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this is a near-direct transcript of a zoom interview so sorry if anything looks off. more visual style and formatting coming eventually
A conversation with Shana Cleveland
with me for KDVS 90.3 FM
July 8th 2024
chick-p
I am here with Shana Cleveland of the band La Luz, a band that I like to say falls into my favorite music category, that is “acid surfy space rock.” I'm super duper excited to be here and just talk to you.
So, new album just came out in May, News of the Universe. Yay! How are you doing? How are things?
Shana
Oh man, things are so good. I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me on your show. I'm a big fan of your show, so it's exciting for me. Yeah, you know, it's super hot outside. I'm kind of struggling, I'm sweating. Yeah.
Other than that, I'm doing good.
chick-p
This is the first time that I've ever done something like this. And I just have a few questions that I've been very…I just want to pick your brain. So let's get into it.
So one thing I love that you do just personally is your [Famous Faces] calendar that you do. And you draw musical artists from different times and places. And I love it. And I really am interested in like, the relationship for you between like visual art and music and kind of like what that means for you, if that makes sense.
Shana
Yeah! Thanks for saying you like the calendars. If you have anybody that you want to see on my next calendar, let me know, send me an email.
But yeah, I don't know. I've always done visual art. Like my mom put me in art classes from an early age, you know, so that's always been fun. It’s just something that…it’s almost just more relaxing for me. It's like kind of how I unwind, just draw and listen to records.
But I feel like visual art, the combination of visual art and music is so great when it works well, you know? And so I've always tried to be really deliberate about the visuals around my music and around La Luz. A lot of the early t-shirt designs and posters and the cover for our first tape are all things that I drew. I just kind of…that’s always been close to my heart, just like how we present ourselves visually.
chick-p
Absolutely. And I’m…I’m curious, do you have any just like visual artists or just artists in general that are like, I guess…your muses, you know? What really inspires you in that realm?
Shana
Yeah, I feel like a lot of film lately. Like, like we just made this video for our song Always in Love that was inspired by the movie Hausu, that Japanese horror movie from the 70s. And I think that I find myself really looking to film a lot. Agnes Varda is another director whose work has been really inspiring to me visually lately. Yeah.
And I don't know, other than that…I love design. I feel like that's something that…it’s not really my forte, but I really appreciate just great graphic design. I feel like it's so…it’s such a sort of magical art. You're like, what makes something compelling. Even if it could be really simple, it could be just text, but just how something can draw you in or not. I don't know, I'm really interested in that.
I have a ton of visual artists I love, but I'm always like, oh, it's the first time anyone's asked me that. So I don't have a ready response. I'm going to have to do it later tonight.
chick-p
Awesome. Well, I love it. And just in general…hm, I’m thinking right now of the cover for News of the Universe, the album cover. And…this is kind of a half-baked thought…but you've said in the past that your solo music is kind of you looking inwards, whereas La Luz is kind of you expanding outwards.
I think the cover of News of the Universe, at least, and even just the sound of it, it's all so…I don't know, I guess I just want to say I admire it and it's great and I love it and it's colorful and it's exciting and fun.
I don't know. It's just great. So I just wanted to say that.
Shana
Yeah, that artist is so great. Her name's Mabel Esteban. And she's just somebody that…I saw their work online. And I was just like, oh, man, something about this really resonates with me. And just reached out to her. And she was just like, yeah, I'll do your cover. And I don't know. That's one of the things I love so much about doing a creative project that, you know, extends outward is just being able to collaborate with people across genres and across disciplines and stuff like that.
So yeah, Mabel Esteban, I don't know, I'd recommend anybody look her up. Her work is, is, is just really interesting.
And most of her subjects are women. And that felt really appropriate for this record, which was made entirely by women, you know, I thought, it’s got to have a woman on the cover and I just really like the way that she draws women. It's kind of creepy and eerie, you know, but beautiful. To me that's like, I don't know, that's kind of the the experience of like womanhood and growing up right and seeing things as both. You can appreciate what's eerie and what's beautiful and it's all, it’s all together and it's great and I love it.
chick-p
And honestly, that's something that I really admire just about your vision and your music. And that reminds me, I'm really curious about like, for me at least, your music and your lyrics both solo and with the band feel very metaphysical and esoteric and just very praiseful of what's naturally occurring in the world.
I I guess I'm just I really do want to hear more about that influence, especially since I know that the name of the album comes from, from what I saw in Bandcamp, it's like metaphysical poetry, but I want to know, what is it all? What is it, what are these influences?
Shana
Well, I think I've always been really inspired by nature. I've always gone to really quiet, natural settings to, to get inspired. And even just to kind of work out melodies sometimes, I love to go to some place where nature is loud and I can just sing and feel like nobody's going to hear me and just sort of blend in with the elements. You know, I feel like that's something that is always, that I'm always kind of seeking.
And I think since I moved—I live in Grass Valley, California—since I moved out here where I live, it's very rural, you know…I can't really see other people from my house. And so I'm just surrounded by nature. And I think that the albums that I've written since I've lived out here have really been steeped in, in nature. That was really,
News of the Universe and the self-titled La Luz record and my solo record Manzanita, there's so many plants, and there's so many planets. I trip out about like the word planet planet and plants and how similar they are. There's just so much there's there's just so much of the natural world and on all of those records and I think it's just because that's what I'm surrounded by now. And so that's something that's just been really inspiring to me.
