans we’re all powerful beings with the capacity to do so many wonderful things for the world and for each other, even if that’s not what we usually focus our attention on,” says Howard. “‘Another Day’ is my way of agreeing with Maya Angelou and trying to see the good in others, trying to change my outlook despite what’s shown on the news, trying to stay strong in how I live my life.” And on “Every Color In Blue,” What Now closes out with a gorgeously sprawling reverie graced with a spellbinding performance from trumpet player Rod McGaha. “That song has to do with depression and how it can be such a horrible, heartbreaking thing but also bittersweet,” says Howard. “Within that depth of feeling, when you’re as low as you can go, that’s also where you find your capacity for love and for empathy. It’s a heavy subject for me, but I’ve gotten to the age where I realize that it’s a part of life and something that a lot of people deal with. So why not talk about it, and why not encase it in a beautiful frame?”

In putting the finishing touches on What Now, Howard reached out to two friends from the Nashville Center For Alternative Therapy and recorded their performance on crystal singing bowls, then used those hypnotic tones as a transition between each song. “This record’s definitely meant to be listened to alone so you can really meditate with it,” she says. “At the end of the day I hope people use the album however they need to, but I do think the gift I bring is to help people to be more introspective and ask themselves questions. And I think with a little self-examination, we can learn to be kinder, more compassionate, more understanding of each other. We can see that a lot of us are going through the same shit, and we all just want to be seen for who we really are.”

Michael Kiwanuka

British musician Michael Kiwanuka introduced and ingratiated himself with his acclaimed debut album, Home Again. A talented, unassuming young man of Ugandan heritage and honeyed voice, Michael was busy making some of the sweetest contemporary soul music of recent years.

With a BRIT Award to his name before arguably finding his own distinct space, Michael took a decidedly left turn for the Love & Hate LP. Produced alongside Danger Mouse, the record flew to number 1 in the UK, with its otherworldly soundscapes sounding utterly both singular and sprawling, an opus by anyone’s definition. Notably, the haunting “Cold Little Heart” featured as the title music to HBO’s Big Little Lies, introducing Michael’s music to a whole new and appreciative audience (counting the likes of Barack Obama, Adele, and Tyler The Creator amongst them).

With the benefit of hindsight, Love & Hate almost acted as a blueprint for 2019’s KIWANUKA, Michael’s third and most definitive release to date, with Danger Mouse and British producer Inflo back behind the glass. A complex but deeply listenable and expansive expression of self-worth, KIWANUKA reaped Michael the distinguished Mercury Prize in 2020, his fourth and fifth BRIT nominations (British Male Solo Artist and British Album), and his first Grammy Award nomination for Best Rock Album. All three records have been certified gold status in the UK alone.

Quite how an artist begins to follow up one of “the greatest albums of the decade” (The Guardian), we will surely soon find out, but Michael’s been keeping himself in good company as a regular contributor and confidante of the acclaimed SAULT collective, both on and off stage.

As we welcome him back to festival stages this Summer (where he excels, helping to sell out Green Man in 2022 on his name’s headliner reveal alone), what Michael delivers for his fourth act will be hotly anticipated. An artist in its truest, purest sense.

Yasmin Williams

Based in Alexandria, VA, Yasmin Williams is an acoustic fingerstyle guitarist and film composer. She has an unorthodox, modern style of guitar playing and utilizes various techniques including alternate tunings, percussive hits, and lap tapping in her music to great effect. Her “radiant sound and adventitious origins have made her a key figure in a diverse dawn for the solo guitar” (The New York Times). Williams’s music has been described as rich, harmonious, and “in a lot of ways, the joy and possibility she brings to the guitar reminds me more of Eddie Van Halen than any of the other fingerstyle guitarists to whom she's compared” (NPR Music).

She grew up in northern Virginia where various genres of music from smooth jazz to hip-hop were played in her household. She was introduced to the guitar after playing the video game Guitar Hero 2 and became interested in playing the guitar in 2009. She begged her parents to buy her a real electric guitar and once she received her first guitar and amplifier, she taught herself how to play the guitar by ear. After a few years of playing the electric guitar, she taught herself how to play the bass guitar, 12 string guitar, and classical guitar before eventually deciding to switch her focus to the acoustic guitar because of the instrument's versatility. While in high school, she released her first EP Serendipity in 2012, which she recorded and mixed herself.

She graduated from New York University with a BM in Music Theory and Composition in December 2017. Her first album, Unwind, was released on May 4, 2018. It charted highly on several Amazon and iTunes charts including top paid albums, including charting at #7 on Amazon’s top paid albums and #1 on iTunes‘s Folk chart, and charted at #15 on Billboard's Heatseekers chart. Her latest album, Urban Driftwood, was released on January 29, 2021 and has received critical acclaim from numerous major publications including The New York Times, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, NPR Music, The Fader, Wallstreet Journal, AllMusic, Paste Magazine, No Depression, and several other outlets. She was listed as one of the “25 New and Rising Artists Shaping the Future of Music in 2023” by Pitchfork. Most recently, Williams signed to Nonesuch Records and released a new single, titled Dawning, featuring Aoife O’Donovan on vocals, Kafari on rhythm bones, and Nic Gareiss on flat foot percussion.