Speaker 1: Pushkin. The band Shannon and the Clams were longtime regulars
Speaker 1: in the Bay Area music scene. The band's two main songwriters,
Speaker 1: Shannon Shaw and Cody Blanchard, met in college in Oakland, California,
Speaker 1: and remained there for about a decade until a number
Speaker 1: of events set them adrift, not only physically but also spiritually.
Speaker 1: There was a tragic ghost ship warehouse fire in twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen that killed thirty six people attending the show in Oakland.
Speaker 1: Then there was a danger situation where Shannon was a
Speaker 1: victim of a stalker, and if that weren't enough, there
Speaker 1: was also the death of Shannon's fiance only weeks before
Speaker 1: their wedding day. The band's new album, The Moon Is
Speaker 1: in the Wrong Place, is taken from a phrase Shannon's fiancee,
Speaker 1: Joe Hayner, uttered shortly before his passing. It's also the
Speaker 1: record's moving title track. Much of the new record is
Speaker 1: a Shannon's grief, but there's also tender moments like the Vow,
Speaker 1: a song Shannon had written to surprise Joe on their
Speaker 1: wedding day. I spoke to Shannon, Sean Cody Blanchard about
Speaker 1: moving away from Oakland the aftermath of losing a friend
Speaker 1: in fiance and about their Dan Aarbach produced record, The
Speaker 1: Moon Is in the Wrong Place. This is broken record
Speaker 1: liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Mitchman. Here's
Speaker 1: my conversation with Shannon Shaw and Cody Blanchard of Shannon
Speaker 1: and the Clams. When the single The Moon Is in
Speaker 1: the Wrong Place first came out, and when I realized
Speaker 1: it was the album title, my thought was it might
Speaker 1: be one of the better album titles in recent memory.
Speaker 1: And then when I read the backstory, I got a
Speaker 1: little bummed out. I was like, where it comes from
Speaker 1: makes it even better in a sense. But it's obviously
Speaker 1: just a brutal way to come to it. And I
Speaker 1: don't know what degree you want to talk about it
Speaker 1: or Shannon, but you know, I don't know how to
Speaker 1: talk about this, so sorry.
Speaker 2: Well, we're not raised to talk about it or trained
Speaker 2: generally in America. It really seems.
Speaker 3: Like just so not a part of our culture.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: The funeral marks the end of your time to publicly
Speaker 2: deal with with the loss. But I'm not going that route.
Speaker 2: I can't go that route. It's not sustainable to me.
Speaker 1: What was your relationship with sort of life and death
Speaker 1: prior to this experience, and has it evolved if it
Speaker 1: has at.
Speaker 3: All, It's yeah, it's evolved a lot. You know.
Speaker 2: I've lost my grandparents who I loved but I was
Speaker 2: not very close with. And we had someone who used
Speaker 2: to drum for us years ago committed suicide and that
Speaker 2: was definitely hard. And then I would say the ghost
Speaker 2: Ship fires, was.
Speaker 3: It definitely? Yes? Yeah, that definitely took a lot out
Speaker 3: of us.
Speaker 2: You know, It's that occurred in like the same kind
Speaker 2: of spaces that we frequent and you know, came up
Speaker 2: playing and had had some friends in there and everyone
Speaker 2: was just maybe one or two degrees away from us.
Speaker 2: So it was that was a really hard one. But
Speaker 2: nothing has affected me like this before ever. I think
Speaker 2: just having it be something from inside of my life
Speaker 2: disrupting every part of my life and changing my future.
Speaker 3: Drastically.
Speaker 1: Yeah. How long after you lost your partner, Shannon, did
Speaker 1: you feel that you could reasonably move forward with music again?
Speaker 4: Pretty quick? Right?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I never thought of it quite in those terms, because
Speaker 2: when I write music, it's usually coming from a place
Speaker 2: of I need to get something out of me.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: The way I make music is it's processing emotions, so
Speaker 2: it shouldn't be a surprise that that's the route I took.
Speaker 2: I mean, since I was a little kid making up songs.
Speaker 2: I started making up songs when I was really young,
Speaker 2: five or so and not playing music. I never ever,
Speaker 2: I never thought i'd be a musician. That was a
Speaker 2: huge surprise to me, and I didn't start playing anything
Speaker 2: till I was twenty five. But it's always been a
Speaker 2: form of self soothing to me, and now I see
Speaker 2: it as processing too, So songs started coming to me
Speaker 2: right away.
Speaker 1: What was the first song to come to you?
Speaker 2: I feel like it was maybe the bean Fields, not
Speaker 2: like the melody or the music, but the concept and
Speaker 2: maybe life is unfair? Yeah, beautiful. Yeah, we were spending
Speaker 2: so much time just sitting in this crop. I don't
Speaker 2: know if you know, but Joe's pickup flipped into the
Speaker 2: bean field that he tended, and himself. I don't know,
Speaker 2: it's ironic, I guess, but yeah, just me and his
Speaker 2: family and some friends just ended up spending so much
Speaker 2: time just sitting out there, you know, surrounded by this madness,
Speaker 2: you know, as a real juxtaposition between life and death,
Speaker 2: being surrounded by all these blossoms, and bees buzzing, and
Speaker 2: you know, the beans starting to come in, and then
Speaker 2: this big burnt out hole in the earth where his
Speaker 2: pickup had been, and we just ended up spending so
Speaker 2: much time there that I eventually hauled out this camping.
