How Many Spirits Dos Take to Lift the Spirit?

On her intimate new album Wary + Strange, Amythyst Kiah sings her heart out about losing her mom to suicide, and what it’s like being the only black person in the room at country gigs. She created the album with Phoebe Bridger’s producer, Tony Berg, and the result is a project expertly fuses Kiah’s love for ‘90s alt-rock with her old-time, country sensibility.

Amythyst Kiah performs two of her new songs on today’s episode and talks to Bruce Headlam about what it was like for a black teengager to come out as gay in a white Christian southern town. She also explains how learning of the West African roots of Bluegrass helped reaffirm her place in Americana music.

Just a warning, this episode contains talk of suicide.

Subscribe to Broken Record’s YouTube channel to hear all of our interviews:  https://www.youtube.com/brokenrecordpodcast and follow us on Twitter @BrokenRecord

You can also check out past episodes here: https://brokenrecordpodcast.com

Check out our favorite Amythyst Kiah songs HERE.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.