“I don’t think people can prepare you for what you learn in the first year of marriage. It’s so crazy.” BREAKING UP IS TOUGH—especially when it’s with your bandmates of 17 years. For former Gossip front woman Beth Ditto, that breakup came after 2012’s A Joyful Noise, the group’s fifth album, which was released after member Nathan Howdeshell decided to leave Portland, Ore., and return to their home state of Arkansas. Ditto says there was no falling out. The split was swift and smooth.
“I was trying to write for the Gossip but without the Gossip, and it just felt wrong,” recalls the 36-year-old singer, sitting in pajamas in her house in Portland, where she lives with her wife, Kristin Ogata. “For a while I couldn’t put my finger on…
