British country singer-songwriter Anna Howie, who lives just outside Blindley Heath, is promising songs about “the struggle and the joy” as she gears up for the release of her second album Good for Roses via the Absolute Label (Universal/Sony) on April 18.
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00:00Good morning, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor for Sussex Newspaper. It's really
00:05lovely this morning to meet and to chat to Anna Howie. Anna, you've got your second album
00:10coming out and this is a significant one and so interesting. You described this album as
00:16being about the joy and the struggle, so that's a lot to encompass in one album, isn't it?
00:21That is, there's a lot to get in, but it kind of covers a lot of things, doesn't it? I mean,
00:25it covers from getting out of bed to where you might be. That's the biggest struggle, isn't it?
00:32Yeah, to, you know, how people deal with the everyday. So I can't, I didn't set out for it
00:39to be about that, but I realised as I was writing and as the songs were kind of emerging off the
00:44production line that actually that was a common theme, was coming from some kind of slight dark
00:51place into something bright. And album number two, really curiously, this is the more personal
00:57album, isn't it? You were saying that album number one, a little while ago at the end of the lockdown,
01:01was much more other people's stories. This is very much yours. It is, yeah, it is. And I think that's
01:07kind of probably a natural progression. It's a bit harder to, well, I've found it a bit harder to kind
01:15of write about myself and about stuff that's gone on and how I feel about things. And I found that
01:23it's much more natural for me to kind of latch onto someone else's story and try and find where
01:28I identify in their story, whereas this is a lot more about my story. So it did feel like
01:35I had to be kind of a bit braver.
01:37Well, I was going to say, there's a courage in putting your own story out there, isn't there?
01:41There is a bit, yeah. You have to kind of take a deep breath and say, well,
01:46this is true and important. And so it's good that I'm doing it. But yeah, sometimes you kind of,
01:53it does feel like you need to be a bit bolder.
01:58Well, absolutely. And also that's authenticity, isn't it? If we listen to this album, by the end
02:03of it, we'll think, oh, I know Anna a bit better now. That's presumably part of the aim.
02:09Yeah, for sure. I hope as well that it's kind of, my daughter listened to it from start to finish
02:14and she said, she came away saying, I feel really good. I feel really good. So I loved that. That
02:20was kind of like the top, the top kind of critique for me.
02:26Well, coming from family too, yes, that counts.
02:28Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, because she doesn't hold back.
02:31So that reflects, you're saying you have a natural positivity.
02:35Yeah, I think I do. I try. I mean, it's not, we were just talking about January earlier,
02:39weren't we? And it's not, you know, it's not our favorite month. Yeah, I do think I do have
02:47a natural positivity, which, yeah, I've tried to kind of put into this or maybe it just kind of
02:55comes into that. But that's not to say that I, there aren't some slightly dark moments on it,
03:01because there are, but there's also some fun. And we've had some great fun in the studio with
03:07a couple of the songs. So there's, I hope there's a little bit of everything in there.
03:13There's some heartbreakers, but there's also lots of, lots of laughs too.
03:18That sounds fantastic. And clearly a very different album to the first one in other ways too,
03:22insofar as the first album, Merge from the Lockdown, when you did a truly remarkable thing,
03:27which surprised you as much as anyone.
03:30Yeah, for sure. I mean, I started a Facebook live stream on a Friday night, really just so,
03:37in order for me to keep playing and kind of keep some kind of connection and some kind of
03:42gigging going, although it felt so odd, you know, kind of singing into a screen, you know,
03:49it was just so alien to everybody at that stage, really. We all got better at it as time went on,
03:55but to start with, it was, you know, you kind of just felt like an idiot. But, but yeah,
04:00so I started this live stream, really not expecting anything, just giving it a go.
04:07And it rather took off.
04:10It did rather take off. Yeah, it went, I did 26 Fridays in a row. And I'd only planned to do one,
04:18maybe two. And it went on to have nearly 2 million views on Facebook.
04:23That's an astonishing figure, isn't it?
04:26That was a huge thing.
04:28And you even begin to explain that, 2 million.
04:31No, no. And it was just amazing to see kind of how, what that reach, you know, that reach is,
04:40where at places in the world I'd never heard of, I was having messages from people over,
04:47you know, on Facebook Messenger, just saying that they're tuned in. And, and a lot of it was,
04:52was me going on to Google Translate, because it was all in different languages.
04:57So music is a great connect to the great communicator, isn't it?
05:01Absolutely, absolutely. And I think people wanted somewhere to be. We, in my house,
05:07we needed somewhere to be. It became a thing here too, you know, that Friday night,
05:13that's what we were going to do, because it was such a kind of rootless time, wasn't it? It was,
05:18so people were just sort of floating around trying to make the best of what they could do.
05:23And then all of a sudden, we needed somewhere to be. And we had to be there Friday at 6.30,
05:27because people were tuning in. So it was kind of great for us in our house. And I think that sort
05:33of went spread out and became good for other people as well. I know people met in my comments
05:41in those gigs who are still friends now. I mean, you know, which is just a fabulous legacy,
05:47isn't it? And now, which is good for roses. And coming up, you've got dates in Arundel,
05:55Hawley and Brighton. Anna, really nice to speak to you and to meet you. Good luck with everything.
06:01Thanks, Bill. Lovely to talk to you. Thanks.