The Suffers

Kam Franklin isn’t afraid to say her piece. As the singer for The Suffers, a Houston-based seven-piece soul group, she’s shared the stage with Chaka Khan, toured with My Morning Jacket’s Jim James, and received advice from Mavis Staples. But when she’s spoken up about the inequalities of the music business, it hasn’t gone over well. “It’s really scary to talk about racism and sexism, and gender pay inequality, and payola in journalism,” says Franklin over the phone from a tour stop at BottleRock festival in Northern California. Outside of singing, she serves as the governor of the Recording Academy’s Texas chapter and as a board member of HeadCount, a nonprofit that works with musicians to get people registered to vote. “Now [I’m] an activist,” she says, with a touch of bemusement. “I didn...