Shannon Carey is the ethereal lead singer and banjo picker
for Luray, a new presence on the bluegrass scene. Make that post-bluegrass, as
Luray’s sound is an ambient mix of grass, country, indie folk, and splashes of
lots of other things–a bit like the kind of stuff her brother Sean plays in Bon
Inver. Luray have just released The
Wilder, the band’s debut recording.
Your PR material
mentions that your past has involved a lot of wanderlust. How has this affected
your music?
SC: I grew up in Wisconsin and Arizona, but I’ve moved
around a lot. I picked up country music from my dad, who was in bands that
played at country fairs. I also lived in New Orleans for a year, where there’s
so much street music. I learned about bluegrass in the Bay Area of California,
where amazing musicians are creating new versions of it. When I moved to the
Washington, D.C. area I decided to see how what I could meld together.
Were there specific
musical influences you picked up in your travels?
SC: Well, you try not to sound like anyone else, but I love
the singing of Patty Griffin and Emmylou Harris. You also hear things you have
to learn on your own. Bluegrass singing has a kind of yodel thing going on. I
had to teach myself how to do that.
I don’t have specific influences for the banjo, though
Alison Brown has been a strong role model for women for many years. Of course,
I love Béla Fleck. But I also like a lot of the banjo that’s been in recent
Indigo Girls records. Mainly I liked melodic banjo.
I like to ask
musicians how they describe their sound and you’ve just released your
debut record, so what’s it sound like to you?
SC: (Laughs) Well… I wrote a lot of the promo material, so I
don’t want to repeat myself! The sound of the record is supposed to be textural
and comforting. It has earthy, natural sounds, but also layers of banjo picking
and vocal lines. I wanted it to be transporting and ambient, but with the sense
of joy we get from country and bluegrass music.
I want to ask you, in
turn, about my three favorite songs on the album, beginning with the title
track “The Wilder.” Tell me about it.
SC: It was actually the song that inspired the entire
project, which is how it ended up as the title track. It’s about trusting the
universe and stepping into an unknown space both spiritually and physically. It
came as I was turning toward music to reinvent myself after a career in social
work. I had to step into that unknown space and trust that things would work
out.
How about “Crying,” a
sweet little song I really like?
SC: I wanted to see if I could write a country song. It’s
about getting in touch with my feelings, even though the story is told from the
perspective of a man trying not to cry. It also came out of my social work job
that involved families and children. You try not to let it happen, but that
kind of job can shut you down emotionally. I had to relearn how to be sad and
cry. As it happened, my dog died and I cried for months!
Kalorama is bouncy and
unlike a lot of the other tracks.
That’s actually the name of the D.C. neighborhood where my
husband (Luray guitarist and Greenpeace employee Gary Wisniewski) and I lived.
It’s in the northwest of the city and we had an apartment on the corner of Kolorama
and Columbia. It was all new, including trying out apartment living, which we
had never done before.
The song tries to capture the experience of being a newcomer
and feeling like you don’t belong in the first place. The neighborhood is next
to Adams Morgan (a historically black neighborhood in the process of
gentrification), but it’s also a mixture of college kids, embassies, and middle
and upper class people, all living near Kalorama Park. It often felt like being
an alien. We live on a farm in Maryland now, which makes for a longer commute
into the city, but it suits us better.
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