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.
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