Brittany Howard Time Quotations

By the time I'm 35, I'll probably want to have a family. I'd be happy doing that, teaching my kids to do the right things, to do good things.

I'm homesick all the time. I miss my animals. I miss my family. I miss my friends.

Onstage is the one time in my day that I can let it all out.

The first time I learned how to play, my guitar was out of tune. I didn't know it; I just started writing songs.

Every time I'm home, it's like a vacation, but I've been playing in bands since I was 11. I guess our goals were always small goals. It started off my goal was just to be in a band. Then it was to have a drummer that would show up.

For my band's debut tour in 2011, we road-tripped across the country in a 15-passenger van. It was the first time I'd left Alabama. I drove through scenery I'd only ever seen in calendars: auburn leaves falling in Vermont, the sun setting over purple mountains in Arizona. It was incredible.

When I first started, I was much weaker of a singer because I wasn't used to singing so much. Now I've learned, when I'm singing on stage, not to go over. You can go over and mess yourself up. I used to do it all the time, wouldn't know how to preserve it for the next show.

I've had some terrible jobs, but working in a kitchen at Cracker Barrel is probably the worst I've ever had. I was a grill cook - awful! It wasn't the smell, it was the people. The music, too. We had to be 'country fresh,' so they played this terrible country music eight hours during the shift. It was a bleak existence - a very dark time.