Brittany Howard used to practice music in a haunted house

Q31:27Brittany Howard on leaving Alabama Shakes, What Now, and growing up in poverty

The musician Brittany Howard says there's a side to living in a haunted house that people never talk about: if you don't have the money to move, you're stuck sharing a roof with ghosts.

Howard made a name for herself with her band Alabama Shakes, but these days she's striking out on her own as a solo artist. She first met her Alabama Shakes bandmate Zac Cockrell in high school where they started making music together, often practicing in her haunted house.

"Yes, it was haunted," Howard tells Q's Tom Power in a recent conversation about her second solo album, What Now. "I figured it out real quick."

Howard says the hauntings weren't an everyday thing, but it wasn't uncommon to hear slamming doors and mysterious footsteps around the house. 

"I got locked out one time," she recalls. "The back door had this giant slide lock. I remember being on the back porch talking on the phone with my friend — I had just got off work — and I can hear the slide lock [moving]. It was kind of hard to do, too … and then I heard it close, because that's a very distinct sound.

"Immediately, I'm telling my friend, 'Oh my God, stay on the phone with me, I think someone's in my house!' I run around the house and go to the front door, and there's no one in the entire house. That had happened to me a couple times."

Having grown up in poverty, Howard explains that the house was quite old and "definitely should have been demolished," but her family couldn't afford to leave. She lived there for seven years.

"I never got used to it," she says. "No, I never got used to it because it seemed like when it would really kick up is when you were relaxed. So when you got comfortable is when something would happen and it would scare the crap out of you."

Watch Howard's full interview with Power, or listen to it on our podcast, for what she had to say about her new album and leaving Alabama Shakes.

The full interview with Brittany Howard is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Brittany Howard produced by Vanessa Greco.