(mellow piano music)
(♪) ('LOVERS' BY SHAINA SHEPHERD) You’ve got me (♪)
(♪) feeling curled up like a (♪)
(♪) on a Sunday (♪)
(♪) dream you’re sunbathing (♪)
(♪) in the rolling stream. (♪)
(♪) That's mean. (♪♪)
[SHAINA SHEPHERD] I'm Shaina Shepherd.
I am a human making music and living in the music arts
community and just surviving and thriving.
(♪) Every time we talk, I feel (♪)
(♪) inspired. Every time we move
(♪) it feels like fire. (♪)
(♪) Honey, that’s mean. (♪♪)
I grew up in Tacoma, Washington.
I was a church girl.
I grew up a church girl.
We went to service every Sunday.
♪♪
My dad is a deacon in the church.
My mom was a Sunday school teacher and educator,
so that was really where I was when I was growing up.
Music itself
was like the home for me, for
I could figure out how to communicate my feelings.
I was very shy, so
being able to watch the amazing musicians
that I got to grow up around, even though I was quiet,
I absorbed all of that and have brought that
into the way I communicate everything that I,
everything that I do it’s like the background music to
my life...is gospel music.
(♪) Water works (♪)
(♪) Let me drown (♪)
(♪) Let the gates flood, (♪)
(♪) let my frowning now. (♪♪)
I started to sing in choir and within that
audition process I started to get recognition.
I was suddenly like, “Oh, that girl can sing.”
(♪) But now I just gotta be ok. (♪)
(♪) I just got to be ok. (♪)
(♪) Someday.... (♪♪)
I had a really challenging couple of years between when I left
college and I moved to Seattle with nothing.
I was just trying to rebuild my life
and I just went to Craigslist
because that's where I found my apartment,
and that's why I found my job.
And I opened up the music tab and started looking for gigs,
looking for opportunities to audition for things.
I did meet my guitar player, Matt Williams.
He was like, “Yo, so you want to come hang out
in this warehouse?
Me, and my friends, we're going to start a band.
We used to be in this band.”
I was like, “Yeah, dude, that's sounds great.”
And within one night we were a band.
We just jammed.
(♪) But in the final faaaade (♪♪)
And then all of a sudden, not only was my world
filled with amazing friends, but also
it was just constant inspiration and exploration
of sound.
(♪) Yeaaaahhhh (♪♪)
When everything came to a halt,
during the shutdown,
I think that there was just
kind of like an empty, vacant space of a lot of questions,
like a big bag of like, what the f are we going to do?
I was teaching.
I got laid off three times
and I had nothing to do and no income.
And then all of a sudden
my life was nothing but this piano right there, and me.
(♪) I try to sleep (♪)
(♪) through the daytime (♪)
(♪) keeping your shadow close, (♪)
(♪) but all I can see is (♪)
(♪) your movie memory. (♪)
(♪) Picture perfect pause. (♪♪)
I think that it was really a great opportunity to hit that
restart button for myself and say “What can be?”
And I made a decision
at the beginning of the pandemic
that no matter what,
I was going to get through this, these challenges,
and that I would be open and willing to work
with anybody that saw the world the way that I do.
♪♪
We went into London Bridge with the goal of recording
three tunes; three songs that I wrote in my apartment
at the piano.
And over the course of that week, we came out
with three beautifully arranged, wonderful tunes.
♪♪
I'm really excited
to use this record as an opportunity
to be on people's
shelves for a long time, because that's how
the music has come to me.
It's in my library of who I am as a person.
(♪) Oh, that broken heart. (♪)
(♪) How you gonna manage when they tear you apart? (♪)
(♪) Oh that broken heart (♪)
(♪) How you gonna manage when they tear you apart? (♪♪)
There's this thing.
It's like when you open up a box,
like one of those cardboard boxes,
you can never close it again.
That was an experience
I had during the George Floyd protests.
What I would really love for people to get is
that the world has changed so fast for somebody like me.
You know, I'm 30 years old.
15 years ago, I was I was fat,
and I was dark, and I was useless.
That's the narrative in my mind.
That's what I grew up in.
And the world changed really fast.
All of a sudden, my body type, my bone structure, my color,
my hair texture were all things that were desirable.
Then the protests happened
and people were looking at me, asking me
what to do, and I'm like, “I don't know what to do.”
Apparently you need my feelings.
I have been forced to actually evolve.
I've been forced
to actually become the change
that I wish to see in the world.
And it's really hard because it's happening really fast.
And I hate it.
And I hate it because I
I'm tired and I'm sad a lot,
but I'm really motivated
to make this work really meaningful.
Music is activism, just like Nina Simone said.
I want to learn how to step into my purpose,
because I do feel truly that it is my purpose to make music
that feels real and reminds
people of a sense of the present,
which means I have to make sure that I stay whole
and that I stay balanced and I stay working.
And when I'm working and I'm balanced and I'm whole,
I'm good.
♪♪
Shaina performs with Crowdsource Choir on Wednesday, March 8th
at the KEXP Gathering Space on the Seattle Center Grounds.
And watch for Shaina’s
new record, slated for release on Juneteenth, 2023.
♪♪
Catch Art Zone Friday nights at 8
and anytime online at seattlechannel.org/artzone.