Preston C Howell is about to shake things up with his debut single “Supply and Demand”, out today! From a very young age, the South Florida native has had a strong passion for singing… and that passion recently led him to season 17 of The Voice! Preston is also a part of the a capella group Acapop! KIDS, an elite group of talented young singers put together by Grammy-award winning Pentatonix creators Scott Hoying and Ben Bram.
With “Supply and Demand”, Preston hopes to give back to the community that supports him. He hopes that the song can offer some optimism during these difficult times, and it’s surely a fun track!
I recently got to catch up with Preston about his adventures in music. Read our chat below!
Hi Preston! Thanks for being down to chat today. How’s everything going?
Everything’s going great! Quarantine’s a bummer, but you know… still making the most out of it!
That’s true. That’s true. Sooo, congratulations on your new single “Supply & Demand”! It’s really fun and upbeat, and I think those vibes are much needed in the world right now. Can you tell us how it was like creating the song?
It was just an awesome railroad track, like where we are now… it was just so fun getting there. The people, the attitudes, it was just amazing. We haven’t had any beef in between us because the guy who wrote this song actually shared his story with us and he wrote this song because he was in a bad place, in some dark times and he just really wanted to make something out of it. It’s helped us a lot by putting it up there in our minds because when I was recording the song it was just… wow, I just gotta make this guy proud because this song means so much to him and I was like alright, I’m gonna do this. And it was so fun being in that studio recording.
Dang, that’s awesome! I know sometimes having to feel like you have to live up to certain expectations can be really hard.
Yeah. I was a little nervous at first I was like I don’t know if he’s gonna like it, I don’t know what he’s going to say but I mean I feel like he really liked it, and liked where I was going, so I’m glad I made him proud.
That’s awesomeee. So I know this past year has been very eventful for you. You were on The Voice and you got to have John Legend as your mentor! Could you perhaps tell us about some of your favorite moments of the whole experience?
Definitely meeting the other contestants right when I got to LA at the hotel and the recording place. It was just super exciting energy and I felt like I was with people that were doing the exact same thing that I was doing and it was just so peaceful in there. It was amazing. We all clicked right away and we were all hanging out, went to the pool sometimes, it was just so fun! Also, definitely another amazing part of this journey was meeting Taylor Swift and Usher, which was crazy.
Wow.
It was crazy because I didn’t know who was going to be the advisor, and it was crazy. I walked in and I almost fainted inside. I kept it cool outside because I didn’t want to faint on camera but yeah. I was shocked.
That’s so cool like… that doesn’t happen every day!
Yeah I just never… ever… ever imagined I’d sing in front of Taylor Swift or Usher. Singing in front of them was a DREAM. Crazy.
I bet. What were some of the most important things you learned from that experience?
I think what Usher said in one of my episodes was that I need to connect with the song, and the word he used was “intimacy”. I was like oh intimacy yeah. And then he’s like no no no, not just intimacy, INTO-me-see, and I was like mind blown. He was using such wisdom, he was like “INTO-me-see bro, you need to see into yourself when you’re singing the song. You need to connect differently” and I was like… I got it right away.
We love an intellectual!
Yeah! I never really thought of the word until now.
That’s cool! So you’re also a part of Acapop! KIDS, where you’ve gotten to perform cool acappella covers of some of today’s biggest hits. What’s been one of your favorite experiences while in the group?
Probably in almost every single video that we do, when we’re practicing and learning the choreography and the song, it’s just something else. We’re all in our own safe space, jamming out, learning stuff… we don’t even see it as work. We’re just jamming out like we’re just hanging out as friends, which is awesome. Also when we all went to the Kelly Clarkson show, it was crazy. Like absolutely crazy. The backstage was amazing, we were walking through and one of the kids was crying and we were like oh my gosh. It was just crazy, they made this guest room for us and they probably do that for every guest they have but ours was just… we couldn’t. It had Acapop! right there on the door and it was awesome.
The details you know? The details.
Yeah.
What sparked your interest for singing?
Definitely my dad. When I was like… I know I said this on The Voice because this was my main story, but when I was 4 years old I started singing along with my dad. My mom would be like “What’s this kid doing? Why isn’t he singing?” and then I started singing a lot after my dad, because he’d always be singing around the house. He sang in the closet, recorded into his phone, and I just connected right away even when he’d be singing Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. It was automatic, like I want to be a singer.
And you did it! So, if you weren’t making music right now, what do you think you’d be doing?
Hmm. I joke around about this a lot, but I always thought about being a detective. I would always watch The Flash, I don’t know if you know the story behind that but he’s a forensic scientist and what he’s doing in the show, I thought that was so cool like wow I want to do that. I want to be The Flash. So, I want to be a detective.
That’d be cool.
I always thought that secret service type thing was cool.
It’s super like… you have to be super slick and secretive.
Yeah like, have you watched Kingsman?
Yeah.
Bro. That was like my favorite movie ever. Like secret service. It’s cool.
Mmmm. That’s awesome! Now, to finally wrap all of this up, what was the last song you listened to?
Oooh. This morning I just listened to “Don’t Start Now”
YESSSSS A BOP!
Yeah and I just… in our acapella group in A Capella Academy which is run by the same people who made Pentatonix and Acapop!, they do this camp every summer. You know, this summer we obviously couldn’t have the camp, it’s in a month. But we got the song to do, “Don’t Start Now” in a capella. So Shams arranged ours and I was learning it through the actual song. I was just jamming to it this morning.
That’s like really energetic, you know? It’s great to wake you up when you’re feeling like okay, this is too early for me to function. Even if it’s like the time when you usually wake up… but we’re in quarantine, so!
Yeah. I love that song. One of my favorites.
Me too.
Check out “Supply and Demand below”, and say hi to Preston on Twitter and Instagram @prestonchowell!
