HOUSTON – In a recent interview, Kam Franklin, of the Houston-based band The Suffers,’ spoke to NPR about the band’s new album, its difficult recent years and its powerful song about racism.
You can listen to the full interview here.
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Among the topics touched on in the wide-ranging interview included the band’s new album -- the culmination of a difficult three-year journey.
The album is called “It Starts with Love.”
“It was three years of trauma and chaos and COVID, you know?” Franklin said. “And so 2019 was probably the most intense year as a band we’ve ever had. We lost two of our founding band members. We had $40,000 worth of gear stolen in Dallas. We also split from our longtime manager at that time. And having all of that happen, it’s like the equivalent of a breakup. You know, we’d all been together for many years at that point. Then the pandemic hits, and we are forced to reevaluate everything we thought we knew about recording. I made a plan for us, presented it to the band and told them, look, I really think this is going to work out in our favor, but if it doesn’t work out, we don’t have to release these songs. We can, you know, scratch it and try again. We can all get back together. And they said, all right, let’s try. And we tried, and we did it.”
One of The Suffers’ new album songs includes one that touches on the deaths of Black people called “How Do We Heal,” written in 2019.
“I had been told by multiple people not to put it on the record because of how heavy the lyrics were and because of just the fact that I was talking about racism in a song,” Franklin told NPR. “And I had been told many, many times by artists I really respect that if the song scares you or if it’s the truth, you have to release it.”
“I had written it after the death of Atatiana Jefferson and after the death of Philando Castile and all those people that have come before them,” Franklin said. “And I changed a lyric at the very, very end to include Breonna Taylor. I was not planning to write a song about 2020 is what I’m saying - is that it had already been happening for so long, it just happened to still be relevant.”
The song lyrics say, “Shalina, Sandra, Breonna, Corinne, we say your names till we get to see you again.”
“‘How Do We Heal’ came initially from how the Black community was supposed to heal from everything that was happening, from all the police brutality, the racial inequity,” Franklin said. “But now when I sing it every night, I look at it as humanity, as our society as a whole because there’s no way we would be treating ourselves like this if we weren’t all collectively hurting.”
“It Starts With Love” is on sale now.