Interview with Shana Cleveland

 

(This feature first appeared in issue #137 of Shindig! magazine. For the full unpublished interview click over the jump below.)

 

The creation of Shana Cleveland's new album was bookended by life-changing experiences. “It's been a wild ride” she tells Duncan Fletcher

“I was into old blues pickers like Geeshie Wiley, Skip James and Lightnin' Hopkins. I’ve always been a big Fahey fan. There’s a guy who played open mics in Seattle when I lived there named Rick Sabo. I never knew when he would show up, but I would go to places I thought he might and wait. Then when he did stumble in, always in an old trench coat and a bit drunk, and he began playing it felt like I had won the night.” So says Shana Cleveland when asked about early influences. Traces of all these players can be heard on Shana's new album Manzanita, but its dominant shaping forces are her life experiences.

“I wrote all the songs on this album while I was pregnant and in the early months of my son’s life. It was such a psychedelic time! My head was in such a weird place, all flooded with hormones and wonder at the mystery of life. I liked where the songs were going so, I figured it would be cool to see what a whole album written in that surreal state would sound like.” With her husband Will and several musician friends from Seattle, Shana recorded Manzanita in less than a week. The unrehearsed, intuitive arrangements blend with Shana's open-tuned guitar to give the songs an otherworldly watercolour-like quality. It reveals a different side to Shana, who readers may know as vocalist/guitarist in surf band La Luz.

Shortly after completing the album Shana received shock news. “It’s been a wild ride. Around this time last year, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and for a few months following that shocker I really couldn’t create much of anything” she says. Thankfully her treatment proved successful. “This album was done before I got the diagnosis, but I’ve written two albums since then. The intensity and horror of that time led to a lot of contemplation which, in turn, led to a lot of songs.”

While we wait to hear those songs, Manzanita yields an abundance of riches, all imbued with early parenthood's peculiar sense of wonder, and an appreciation of the natural world, inspired in part by Shana and Will moving to rural California. “I write outside most of the time” she says. “I like being immersed in all the little noises - insects, birds, cars, wind, chainsaws ... I feel like I’m able to tap into my subconscious mind without the judgment I might fall into if I was alone with my thoughts in a quiet room. It feels like a collaboration in a way.”

Manzanita is out on March 10 on Hardly Art

Curt Boettcher & Friends - Looking For The Sun

Collection of rare recordings by posthumously-recognised sunshine pop genius.


Any musician or music producer whose name goes on to become synonymous with a particular genre must have been doing something right. In Curt Boettcher's case that genre was sunshine pop. In the latter half of the sixties studio technology was expanding at the same rate as the imaginations of the people who used them. Music entered what scientists like to call “a purple patch”. The most obvious example of this alignment of stars would be the Beatles creating their sonic masterpieces in London's Abbey Road Studios, or Brian Wilson in making “teenage symphonies to God” with the help of his brothers, a cousin, some extremely talented session musicians and the best studio technology Los Angeles had to offer.

There were of course others forging similar paths, doing work that pushed the boundaries of what a three-minute pop song could sound like. Boettcher was one such man. And if anecdotal evidence is correct Boettcher actually influenced Brian Wilson with his uplifting, shimmering pop, helping raise the bar for music production as an art-form.

Boettcher was best known for producing hit records for the Association, and for forming rock bands The Ballroom and The Millennium, but he also made vast amounts of recordings with various groups and singers in the studios of LA. Bad deals and bad luck meant he didn't attain fame and financial success. He died in 1987 at the age of 43, at the time largely unrecognised for the work he'd left behind.

Over time interest has grown however and his reputation is now beginning to match the size of his talent. This collection, expertly put together by Steve Stanley, founder of Now Sounds Records, is not a “best of”, but focuses on the work Boettcher did as a producer rather than a performer. It highlight just what a treasure trove the perpetually busy producer left behind. Not only that, it gives a strong sense of what the Californian music scene was all about. Most of the tracks on this compilation were released as singles and have been unavailable and out of print since their initial release.

I cannot stress enough how enjoyable this collection is. There's not a duffer among the CD's 21 tracks (18 on the vinyl version). My own personal highlights include Cindy Malone's stomper 'You Were Near Me', the gentle psych-pop of 'Milk And Honey' by Summer's Children, and Ray Whitley's 'Lorraine' – a masterclass in melancholic melodrama akin to the works of Scott Walker. For the more psychedelically minded there 's Eddie Hodges' ' Shadows and Reflections' or the Latin-influenced 'Enamorado' by Keith Colley. Novelty and light relief get a look in too with Jonathan Moore's camp pastiche of swinging London, 'London Bridge'.

If you're of the belief that the well of '60s music has been drained and exhausted think again. This well-researched, and lovingly annotated collection can only further enhance Boettcher's growing reputation.


Click here for High Moon Records

William Tyler - Goes West

(This review first appeared in issue #87 of Shindig! magazine.)

Merge CD/LP

Listeners to Tyler's occasional It's All True podcast series will be familiar with his insightful take on music's relationship with human emotions. Equally articulate whether discussing the importance of silence, white noise or obscure indigenous folk music, it's this deep thinking that underpins his guitar playing. Goes West is the first record he's made since relocating from his home town of Nashville to the Californian coast. A ten track instrumental album of ambient Americana, it finds Tyler in a hopeful, even optimistic mood. Despite being an in-demand electric guitarist here he's restricted his own playing here to acoustic guitar but is ably backed by a hand-picked band of sympathetic players.

With an ego-less virtuosity and precise technique similar to that of Brit-picker Martin Simpson, Tyler makes melodic journeys that have roots in British and Appalachian folk, bluegrass and southern country, but mood and magic take precedence over any genre-specific stylings. Majestic.

GospelbeacH - Another Summer Of Love

(This review first appeared in issue #68 of Shindig! magazine.)

Alive CD/LP

Whether 2017 yields a season of goodwill remains to be seen. This follow up to GospelbeacH's 2015's debut Pacific Surf Line can only help it happen. Its ten tracks of lush, cosmic Americana could only have been made on America's west coast, so the opening lyric cheekily borrowed from The Jam (“In the desert there's a thousand things I want to say to you”) is a neat attention grabber. You know you're listening to a band with serious pop-nous.

GospelBeacH's sound recalls Tom Petty's mix of roots rock and new-wave, along with the grown-up country rock of Chuck Prophet. Though recognising they may be peddling an idealised version of the Golden Sate their take on Cali-rock is seductive – catchy tunes, tasteful song-serving guitar solos and accomplished musicianship that doesn't stray into session-player blandness. Not one for neophiles, but those of us who value quality can bask in its revitalising sun-drenched goodness.

Morgan Delt - Phase Zero

(This review first appeared in issue 58 of Shindig! magazine)

Sub Pop LP / CD / CASS

Despite the implied clean slate, Delt already has a self-released six song cassette and a full length LP to his name. Yet this latest outing makes the best starting point, with Delt having honed his mix of home-made bedroom psych and trippy soft rock. Experimental but never at the expense of melody, with his falsetto vocals low in the mix the ten songs are performed entirely by Delt in his Topanga Canyon studio. It's a modern take on west coast psychedelia, avoiding retro re-hash errors and sound-a-like faux pas.

The poppy 'I Don't Want To Know What's Happening Outside' begins the inner journey before giving way to the heavier, more ominous tracks that characterise the rest of the album. Coming across as the Californian hippy cousin of Jacco Gardner, Delt has created a comforting blanket of sunshine dappled lo-fi layering, albeit one that hints at darkness in the sunshine state.