I think I was always kind of headed for this sort of setting, even though I lived in cities before I moved here, just because that has been something that's always been inspiring to me, even though I have mostly lived most of my adult life in cities. Even in those cities, I've kind of sought out really cool parks and natural settings.
chick-p
Do you have any literary influences, or just musical influences that have been big for you, both growing up and now? Just…yeah, how they've like influenced your work I guess.
Shana
Yeah, yeah. One of the first people that comes to mind is Richard Brautigan), who was a writer in the 60s, sort of like a later, B generation writer in San Francisco and in the Northwest, mostly. And he, I just really love the way his work is written very simply, but the emotion behind it feels really complex and strange. And he takes these very sort of domestic scenes and sort of charges them with magic. And so, yeah, I found his work at an early age and it's something that I always kind of come back to.
But yeah, musical influences, I feel like I have so many, but I really sort of similarly to Brautigan, I really like early rock and roll, early soul music from all different cultures, just in the way that it is. A lot of times the emotions are sort of delivered with a lot of simplicity, so that you could sort of hear the songs and like really understand them right away.
You know, there's, you don't have to like think too hard about a rock and roll song or an old soul song, but like the emotion is so deep. And I'm just really interested in that and that ability those genres of music have of being sort of immediate, but something that anyone can understand. In that, I feel like there's a reaching out and a sort of community and making something not exclusive and sort of easy to understand. Sorry, I'm rambling a bit with that. You know what I'm trying to say?
chick-p
No, I mean, please ramble. I'm also wondering, how does making music in the context of a whole group and a whole band…Like, La Luz, having so many different people with so many different influences and styles and things that they love. How do you find the cohesion? How do you kind of decide, this is how, maybe, we want to do this?
Shana
I feel like for me, that's been such a learning process. And sort of letting go of control has been something that has felt really important with the band. And I think that's why I make solo records, because I think I am like a little bit of a control freak, you know, like an only child. I just like I kind of have my ideas and I just get really into them by myself.
But with the band, I feel like it's just been a real lesson in like, “let me see what happens when I let go of a little control,” you know? And just trust that the people that are with me on this journey of La Luz are the people that are meant to be there, have felt sort of called toward the band. Just, how to lean into collaboration with them.
And it’s been…the band has changed over the years, but I feel like every record feels just perfect for where we're at right now? This, this record marks sort of the biggest changes I think of the band ever. And yeah, it's my favorite record that we've made. So I think that there's something to that, just being like, let me lean into this transformation and with an open heart and see where it's going to take me.
chick-p
One more question. I love it, this is awesome. I just, I so appreciate your work. One, your being here and two…I don't know, I feel like sometimes it's hard to put things into words. I find solace in your music, your solo work and in La Luz, and it's like things are being put into words, put into music and sound. I guess, do you also kind of find that to be true sometimes?
Like, you can't say the things sometimes. They just have to be…I don't know. Does that resonate?
Shana
Right. I mean, I think, I think it does. There's something just so strange and powerful about music. You know, I, I've seen, I saw something once about how, people that are really old, you know, like kind of beyond being able to really communicate very well, they'll hear music and it'll move them. They'll sort of wake up from a train, you know?
And I've seen that like with my, my, my own grandma, you know? I'd play her, we would play her some Ella Fitzgerald or something that she used to love. And it was just like, it was just such a transformation, you know? And I think that I'm just so interested in that power. I see obviously in the music that I love, but even when I'm writing songs, I feel like that's how I know a song is done when I play it back.
And I'm just like, “I don't know, I don't know where that came from.” I didn't really know what I was doing while I was writing that, but it just feels right. I kind of want everything to have that quality. And I have so many songs that I've never released, because I have an idea for a song and then I write it. And then it just, for whatever reason, it doesn't hit me. The mystery isn't there. That element that sort of explains more than anything more than you are normally able to articulate. That X factor isn't there.
And I feel like, I don't know, I like great music. It just has this, this magical way of saying more than just the lyrics, you know, saying more than the melody…there’s some sort of alchemy there, I guess. Yeah. I'm really interested in that as well. And I also love instrumental music that doesn't have any lyrics. I feel like…that can be so magical in its own way because you don't have anybody telling you how to feel. You can just kind of go on your own journey and imagine whatever visuals come to mind.
chick-p
No absolutely! I also just want to say that on Manzanita, I’m a huge fan of all the instrumentals.
But yeah, I guess our time, I guess is just about up. But I just want to say, thank you so much for doing this. It's been a pleasure. It's been an honor, and I will be seeing you in November in Sacramento.
Shana
Yay, come up and say hi, please.
chick-p
Yeah, absolutely! And yeah, just thanks so much.
Shana
Well, I want to thank you and thank KDVS, because I listen all the time. And honestly, it makes me feel like…less lonely in life to listen to a good radio station. I just love listening to good music and knowing that other people are listening at the same time.
And I've heard so many songs that I wasn't aware of on your show when I listened. So thank you for that.
chick-p
Yeah. And I will say thank you also. You called into my show once and I was like, “Oh yeah, I love Shana Cleveland.” And you're like, “No, it's me.”
Shana
I was so excited to finally meet you after that funny phone call.
chick-p
I know, right? Yeah, just…good luck on the rest of the tour with La Luz I will be having News of the Universe on repeat at the station when I'm down there, like I already do. And yeah, just…Thanks!