The Reverend Shawn Amos - Back To The Beginning

• The Rev with the McCrary Sisters and his son,
• Ellis at East Iris Studios, Nashville.
• foto: Brady Blade

The Reverend Shawn Amos - Back To The Beginning

On February 23 the NAACP award-winning author, Grammy-nominated producer, and multimedia storyteller The Reverend Shawn Amos shares his new track “Back To The Beginning,” the second single from his upcoming album Soul Brother No. 1. The song builds from a slow-burning soul groove to a revelatory crescendo courtesy of the celebrated Nashville gospel group The McCrary Sisters, who lend their powerful vocals to the song. Soul Brother No. 1 will be released on May 3 via Immediate Family records.

"It's a song about looking at yourself in the mirror and learning to love what you see,” writes Amos. “Like much of the album, it's also a reminder that our time here is limited. We can use it hating or use it loving. I’m working hard to love." 

Soul Brother No. 1 represents both the culmination of a unique, two-decade-plus artistic career, and a breakthrough in an ongoing journey of self-exploration. From the get-go, Amos has expressed an ever-evolving musical vision through rootsy Americana, singer-songwriter pop, and, as harmonica ace The Reverend Shawn Amos, the blues. Through The Rev persona, Amos immersed himself in African American culture, directly linking to the ongoing story of his people’s struggles, triumphs, and unshakable joy. “The whole reason I started playing the blues,” he says, “was it connected me to my race in a way that I hadn’t fully understood. With Soul Brother No. 1, I’m taking that journey even deeper.”

Seeking new depths, Amos, and producer James Saez (Social Distortion, The Road Kings) crafted a sonic world redolent of the socially conscious, Afrocentric ‘70s soul and funk. Amos and Saez assembled a dream team: drummer Steve Ferrone (Tom Petty & the

Heartbreakers, Average White Band, Chaka Khan), bassist Jerry “Wyzard” Seay (Stevie Nicks, Keb’ Mo’, Mother’s Finest), keyboardist-songwriter Dapo Torimiro (Lauryn Hill, Earth, Wind & Fire), and longtime Amos guitarist Chris “Doctor” Roberts. 

The fierce vitality and spirit of self-reconnection underpinning Soul Brother No. 1 initially emerged through words and story rather than song, as Amos dug deep into his life and generational experience to author his first published book, the NAACP Image Awardwinning youth novel Cookies & Milk, a semi-autobiographical tale based on his latchkey kid years as the son of cookie entrepreneur Wally “Famous” Amos and erstwhile nightclub chanteuse Shirley “Shirl-ee May” Ellis. Like the book’s protagonist, Ellis Johnson, Amos was a Black child of divorce with mostly white friends, struggling to find his identity in colorfulbut-chaotic ‘70s Hollywood. In those hothouse times, Amos’s hustler father bequeathed 

him preternatural willpower to manifest big dreams, but feelings of blood kinship came as much from Parliament-Funkadelic, Isaac Hayes, and the Jackson 5 as they did from Amos’s broken home. The rich, righteous world of Cookies & Milk – and 2023 sequel Ellis Johnson Might Be Famous – emboldened songwriter Amos to tap back into his family of choice: the seminal soul artists of the Black power era. 

In the thick of making Soul Brother No. 1, Amos realized, “I’ve spent so much of my life partially dimming my own light. No more. With this album, I am uncovering every last root, undoing my own programming. I was brought up to think I was white, cut off from my own roots. No more. I spent weeks trying to figure out who this version of Black Pride is for me. Now I know. Soul Brother No. 1 is who I am.”

WEBLINKS:

• OS: www.shawnamos.com
• FB: www.facebook.com/therevamos/
• IG: www.instagram.com/therevamos/

More information: Betsie Brown, Blind Raccoon, betsie@blindraccoon.com