“In a way it’s like casting a film.”
That’s how Reverend Shawn Amos describes producing his latest album, Soul Brother No. 1. He went to NYU Film School and dropped out in the middle of his senior year to pursue a “first-look” deal with A&M Films as a screenwriter.
His resume reads like a collection of three men’s accomplishments. A renaissance man in every sense of the word, he’s a published author, a record producer, and digital marketing executive. He oversaw Solomon Burke’s last three studio albums,Make Do With What You Got, Nashville, and Like a Fire and produced Quincy Jones’ career overview Q: The Musical Biography of Quincy Jones.
His voice on the album is guttural like a Delta denizen. On the phone, he comes off as a polished executive. He wrote the NAACP Image Award-winning youth novel Cookies & Milk and has released several of his own albums over a three-decade career including Harlem, In Between, Thank You Shirl-ee May, The Reverend Shawn Amos Tells It, The Reverend Shawn Amos Breaks It Down, and Blue Sky.
“Music is always the primary pursuit,” he says, “and to some extent I do the other things while I’m waiting to get back to music, but I like the immediacy of being a songwriter and the relatively light life of it compared to book writing.
“As a singer – as a recording artist, I love the collaborative nature. I went to NYU Film School and making albums is similar to making films. I love the collaboration. I love a bunch of people coming together for a shared creative purpose, the camaraderie and that creative exchange and, as a performer, it’s just the most direct connection from my head to my heart to my spirit. There’s no other way I can tap into my heart and live up in that way that comes even close.”
Soul Brother No. 1 is as diverse as his resume. The title cut and “What It’s Like to Be Black” could fit right in on Soul Train, but the other numbers cut across multiple genres.
“We recorded in Hollywood, all in the same room live. We did the basics in three days. Then, I re-recorded some of the vocals, not all of them. We did vocal overdubs. Leon Mobley who is Ben Harper’s percussionist came in and did overdubs. We overdubbed horns, but the basics was me, The Doctor (longtime Amos guitarist Chris “Doctor” Roberts), Wyzard Seay, and Steve Ferrone (drummer from Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Average White Band, Chaka Khan.)
“I knew from the outset I wanted to bring this sort of ’70s soul funk into a band experience. Foundationally, it’s a blues album, but built in the foundation are blues, and then a soul sound and more of the songs constructed in a way much more blues. And, like I said, in a way it’s like casting a film.
“The first player I knew I had to have was Wyzard Seay. He was in this band called Mother’s Finest, this really seminal Atlanta based funk rock outfit that every musician who is anyone knows, but even though they never really hit. They were signed to Columbia Records, and they were like Aerosmith in the ‘70s. They were gonna be like the next big thing, and it didn’t hit, but he was a monster bass player. We were both on Joe Bonamassa’s Blues Cruise a couple of years ago, and he was playing with Keb Mo.
“I was introduced to The Doctor through a mutual friend. He hadn’t really played the blues before. He had no interest in the blues. He studied jazz at University of Texas in Denton. He’s a Texan, but belies the typical Texas guitar slinger typical stereotype. He had progressive stuff, jazz stuff, stuff that was out a little bit along with classical stuff. He didn’t really connect the dots from classic rock to blues like a lot of folks have done.
“He didn’t have a real allegiance to it. He wasn’t part of that world and didn’t really relate to that either. It meant that we could write a different kind of blues songbook. One of the first things I said to him when we met was, ‘Pretend like no guitar exists after Hubert Sumlin. Imagine a world where nothing else came after it.’”
The only cover song on the albums is Sly and Family Stone’s “Don’t Call Me Nigger.” I asked him if the album, and that song in particular is a statement of him telling the world, “Hey, I’m black.”
“In part, yeah. And it’s also an invitation to anyone else to claim their own individuality whichever way they want to do so. And it’s also an invitation to have trust and empathy and curiosity about other people’s stories. The “Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey” thing; we all talk to each other, and we all carry around our stories and our pains, and if we were a little empathetic, a lot more empathetic to our own human journeys, we would get along better.
“I was dying to record that song, and I think it’s one of the smartest takes on how we don’t listen to one another, and how everyone makes their own pain. We all have to treat each other with kindness. So, I like that. We talk past each other. It’s two sides yelling back and forth all over again and it predates social media, but that song is social media. We yell past each other continuously. Yeah, but the rest is all original.
“There’s also a song called “What It Is to Be Black?” What is to be Russian? What it is to be Chinese? What it is to be Palestinian. What it is to be gay. So, yeah, I’m singing my truth.
“I’m on the cover of my album with my shirt off trying definitely to claim my blackness and my black manner in a way I define it, which is not a way in which a lot of other people define theirs but it’s just as valid and authentic as anyone else’s. And at the same time, hey, what’s yours? What’s your version? I want to know about you, too. I’d like to be a human voice, being black.” Shawn’s father was the first black man to work for the William Morris Talent Agency. His son did, too. Both have had significant impact in a fundamentally white world. Soul Brother No. 1 is Shawn’s declaration that he is comfortable and creatively valid in both milieus.