Speaker 2: Matt and me and his sister Beth would just lay
Speaker 2: out there night and day, and eventually we dragged out
Speaker 2: chairs and a table and would meet there like every
Speaker 2: night and listen to music and talk and watch the
Speaker 2: meteor shower that had been going on.
Speaker 3: And I think.
Speaker 2: Being in that environment made me feel really inspired and
Speaker 2: blown away that I could still appreciate anything, and nature
Speaker 2: became a really big, in your face, in my face
Speaker 2: inspiration and just being able to appreciate it in a
Speaker 2: new way and just kind of living in awe.
Speaker 1: Were you starting to trend that way? I mean, you
Speaker 1: had moved to, you know, your partner's farm outside of Portland,
Speaker 1: and from what I gathered was a pretty, you know,
Speaker 1: like beautiful piece of land. So I mean, were you
Speaker 1: starting to trend towards being a person inspired by nature anyway?
Speaker 1: Or was that period of morning more of a time
Speaker 1: where that happened.
Speaker 2: I mean, I've always loved nature, grew up in the country,
Speaker 2: and I've always wanted I mean, I spent sixteen years
Speaker 2: I think in Oakland and then two years in Portland.
Speaker 2: I would go back and forth between Portland and the farm.
Speaker 2: But I've always been a lover of nature, but it
Speaker 2: totally changed. I just started to take certain things really seriously,
Speaker 2: like feeling overwhelmed by the sunsets that we were seeing
Speaker 2: and overwhelmed by plants and bugs, and I felt like
Speaker 2: a new relationship with them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that Beanfields is one of my favorite songs on
Speaker 1: the album, along with the title track. There's a couple
Speaker 1: others you so Lucky the vow, but bean Fields feels
Speaker 1: like a For it to be one of the first
Speaker 1: songs you'd written is surprising to me because it feels
Speaker 1: like it's coming from a person who's fully, fully processed
Speaker 1: things and fully I don't know, it seems like such
Speaker 1: a beautifully you know, given the circumstances, like a beautifully
Speaker 1: formed way of thinking about happened.
Speaker 3: Thanks.
Speaker 2: I think that one is something that really surprised me
Speaker 2: that I felt soon after the loss was gratitude and that,
Speaker 2: you know, it's a concept that I've always understood, but
Speaker 2: I think it wasn't until this event where I felt
Speaker 2: it like deep within me, like I have been so
Speaker 2: deeply grateful to have had Joe for the amount of
Speaker 2: time I've had him, and I feel like definitely forever
Speaker 2: changed by having his influence in my life, and I
Speaker 2: feel like I still am being inspired by him as
Speaker 2: a person. I constantly asked myself like, WWJD, what would
Speaker 2: Joe do? You know, I'm like using him as a
Speaker 2: moral compass oftentimes, and I think that was part of
Speaker 2: the joy that you feel in the bean Fields. I
Speaker 2: was afraid of that song at first because when I
Speaker 2: started really working on it, that's all that was coming
Speaker 2: out of me, was like a joy, a celebration and appreciation.
Speaker 2: I was so surprised to be writing something upbeat, and
Speaker 2: I was afraid to embrace that because I was like,
Speaker 2: is that disrespectful or is it too weird? Too soon
Speaker 2: to put a joyous song on there? And you know,
Speaker 2: I answered, have answered my own question, and it's no,
Speaker 2: absolutely not. You know this, this grief has been a
Speaker 2: really massive range, you know, of emotions, and I think
Speaker 2: with the extreme depths of depression and darkness and nothingness
Speaker 2: that I've experienced, I've also experienced sheer joy and celebrating
Speaker 2: feels so important.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and really.
Speaker 2: Grasping any bits of light that I can find is
Speaker 2: so important to my survival.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy to hear that. I'm grateful that you've
Speaker 1: sort of found the strength or the sensibility or the
Speaker 1: courage or to handle it the way that you have.
Speaker 1: It's been the rough kind of beautiful to watch as well.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Cody, As someone who's known Shannon, like you know
Speaker 1: obviously a very long time, how has the last couple
Speaker 1: of years been for you?
Speaker 4: I mean, right after Joe Dive was just fucking completely shattering.
Speaker 1: It was just like.
Speaker 4: Total destruction for me. And then to watch your friend
Speaker 4: have to go through this and deal with this is like, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's just annihilating. Just everything stopped, you know, like we
Speaker 4: just didn't do anything else, just cancel everything. Yeah, and
Speaker 4: you know, Shannon came and stayed at our house for
Speaker 4: a while because she was living in Portland. But obviously
Speaker 4: like didn't want to go back to their apartment. I
Speaker 4: mean I even had a hard time going in there
Speaker 4: and I didn't even live there. I tried to just
Speaker 4: i don't know, be like a point of light or
Speaker 4: be like the kind of friend that Shannon was used to,
Speaker 4: So be present and not like try to force anything,
Speaker 4: you know, not try to like really force Shannon to
Speaker 4: talk about what she was feeling or what's going on,
Speaker 4: and to like allow moments of levity or find a
Speaker 4: little moments of like joy or humor, you know, when
Speaker 4: we could.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how long after Shannon wrote Beanfields did you hear
Speaker 1: it or see it? I don't know if the words
Speaker 1: came first or if everything sort of came together.
