Produced by Elisha Hoffman and executive produced by CMA and ACM award winner Lee Brice, I’m Not Who You Think I Am features the most relatable “gems” within what Howard believes to be thousands of songs she’s written in the past two decades.
Signed to Pump House Records in April 2020, faith and independence and a love of life best define her work of late. Country’s popularity creating unprecedented depth and scope has created a space for Howard’s well-earned wisdom and lyricism favored — to the tune of chart-topping and country radio success — by the likes of Runaway June, Martina McBride and Trisha Yearwood.
“Rebecca Lynn is one of the most talented humans I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with,” says Brice, who co-founded Pump House Records with Rob Hatch and Elisha Hoffman. “She has a voice that has been touched by God and I can not wait for the world to get the chance to hear her new music.”
Howard’s career includes working with Country Music Hall of Famers Patty Loveless, Ronnie Dunn, Vince Gill, and Nashville Songwriting Hall of Famer Roger Murrah (Alan Jackson’s “Don’t Rock The Jukebox”). In the past, she’s also toured with Kenny Rogers, while with country-rock sextet Loving Mary, she traveled the world as a bass player supporting Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler’s solo work.
For the latter, Howard — a multi-instrumentalist gifted at the guitar, ukulele, bass, and piano — learned the bass in two weeks.
Notable, too, are her top-10 album and single (2002’s “Forgive”) and an emotional, roots-driven style that has, at times, placed her within bluegrass’ iconic lineage of achieving a “high, lonesome sound.”
Howard’s latest release reflects where she’s strived to arrive as an artist for her entire career.
“I’m Not Who You Think I Am” resonates as a defiant song-as-statement.
“You’ll hate me in the morning / Crave me when the sun goes down / Swear you’ll never touch me again / But you’ll turn around and then / I’ll get you in the end / Lord, I’ll get you in the end,” she sings in the chorus.
Dig into “Flower Bed” and themes explored in I’m Not Who You Think I Am take a twist towards the style of humor found in The Chicks’ “Goodbye Earl.”
Leaning back into her solid and familial roots, work crafted to be “shared to help people through the hardest times in their lives” includes “I Am My Mother,” a song borne of a soul-searching “emotional deep cleanse” of a conversation that reflected the timelessness of family as the most honest of inspirations.
Similar to “I Am My Mother,” songs like “Heart Still Does,” “Holler,” “Good Place To Turn Around,” and “Strong” reflect the power of countrified, home-spun, and simple Appalachian wisdom to serve as tentposts as a life survived that “move people’s hearts.”
For example, “A Good Place To Turn Around” highlights Howard’s feelings that she’s burned every bridge she would need to turn back as she’s emptied her tank while heading down her existence as a metaphorical lonesome highway. Seeking solace in religion to discover peace of mind, it’s a phenomenal song-as-story-of-redemption that demands attention.
The silver lining at the end of the story — and a sense of where Howard’s skills in the next chapter of her career exist best as a live performer who brings down the house — appears via “Hoedown.” Loretta Lynn, a fellow Kentuckian, has her legacy’s imprint all over the raucous party anthem.
“if she don’t quit shaking that thing talking all that trash / the back of her head is going to hit the grass / Yeah there’s a hoedown down at the barn somebody sound the hoe alarm / hoedown she tried to do it / and my fist I introduced her to it,” sings Howard on the song that revives and reimagines Lynn’s classic “Fist City.”
Howard has already released I’m Not Who You Think I Am’s title track, as well as “Hoedown” and “I Am My Mother,” and is backing those releases with local shows and touring with Brice, and, up until his recent retirement, Steven Tyler.
Ask the performer to sum up what allows her, even after releasing an emotional and life-affirming roller coaster of a release, to continue pursuing peerlessness in her craft, and the answer is as heartwarming as it is clear and straightforward.
“I’m still here because of my love of music, and I sing and write songs that influence people to learn how to love themselves so they can love others.”