Shannon McNally – Interview

Shooting the breeze with Shannon McNally.

Is going out on the road and touring what you expected it to be?

Pretty much, yes, sort of. (Laughs)

I had a few articles that I read on you, but I never learned anything since they focused primarily on how pretty you were…

…Really? (Laughs) You noticed that?

What are your feelings about that slant?

We live in a media age. We live a sound clip age. My whole life is a reaction to that. But that is the way the media lives and exists. You can tell a million people that you love the band and all they want to know is what color lipstick I wear. You have to take it with a grain of salt and hold out for the audience, that’s what I do. Otherwise you just get bitter and grumpy.

When did you first start writing?

Music has always been a part of my life. I’ve always written and played music in various situations, always. I’ve always listened to a lot of music. In college I was listening to the Cowboy Junkies and it seemed so much a part of my lifestyle. They had this great record, Trinity Sessions. And they recorded it in this house that was out in this field and it was just beautiful. I just imagined them sitting around on a big oriental rug sipping wine and smoking grass and writing songs. I thought, “Jesus, I can do that”. It all started really in college because that is when I knew. I didn’t read magazines and watch TV and realized I wanted to do it, I was listening to records.

Did you ever have a time where you questioned your ability or that you couldn’t in some sense win the lottery of getting signed?

I don’t think you can look at it that way. Getting signed isn’t winning the lottery. It’s more like getting a mortgage. (Laughs) It’s more work than imagination than you could stand and it hardly has to do with making records. When I was nineteen I gave myself three years to make it. I was in professional mode in college and very serious about school. I knew a lot of people who had independent labels and were on the road and had eight people in a one-person hotel room and van and that didn’t appeal to me. I did give myself a little time, but if I didn’t make it I’d still do it. The three years came and went and I was doing stuff that seemed legitimate to me. I realized that any career path was a slow go and anything that isn’t…

…Worth it?

Right. I hit L.A. when everyone was making a fortune with the online stuff. It had no appeal to me because it didn’t exist. I wanted to see my end product. I don’t know, anyway. Did that answer your question? (Laughs)

Speaking of your three year plan, a lot of people think an artist comes from nowhere and in a few months there they are. Does it drive you crazy that people think you came out of the blue?

Yeah, I mean that three years was ten years ago. (Laughs)You never make it in this business and you are never done. I heard Clapton on the radio last night and he’s done everything you could do and he still doesn’t think he gets it. I don’t think the good ones do. I think the overnight sensations disappear overnight. That means nothing to me.

Grassroots is the way? Like your contemporaries you want to make a slow build town to town?

Yeah. I’m definitely a troubadour in spirit. I love the blues and all those people who really just did it for the love of it.

I think about my family sitting around at get togethers playing guitar and singing, is that sort of the feeling you want to carry on with you as you play each night?

That and I wonder about who is listening, who the song moves, and life. Music is a very basic human tendency. Everything else is icing. Sometimes a little icing isn’t bad, but just plain icing and no cake and you just get toothaches.

Do you go back over the songs and feel where you were at the time?

I know exactly where I was because the album was delayed so long that I couldn’t forget. (Laughs) But at the time something that meant a lot to me was to make sure the songs were timeless. To me it doesn’t matter when a song was made because a good song doesn’t age. That was what I wanted. So I’m always there. I want the songs to outlive me and not the other way around.

There seems like one out of a thousand artists that I might still be listening to in ten years.

They’re not really artists.
I worry about that.

I think a lot of people are in on it and worried. Even people who are way up in the power structure who caused that. There are a lot of people who find it regrettable. But there is a huge system in place and there are very few people in control and it’s a money business. It’s big, big business. Although most of the time all the big business involved that it’s very badly run. It’s unorganized, inefficient and has no long term goals. It’s ironic because its lawyers and accountants who run this stuff. They can’t keep it together. The music industry is crumbling. A lot of people notice how shitty and disposable music is and its infesting the whole world.

Is it the hardest thing to sit and watch your album shelved?

It’s horribly frustrating being in the label system. It’s indentured servitude. It’s the coal mining story, it’s all Maggie’s farm. You see how far and wide the catch-22’s are. Record labels are always crying about how they are losing money, which they are, but it’s a ninety-ten split between the record company and the artist. So the artists, with the exception of Mariah Carey who gets millions to go away, get a kick in the ass to go away. When you sign a record deal they take a life insurance policy out on you that you or your family would never see yet they won’t give us health insurance. You understand these things going into it, and if you don’t then maybe you get in and out. It’s a very precarious business especially if you love what you do.

When you think about the future, what are your hopes and dreams for your career?

I hope I can be making records for a very long time no matter how I’m making them. I’d like to make a record a year for the rest of my life or until I get tired of it. I’d like to tour and play for an audience, because aside from all the bullshit I love that more than anything.

+ charlie craine