Speaker 4: I guess probably December or January, so that was probably
Speaker 4: like four months because we didn't really get together to
Speaker 4: work on stuff until January.
Speaker 1: How did you feel about the things coming in? The
Speaker 1: songs coming in from Shannon?
Speaker 4: We were trying to we keep talking about this. We
Speaker 4: were trying to find another instrument for Shannon to write on,
Speaker 4: and someone told Shannon to get an omnichord because you
Speaker 4: can just push buttons and like it plays chords for you,
Speaker 4: and it has a drum machine in it. So that
Speaker 4: was I thought was really cool because it I think
Speaker 4: it removed the like translation step because there's often Shannon's
Speaker 4: writing on bass and then we're trying to find these
Speaker 4: chords that work with you know, what she's singing or
Speaker 4: you know, like if you play a bass note and
Speaker 4: then you sing a melody on top of it, it
Speaker 4: informs like what the key it's in or what chords
Speaker 4: would work.
Speaker 1: With it, right, and then if you change the bass
Speaker 1: note or something, it would totally change the.
Speaker 4: Between those two notes. But it like removed that translation
Speaker 4: kind of step. And then Shannon could just like play
Speaker 4: around with all these different weirdo chords and I think
Speaker 4: write more freely.
Speaker 1: And then so like we're the demos with omni chord
Speaker 1: on them that you're hearing, Yeah, that's pretty cool. Like
Speaker 1: how did that inform? I guess what you do? Then?
Speaker 1: As a guitar player, must have just given you like
Speaker 1: a kind of a pretty strong blueprint for what to do.
Speaker 1: I guess.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's still has to get glued together, and I
Speaker 4: think like backing vocals and harmonies and stuff still come
Speaker 4: to you know, like Shannon usually has an idea for
Speaker 4: a backing vocal, but it's just it's different when we
Speaker 4: all get together because we bring different like we sing
Speaker 4: in different ranges and have different ideas, and we tried,
Speaker 4: we tried to like have a more free form, you know,
Speaker 4: like jam session where we were coming with really incomplete ideas.
Speaker 4: But I don't know. It was cool and it was fun,
Speaker 4: but we didn't actually produce that much usable stuff. It
Speaker 4: just felt like everything was like upside down and we
Speaker 4: could try anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, it felt like a good time just to
Speaker 1: try a new playbook maybe, But.
Speaker 4: The stuff we kept from it was really stuff that
Speaker 4: had been pretty well like written before because we were
Speaker 4: recording in March and that's started in January, so it
Speaker 4: wasn't like a ton of time to write stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was writing on the on the code for you.
Speaker 3: It opened up a whole new world.
Speaker 2: I mean, it just made I was just over flowing
Speaker 2: with ideas that I couldn't capture because I just felt
Speaker 2: too limited on the bass. That's how I normally write songs.
Speaker 2: And I only know a handful of guitar chords. And
Speaker 2: I'm not a good guitar player at all. I'm not
Speaker 2: even an okay guitar player.
Speaker 1: Do you try? Do you try?
Speaker 3: I try? I try.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Joe actually made me learn a few guitar chords
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty. It was important to him that I
Speaker 2: learn a few. He was like, just trust me, you're
Speaker 2: gonna love it.
Speaker 3: You're gonna get it. It's just gonna help you. You're
Speaker 3: gonna love it.
Speaker 2: And I was so resistant because I hate being bad
Speaker 2: at stuff. And that's actually kind of how I wrote
Speaker 2: the vow. I used the chords he taught me and
Speaker 2: wrote that song.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the one song that was written before he
Speaker 2: died because I was going to perform it at our
Speaker 2: wedding as a surprise to him. Yeah, but yeah, it
Speaker 2: was going to be that really simple, simple song, and
Speaker 2: it made me furious that he was never going to
Speaker 2: get to hear it. You know, I would never written
Speaker 2: it if he hadn't convinced me that I should learn
Speaker 2: a few chords. And I did get really addicted to
Speaker 2: guitar during lockdown, and it.
Speaker 3: Had become a great tool to me.
Speaker 2: I never got good, but yeah, I was really sad
Speaker 2: for some reason that detail. Of all of the things
Speaker 2: that I was mad about, I kept coming back to
Speaker 2: that song and it was just so naive, you know,
Speaker 2: it was so full of hope and joy and was
Speaker 2: it and when I.
Speaker 3: Was the happiest I've ever been in my whole life.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I guess I wanted that to be on
Speaker 2: the album to tell the story of, like, look how
Speaker 2: fucking happy I was, you know, like we had our
Speaker 2: lives like together, things were going great, and.
Speaker 3: That song was just such a symbol.
Speaker 2: Of of how much I believed in our union and
Speaker 2: how proud I was. So I guess I just wanted
Speaker 2: to kind of share with people how it felt for
Speaker 2: everything to stop. And that's essentially what we put the
Speaker 2: Vow next to our Glass too, because I feel like
Speaker 2: those two songs together some up that nightmarish journey, you know,
Speaker 2: of the beginning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll be right back with more from Shannon and
Speaker 1: the Clams after this break. We're back with Shannon and
Speaker 1: the Clams. When did you decide to put the Vow
Speaker 1: on the album or to revisit it as a song?
