Published: July 17, 2010 3:10 PM EST
By: Isaac Davis Jr., MBA (Juniorscave.com)
New Music Spotlight July 2010 Edition
Shannon & Natalie
Music Now Artist/Band Spotlight Weekly Series
Shannon & Natalie Photo by Richard Wagner
One of the best sounding musical duos currently out in the Indie music industry Shannon & Natalie are perfectly matched musically. Their voices blend nicely together to form one harmonious sweet sound. Fans will appreciate Shannon and Natalie’s crafted lyrics, strong songwriting abilities, and sweet heavenly voices. In this spotlight with the two singers/songwriters from the group, Shannon & Natalie expounded on why they make music to entertain the masses.
Isaac: Let’s get started with this interview. When and how did you first become interested in music? How long have you been playing music?
Shannon: I had been a band geek for most of my life. My interest in music started with playing the flute when I was younger, then I started playing guitar when I was 10 years old. I met Natalie in chorus when I was in 7th grade, then we started our band “Shannon & Natalie” soon after.
Natalie: My father and mother were in a band together when I was growing up so I’ve always been interested in music, especially the singing aspect of it. Shannon convinced me to play the bass guitar about seven years ago and I haven’t stopped since.
Isaac: Who would you say are your biggest musical influences and why?
Shannon & Natalie: Both of us have somewhat different musical influences, which contributes to our different, yet complementary song writing styles. Influences include The Ditty Bops (another female folk duo), Simon & Garfunkel, Joni Mitchell, and Regina Spektor. They definitely showed us different ways to utilize harmonies and combine modern and traditional styles of folk music.
Isaac: What has been the greatest highpoint in your career so far?
Shannon: It’s hard to pick one particular highpoint; I would have to say that as a whole, playing shows is the greatest part our career. There is nothing better than performing for an appreciative audience, and lately it seems that each show we play gets better and better.
Natalie: The apex of our musical career is our recently released EP, entitled Laserbeams. It’s nice to finally have a printed, tangible, plastic-wrapped, and bar-coded version of our music to hand out to people. Plus, you can’t be famous without a CD so now since we’ve released one, stardom is inevitable.
Isaac: What has been the greatest disappointment in your career so far? What did you learn from that experience?
Shannon & Natalie: The greatest disappointments in our career have involved the business side of performing. We’ve sent out so many emails that have never received responses and we’ve dropped off many demo tapes that have never been heard. Being our own managers, booking agents, publicists, website designers, etc., can be really difficult, and taught us (at a very young age!) that the business aspect of performing may suck out your soul. But at least the angst of it all fuels good songwriting.
Isaac: What draws you to want to play the type of music that you do?
Shannon: I feel most comfortable writing and performing acoustic and folk music. There are so many variations on the acoustic style, whether it is a finger picking ballad, an upbeat Dixieland-ish tune, or a quirky pop song.
Natalie: Folk music has so much history to it. It’s a challenge to take something that has been done so many times before and make it our own. We like to juxtapose new and old, funny and dark, sweet and abrasive, etc.
Isaac: What do you feel it takes to play this type of music that you play?
Shannon & Natalie: You have to a have a sense of humor and a desire to sing what people don’t expect to hear. At first listen, our music is bubbly and upbeat, but there are some unorthodox lyrics and chords thrown in there which may slightly perturb you (in a good way).
Isaac: What do you think you will create that will make your performances and who you are stand out in the music industry?
Shannon & Natalie: We’re very different. Two girls harmonizing like the dickens while playing guitars. We somewhat fit into the pop genre, but we’re a little bit weirder with the music we write. We like to make our live shows entertaining, and always have a bunch of quirky games, jokes, and shenanigans going on in between (and during) songs.
Isaac: If you had the opportunity to do one cover, what cover would you do and why? How would you put your own spin on this cover?
Shannon & Natalie: We play an acoustic version of an old folk/jazz song “Shimmy Like My Sister Kate”, with added harmonies and instrumental parts. It’s so much fun to play… especially while watching the audience shimmy around the room! It always catches people by surprise since this style isn’t performed often by modern artists.
Isaac: What does it take to be a good songwriter?
Shannon & Natalie: Gee thanks, I guess that means you’re implying that you think we’re good songwriters? You have to experiment a lot. Write a part, let it sit, re-harmonize it over different chords, play it with finger-picking then strumming. Does it sound too much like your other songs? Someone else’s song? It’s good to have some kind of theme or feeling you’re trying to convey. Though also sometimes you just have to create freely and figure out what it means to you afterwards.
Isaac: How difficult is it to juggle music, family and work obligation, and life in general? Explain.
Shannon & Natalie: It’s a real challenge! Our colleges are separated by 300 miles of New York state land, making it difficult to set aside time for shows during the semester, which we spend booking shows and promoting ourselves online. During summer break we kick it into performance overload to make up for the time we spent apart during school. I wouldn’t say it interferes with our lives though; it’s sort of become our lives more than anything.
Isaac: What is your definition of being an Indie artist/band?
Shannon & Natalie: Indie artist/band (n): a person or peoples who create new music by combining old styles and their own ideas. Characteristically they create music they want to hear and are not controlled by record producers or anyone looking to make a quick buck. Antonyms: sell-out, Brittney Spears, spam (as in the canned “meat”).
Isaac: Where can fans access your music online?
Shannon & Natalie: Well funny you should ask…we have music from our recently released EP for sale on iTunes! We are also very active on our social networking pages (Facebook, MySpace, and twitter), and have a YouTube channel (shannonandnatalie) where we upload videos weekly.
Isaac: In five years…….
Shannon & Natalie: We will both be pregnant, renaming the band “Shannon, Natalie, and babies”. Just Kidding. We hope to still be writing, playing music together, and receiving calls from Madison Square Garden about our availability.