Speaker 2: And rework it and I didn't show anyone until we
Speaker 2: were at this session in January when we were writing together,
Speaker 2: and I was like, knew that it would could be
Speaker 2: potentially cruel, you know, I never know how real to get,
Speaker 2: and I decided to just be like completely real, like
Speaker 2: I'm going to just share the devastation because I can't
Speaker 2: I can't hold it by myself.
Speaker 1: When you say you in the past or you know,
Speaker 1: you're never sure how real to get, Like, what do
Speaker 1: you think that instinct.
Speaker 2: Is protecting people? Also, it's just hard. It's hard and
Speaker 2: exhausting to be so vulnerable all the time. Yeah, lately,
Speaker 2: I'm just talking about my grief with press because y'all
Speaker 2: are asking.
Speaker 3: And I do find myself.
Speaker 2: Keeping certain thoughts to myself because they're so sad. I
Speaker 2: don't want to like take someone's innocence away by by
Speaker 2: sharing them like with them, like some of the extreme
Speaker 2: darkness that I live with now, you know. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: I don't you know, I'm also really open, but if
Speaker 2: no one's asking, I'm not usually bringing it out currently.
Speaker 1: Yeah, do you prefer do you prefer people not to add?
Speaker 1: I mean, where are you at with them?
Speaker 2: I want people to ask because it's my life now,
Speaker 2: this is my life, this is all I think about.
Speaker 2: And what is weird to me is if you are
Speaker 2: someone who loves me, friends or family wise, and it
Speaker 2: doesn't come up, you don't bring it up, you don't
Speaker 2: check on me or something that is disturbing to me. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I like to think of it as a dresser. I
Speaker 2: like to think of my relationships as a big dresser,
Speaker 2: and some of those people previously that were in my
Speaker 2: top drawer have had to go to the bottom drawer.
Speaker 2: I love them, But going back to what we first
Speaker 2: talked about, you apologize and said, I'm sorry, I don't
Speaker 2: know how to talk about this stuff.
Speaker 3: We do not know how to talk about it.
Speaker 2: We don't and I don't blame anyone for that, but
Speaker 2: some people are a lot better than others at it,
Speaker 2: you know, instinctual, and like give me the space, you know,
Speaker 2: bring it up and check in with me, and then
Speaker 2: give me.
Speaker 3: The space I need to talk about it.
Speaker 2: And that to me, that's like invaluable. And I honestly
Speaker 2: have a list of friends that have provided that kind
Speaker 2: of a space for me. And I've just had to
Speaker 2: let other friends and family that I thought could could
Speaker 2: hold me there and could be there, I've just had
Speaker 2: to put them in the bottom drawer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, have you been handling this just purely instinctually? I
Speaker 1: mean I've been doing therapy. Well, how do you like,
Speaker 1: how are you finding the words and the processes to
Speaker 1: reprioritize and I mean all these things that you're saying me,
Speaker 1: it's just like, yeah, I'm kind of stunned that you're
Speaker 1: able to do all this, you know, consciously.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: I I would say a lot of it is instinctual.
Speaker 2: But I did join a grief group. Someone connected me
Speaker 2: with a grief counselor right away, so I've had her,
Speaker 2: and then I have a grief group, which has been
Speaker 2: really helpful. But years ago, I did therapy off and on,
Speaker 2: and I still have a relationship with my old therapist.
Speaker 2: I haven't talked to him in a while now because
Speaker 2: I can't afford three different therapies.
Speaker 1: But I'm glad to know you have the same problem
Speaker 1: as me. It's like I need therapy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, It's that's really sad to me because I think,
Speaker 2: no matter what you've going you've been going through, you
Speaker 2: don't have to have had a, you know, life changing death.
Speaker 2: I think that everyone needs therapy just to learn how
Speaker 2: to like communicate with each other. I think that having
Speaker 2: that therapy years ago put me in a much better place.
Speaker 2: I really like encourage everyone I know to have therapy.
Speaker 2: But now the grief group has been so good for me.
Speaker 2: I think being with other people who lost people in
Speaker 2: different ways, different scenarios, different relationships, just I mean, you
Speaker 2: already from a loss like this, you already gain a
Speaker 2: lot of perspective, which I wasn't expecting. But like, things
Speaker 2: that were so important to me before are totally not
Speaker 2: you know, those dresser drawers have moved around on their own,
Speaker 2: and a lot of the noise gets cleared out of life.
Speaker 2: Like a lot of the little things that stressed me
Speaker 2: out gave me anxiety, you know, those the important things
Speaker 2: are like bursting out of the top. Wow, and so
Speaker 2: much further away from from the little noise. But hearing
Speaker 2: other people's grief journeys, I guess you would call it
Speaker 2: is amazing. And I feel so grateful to have this
Speaker 2: group of people to be with every week, because I
Speaker 2: can have the most supportive, wonderful friends, but being with
Speaker 2: someone who's suffered anything close to similarly like it's it's
Speaker 2: kind of one of the only places where I feel
Speaker 2: like I can let my hair down. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: and like I liken it too. When I get to
Speaker 2: that group, I feel like I can like unbutton a
Speaker 2: tight pair of genes.
Speaker 1: Oh you know, do you feel like your writing's kind
Speaker 1: of forever impacted?
Speaker 2: I do, because I guess going back to what I
Speaker 2: was trying to say about perspective and the important things
Speaker 2: like blasting to the top and the noise settling down
Speaker 2: at the bottom. I think that it's changed my fears.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm like just not as afraid to do anything.
Speaker 2: I'm not as caught up on worrying what people will think,
Speaker 2: or I'm not as afraid to try things. You know,
Speaker 2: about our session we did in January to go over
Speaker 2: demos and try to jam. I hated jamming, you know,
Speaker 2: like it's not very me. I normally need to do
Speaker 2: a lot of preparing, and I did. I had a
Speaker 2: lot of things prepared. But also to just go in
Speaker 2: with nothing and just jam off like what one of
Speaker 2: the guys in the band brought, that is very different
Speaker 2: for me. So to sit there and like experiment in
Speaker 2: front of people, that's like, you know, you may as
Speaker 2: well be in the nude, right, I may as well
Speaker 2: be in the dude. So I think that that fear
Speaker 2: has just changed. I am not worried about being judged
Speaker 2: at all, And I'm sure.
Speaker 3: A lot of it is.
Speaker 2: Just that that extreme loss is the change of perspective.
Speaker 2: But I also honestly feel like Joe's wisdom has imprinted
Speaker 2: itself upon me, like he is someone that was not
Speaker 2: afraid of anything like that, and if I were to
Speaker 2: be like, well, I'm Joe, I'm afraid to jam, he
Speaker 2: would be like, what, just do it?
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: He's definitely like a just do it kind of guy
Speaker 2: and wouldn't want me to wasting my time being afraid
Speaker 2: of trying things. So I think that my sign rating
Speaker 2: is just like less afraid. Yes, I was concerned about
Speaker 2: making things too sad for people, but now I'm not.
Speaker 2: Now I'm just like sorry, this is my life and
Speaker 2: so far our fans are very here for it, which
Speaker 2: has been beautiful.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I mean the music is really really good too,
Speaker 1: you know, which, which of course always helps. Like it's
Speaker 1: not you know, I don't think anyone is having to
Speaker 1: no one's having to pretend to be here for anyone's sake.
Speaker 1: Like it's really really good news.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it's thank you. I actually I really
Speaker 3: do feel.
Speaker 2: I also feel this like confidence that I don't think
Speaker 2: I ever had before, and that I think that if
Speaker 2: people had no idea what happened, I believe that this
Speaker 2: is a really fucking good album. I am totally confident
Speaker 2: that no matter what the content is this album is great.
Speaker 3: I feel really proud and I do think.
Speaker 2: That we all did a beautiful job like contributing, like
Speaker 2: our hearts and our talent.
Speaker 1: I would like to talk a little bitbout the recording process,
Speaker 1: and maybe Cody can speak to some of that. How
Speaker 1: do you move Cody from the jam session and the
Speaker 1: kind of gathering songs you've written and working them out
Speaker 1: together part to the recording part. How did that move
Speaker 1: along for this particular album.
Speaker 4: I think the hardest part of deciding what to keep
Speaker 4: and what to work on, what to cut out because
Speaker 4: we just have too much material. So we're often like
Speaker 4: keeping a big list of songs and.
Speaker 1: Then trying to.
Speaker 4: Decide like which ones we love and which ones we
Speaker 4: should get rid of.
Speaker 1: How do you guys negotiate that?
Speaker 4: I don't know. It's like sometimes it actually just comes
Speaker 4: down to like we didn't decide and we ran out
Speaker 4: of time, and so something doesn't get recorded, like we
Speaker 4: have like five days to record or something, and then
Speaker 4: it's sort of like, okay, well, these four like we
Speaker 4: didn't decide which ones we're gonna keep, and then we
Speaker 4: just ended up recording one of them, and then we
Speaker 4: just like ran out of Top. Yeah, maybe that's like
Speaker 4: a subconscious way of making the decision, because you if
Speaker 4: that's the song that you like put off recording, like
Speaker 4: maybe it's not that good or you don't like it that.
Speaker 1: Much, certainly makes the decision easier. It makes it less
Speaker 1: of a conscious decision in the sense, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but then the stuff you're really excited to get
Speaker 4: down is like you record that first.
Speaker 1: Do you guys talk to like Dan about it when
Speaker 1: you guys are gonna go into the studio with him,
Speaker 1: or do you like run stuff by him?
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 4: I feel like we've like sent him demos before and
Speaker 4: I don't think he really listened to them. He likes
Speaker 4: to just do stuff live in the studio, Like I
Speaker 4: don't think he likes to Yeah.
Speaker 2: His reaction is like awesome, get in here.
Speaker 4: It's like he would rather you show up with nothing
Speaker 4: and then you write everything like in the studio and
Speaker 4: just like record it as you're going. And he's like, also,
Speaker 4: just whatever we want to do. He's like, yeah, let's
Speaker 4: record that whatever whatever you guys.
Speaker 1: Want or the ever times you're you're looking for a
Speaker 1: more decisive opinion.
Speaker 4: Yeah, not from Dan, But I just wish. Yeah, we
Speaker 4: do kind of wish there was someone who would just say, like, no,
Speaker 4: this is bad, don't do this one. They'll do it
Speaker 4: with takes for sure, and like what we're doing on
Speaker 4: the songs, like this is working, this isn't working. But
Speaker 4: I wish, Yeah, it would be nice to have some outsider.
Speaker 4: I mean that's what I feel like. The Beatles had
Speaker 4: that with their producer and their manager were like just
Speaker 4: so involved in shaping the sound and like deciding what songs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wish there were more George Martin's in the.
Speaker 4: World, you know, I wanted George Martin and Brian.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, It's like it's just nice if you have someone
Speaker 4: who's like fifth or sixth member kind of meddling and like,
Speaker 4: you know, tightening things up.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Do you feel similarly, Shannon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: I think it's always good to have like an outside,
Speaker 2: trusted person to help you with editing.
Speaker 1: After one last break, we're back with the rest of
Speaker 1: my conversation with Shannon Shaw and Cody Blanchard of Shannon
Speaker 1: in the Clans. We're back with the rest of my
Speaker 1: conversation with Shannon and the Clams. I keep going back
Speaker 1: to it, but It just really is one of my favorites.
Speaker 1: I love it so much. The moon is in the
Speaker 1: wrong place, the act on the song. I love how
Speaker 1: the second verse is the first verse with added sort
Speaker 1: of thoughts, you know, a few more lines. It's a
Speaker 1: really cool way to go about that, just give it
Speaker 1: an extra emotion. You're repeating the first few lines of
Speaker 1: the first or the entire first first, and then to
Speaker 1: stretch it out and to add the icy SpaceX and
Speaker 1: all that. It was just like, whoa, it was really cool.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Did you write it that way? Did that come through
Speaker 1: jamming it or how did that particular device come about?
Speaker 2: I think I brought it the song pretty much fully formed, right, Cody.
Speaker 4: I almost feel like that like came down in the studio,
Speaker 4: like having the intro and with a half first and
Speaker 4: then like coming back.
Speaker 3: Oh definitely this yeah, this structure. Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: It almost seemed like really last minute or something. The
Speaker 4: way that we.
Speaker 1: Did that, it adds like a It's like it's just
Speaker 1: like there's a real energy to it, like like almost
Speaker 1: like bursting out the gate, you know, like when you
Speaker 1: just yeah, like having that first verse be like kind
Speaker 1: of the intro you.
Speaker 4: Know, yeah, it's a lot of tension because it you
Speaker 4: can tell that it's not finished or it's not resolved
Speaker 4: or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that was like arranging like in the studio.
Speaker 1: Was that an omnichord song?
Speaker 3: Yes, but I did.
Speaker 2: I had the baseline first, that boom da da doo
Speaker 2: doo boom boom, I.
Speaker 3: Like had that bassline.
Speaker 2: That bassline came to me first, actually, so I think
Speaker 2: after I like got that down, then I formed the
Speaker 2: rest on the omnichord.
Speaker 1: And how how did you work on the omnichord? I
Speaker 1: know there's like pre program stuff, but you don't have
Speaker 1: to do pre programs. I mean the drums are pre
Speaker 1: programmed I guess at least, right, but the chords you
Speaker 1: can do whatever.
Speaker 2: What I was looking for was something so simple. I
Speaker 2: was like, all I want is a drum machine that
Speaker 2: I just select the sound and push play.
Speaker 3: I don't want to edit it in any way.
Speaker 2: Because in previous albums I would ask Cody and Nate
Speaker 2: to send me, Hey, can you just send me a
Speaker 2: drum a drum beat? And Cody actually made me these
Speaker 2: really helpful ones where I'd say, like Cody sent me
Speaker 2: punk drums and you would make a loop for me
Speaker 2: because it's easier for me to write a song on
Speaker 2: the bass. Playing at two drums is just like inspiring.
Speaker 2: It just like gives me ideas that I wouldn't have
Speaker 2: if it was just me and the bass and silence. Right,
Speaker 2: So for this process, I wanted access to chords that
Speaker 2: I could just like push a button and it plays
Speaker 2: a chord.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't.
Speaker 2: I felt so overflowing with musical ideas. I didn't feel
Speaker 2: like I had the time to learn how to play
Speaker 2: the chords on a guitar or something, or on a piano.
Speaker 3: I have no idea how to play a piano.
Speaker 2: I just wanted something that I could push a button
Speaker 2: and play a chord to a drum machine. And I
Speaker 2: didn't want to rely on anyone for help where normal
Speaker 2: am like employing Cody to like, please send me some
Speaker 2: drum machine, and I have to send him things to interpret,
Speaker 2: you know, like either singing guitar parts or like this
Speaker 2: kind of a sound. If you could come up with
Speaker 2: a part that's sort of similar to that, like this,
Speaker 2: you know it. Just finding the omnichord was just such
Speaker 2: a big help because I could be alone and be
Speaker 2: forming songs much quicker than relying on the boys to
Speaker 2: help interpret me. And so, yeah, the way I use
Speaker 2: it is I would find a drum beat. I mean
Speaker 2: it is silly. The like sounds on there are hilarious.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the drums are fucking terrible.
Speaker 1: They sound like trash.
Speaker 2: It totally worked great for me though, you know, it's
Speaker 2: what I needed. It was means to an end. So
Speaker 2: you know, I would slow down. I'd get like, oh,
Speaker 2: a samba beat, and then slow it way down or
Speaker 2: speed it way up to where like, Okay, this feels
Speaker 2: like this feels like the rhythm and the intensity that
Speaker 2: I'm looking for for this song. And then I would
Speaker 2: set the sound of the instrument, you know, to pim
Speaker 2: know or harp or flute or you know whatever. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of silly sounds on there. And then you're
Speaker 2: just pushing the cords. And then you have a strum plate,
Speaker 2: which is supposed to be like strumming strings, but it's
Speaker 2: this like plate that you rub your fingers back and
Speaker 2: forth on.
Speaker 4: Grill.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Actually it's like a really soft, very soft, smooth ribs,
Speaker 2: but it has really sharp corners because it's all made
Speaker 2: out of like plastic that got.
Speaker 3: Glued on, so you can't go too far. But yeah,
Speaker 3: so it was really fun and and and physical, you know, like.
Speaker 2: You're physically pushing all this stuff down, so it felt
Speaker 2: like satisfying. I mean, if I could design one on
Speaker 2: my own, it would be bigger, with a bigger strum
Speaker 2: plate and buttons that like really feel satisfying to squish down.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you should try it. There's like a bunch of
Speaker 4: different models and like different I think like Suzuki and
Speaker 4: Yamaha and maybe like another company made different versions, but
Speaker 4: they recently made a reproduction of the like original one,
Speaker 4: so you can like buy the new one that's a
Speaker 4: reproduction of like the first model.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. I feel like that must be in the
Speaker 1: air too, because yeah, yeah, Michelle and Deggioceello released an
Speaker 1: album called The Omnichord Real Book, and I guess she
Speaker 1: wrote a lot of the songs on there on the
Speaker 1: Omnichord too, So I was like, no.
Speaker 4: This is yeah, it's like coming back for sure. There's
Speaker 4: like a lot of people using it.
Speaker 1: It's pretty awesome. Yeah, you guys are kind of both
Speaker 1: pretty voracious music consumers, it appears to me. I don't know,
Speaker 1: if it's I think it's for your last album. You
Speaker 1: have a playlist on Spotify inspiration for a new record
Speaker 1: and has like incredible cuts on it. What was the
Speaker 1: first kinds of music that you both fell in love with?
Speaker 4: Man, I love the songs that I can first remember,
Speaker 4: like really becoming fixated on listening over and over Sweet
Speaker 4: Dreams by Your Rhythmics, and enter Sandman by Metallica, and
Speaker 4: then nine Inch Nails down in It and the Nightmare
Speaker 4: Before Christmas soundtrack.
Speaker 3: All nice, that's so cute, what a cute combo.
Speaker 4: It's all like pretty like dark it is, damn.
Speaker 1: And then like as you moved on, like how did
Speaker 1: your listening change?
Speaker 4: One thing that me and Shannon both had it in
Speaker 4: common was that we both loved Primus, but it was
Speaker 4: like our favorite band when we were like in junior
Speaker 4: high or something. We were like Primisheads. I went like, yeah,
Speaker 4: really hard on like industrial stuff, like you know, like
Speaker 4: kind of deep stuff like Skinny Puppy and like Front
Speaker 4: two four two and had this kind of goth vibe
Speaker 4: and then got really into like kind of like skate
Speaker 4: punk pop punk stuff and then you know, like Pennywise,
Speaker 4: Operation Our Ivy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, bad religion you miss grade or something like that. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: all that ship.
Speaker 4: And Shannon was like a big misfit st still is. Yeah,
Speaker 4: missive said Danzig, so great.
Speaker 1: I love like all your Spotify or yeah, umpeccable. We
Speaker 1: needed that.
Speaker 4: Reminds you like, I feel like we need to update
Speaker 4: that or like sort of re curated. I don't know,
Speaker 4: because the way it organizes them on your profile is
Speaker 4: kind of weird. I don't really understand how it works.
Speaker 4: But some of those playlists are like really old.
Speaker 1: You don't know how it works either, But don't delete
Speaker 1: them because they're so good. I'm not archival.
Speaker 2: A few of those Joe made, of which, yeah, Joe
Speaker 2: made a few of them. He made one of the
Speaker 2: ones for your wedding. It's called wedding Tinkerings. Yes, and
Speaker 2: he made one that says like Tahoe.
Speaker 4: He made Yeah, I forgot used our account. We all
Speaker 4: shared like one Spotify login.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then when we were doing a Patreon we
Speaker 2: would make playlists for every month and he would he
Speaker 2: would like work on them with me.
Speaker 1: Can you guys share a playlist with me to put
Speaker 1: out to the audience for this episode?
Speaker 3: Share Joe Jojo Yeah, Okay.
Speaker 2: The significance of this playlist is that Joe would make
Speaker 2: mixtapes like the Real Mixtape for.
Speaker 1: People, like like cassette tapes.
Speaker 2: A cassette tape, and then it would come with like
Speaker 2: he would do a beautiful little drawing on the cover
Speaker 2: and then write out, you know, the songs, just like
Speaker 2: back in the day. And I cherished my mixtapes from Joe,
Speaker 2: and so when we were getting ready for like the
Speaker 2: funeral and celebration of life and stuff, I requested that
Speaker 2: everyone he'd made a tape for send their mixes, like
Speaker 2: just the playlist to a friend named Kelly, who compiled
Speaker 2: them and made a big Spotify just like of all
Speaker 2: of Joe music essentially, And I love this playlist is
Speaker 2: so good. I honestly listened to that a lot right
Speaker 2: after he died. That was like months of me just
Speaker 2: listening to that. So I'm sure some of that stuff
Speaker 2: formed its way into my songwriting as well without me
Speaker 2: realizing it.
Speaker 1: Did you guys have any specific references for this album?
Speaker 4: One thing I was like trying to channel was like,
Speaker 4: I want to make a playlist more about this, but
Speaker 4: this kind of late this crossover, this like kind of
Speaker 4: late R and B like pre disco era where there's
Speaker 4: like you get some kind of like psychedelic like fuzz
Speaker 4: guitar stuff and that's some kind of like disco R
Speaker 4: and B singing. One example was that song I think
Speaker 4: it's called Liar Liar called.
Speaker 3: Lilaa Pencil File.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean it's so weird and like such a
Speaker 4: genre mashup, is it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Oh, it's so good.
Speaker 1: There's that.
Speaker 4: There's this song, this late like Blue Christie song called
Speaker 4: Dancing in the Sand that's kind of this weird kind
Speaker 4: of like down tempo. This goes on with this like
Speaker 4: big chorus. Anyway, I was trying to, like I wanted
Speaker 4: to capture that weird genre mashup, which I think we did.
Speaker 4: I think on the Moon is in the wrong place
Speaker 4: in Big Wheel, like we kind of got close to that.
Speaker 1: Definitely feels that way. Yeah.
Speaker 2: A lot of the time what I do is when
Speaker 2: I'm working on a song, like ideas will come to
Speaker 2: me of things that I want to go back and
Speaker 2: listen to from other artists, or I want to like, like, oh,
Speaker 2: when I listen to Blossom Lady by Shocking Blue, it
Speaker 2: makes me feel this way and I want to feel
Speaker 2: that way when I play this song, so I'll have
Speaker 2: like little notes, Like right now, I'm looking at.
Speaker 3: My song book.
Speaker 2: Every time we do an album, I like get a
Speaker 2: notebook and it's just like filled with all my weird
Speaker 2: notes and my songs and track listing potentials.
Speaker 4: And so.
Speaker 2: I wrote down some things I was inspired by, and
Speaker 2: I wrote Zombies, Shocking Blues, Sir Doug Quintet, Paul McCartney,
Speaker 2: Rocking Horse, Jerry, Jeff Walker, Beach Boys.
Speaker 3: And there's definitely like that these have wound their way
Speaker 3: into the songs for sure.
Speaker 2: Or like I'm looking at Dolly's clock and I wrote
Speaker 2: down Irma Thomas breakw Way drums, so I guess I
Speaker 2: was listening to that at the time, or like on
Speaker 2: on Moon is in the wrong place. I don't think
Speaker 2: that this ended up coming through, but I wrote down Buzzcocks, July,
Speaker 2: break on Through, abrupt Yelling, Jim Morrison, Funny. I'm glad
Speaker 2: I wrote this stuff down. I don't know that I
Speaker 2: would have before.
Speaker 1: That's really cool that you. Yeah, that's like a really
Speaker 1: cool journal to keep. That'd be great for the reissue
Speaker 1: in ten years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, deluxy.
Speaker 2: See, this is the kind of stuff that I would
Speaker 2: love to see from another artist. I love to look at.
Speaker 2: I'm also a painter. I love to see people's notebooks.
Speaker 2: I love to see their art, their like art desk
Speaker 2: set up. I love to see how people.
Speaker 3: Notate their music.
Speaker 2: Most of the time I can't relate to that because
Speaker 2: is we call it shanglish. But anyways, I love to
Speaker 2: see other people's processes.
Speaker 1: Do you often ask other people?
Speaker 2: I often ask to see people's like workspace and if
Speaker 2: they have like some kind of like notebook or sketches,
Speaker 2: But it's it can also be a really private thing,
Speaker 2: so I gotta read each situation. One of my favorite
Speaker 2: art exhibits I've ever seen was at Disneyland. They have
Speaker 2: a little gallery in there that they'll have various exhibits,
Speaker 2: and they had this one that was on the Tiki Room,
Speaker 2: and it was all the concept art for the Tiki Room.
Speaker 2: So it was all these artists like sketches, like all
Speaker 2: the various ways that they were like maybe the birds
Speaker 2: could look like this, or look like this, or look
Speaker 2: like this. Maybe we should have the inside of the
Speaker 2: like hut theater thing look like this.
Speaker 3: I love seeing that.
Speaker 2: Is that kind of inside scoop or it. I went
Speaker 2: to the Walt Disney Museum in the Presidio in San Francisco,
Speaker 2: and they have tons of concept art in there, but
Speaker 2: they also have the illustrator's desk, which it was one
Speaker 2: of my favorite things to see, just how the imagineers
Speaker 2: in the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties generally set up
Speaker 2: their art table.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks so much for talking about you guys' process
Speaker 1: and about the new album and all that's kind of
Speaker 1: been going on. It's been really great talking to you guys.
Speaker 3: You too, Thank you so much.
Speaker 4: Thank you, It's been really great.
Speaker 1: A big thank you to Shannon Shawn Cody Blanchard for
Speaker 1: making such a beautiful record and talking through some of
Speaker 1: the painful moments that led to its creation. And as promised,
Speaker 1: be sure to check out the link in the episode
Speaker 1: description for a playlist the late Joe Haynes collected mixtapes.
Speaker 1: Subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash
Speaker 1: Broken Record Podcast, where you can find all of our
Speaker 1: new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record.
Speaker 1: Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose, with
Speaker 1: marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer
Speaker 1: is Ben Toliday. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries.
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Speaker 1: Our theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.