The Girls Room Tour: Shannon McNally

By Alex Teitz

Seeing Shannon McNally live is like watching the child Janis Joplin and Ella Fitzgerald. She sings with power and passion, and soulfulness. When she speaks it is a whisper. In the second part of FEMMUSIC’s look at The Girls Room Tour we spoke with Shannon McNally about her style and her upcoming CD, Jukebox Sparrows. Shannon McNally

FEMMUSIC: Describe your songwriting technique?

SM: I generally start a notebook in January and just start writing, and write and write and write. Write some poems, write some songs then kind of edit, edit them together, edit them down. Just keep dragging along, two or three lines and I just kind of keep filling up notebooks and constantly editing, re-editing them. More writing, re-edit. More writing, re-edit. Just to fish through whatever’s going on in my life, whatever phase I’m in. Then I’ll start making demos just on a little, like a little thing like this (indicating tape recorder). Just anything that says “play” and “record.” I don’t like anything that involves buttons of too many kinds. Then I just sing the songs onto tape. I’ll just listen to ‘em, live with them. I could live with them for a long time. Songs develop over a very long period of time. That’s my technique.

FEMMUSIC: About how long does it take?

SM: Some I write really fast. Some I write in a sitting. “Leaving Bags by the Door” I sat down and wrote. “Colorado: I wrote different parts over a long period of time. Six months. It’s different for all songs. It depends on where they fall in the editing process.

FEMMUSIC: What was the biggest challenge making your CD, Jukebox Sparrows?

SM: Doing exactly what my first instinct was to do. No matter how ridiculous or expensive it sounded, or no matter how unrealistic, or no matter how many people were saying, “Don’t do that.” If it was my first gut reaction and I knew…there were a couple times I didn’t do it. Didn’t go with my first instinct. “First thought, best thought.” If I didn’t go with the first thought, I just remember them as painful experiences. The second after I made the decision I knew it wasn’t right and it was locked in. I never forgot so I only let that happen once or twice. That was the hardest challenge.  

FEMMUSIC: Can you give me an example?

SM: We had a song we went into cut and we didn’t have exactly the right band that I wanted to play the song. But I kinda said, “Alright. Alright.” And we cut it and it didn’t work and we thought about it and lost a lot of sleep over it. Lost a lot of time trying to make the song then be the way I heard it in my head. We were never gonna get there. So we had to go back in and re-cut it. Spend a lot more money and a lot of wasted time.

FEMMUSIC: What would be the best experience you had making Jukebox Sparrows?

SM: My best experiences were when it was exactly…There were moments where it was the right room. It was the right group of people. It was the right sound. It was the right song. It was the right time of year, and it was just magic. Just life altering.

FEMMUSIC: Who have been your biggest music influences?

SM: John Denver. (singing) “You fill up my sunsets…”

I mean he wrote beautiful songs. “Like night in a forest.” I love Linda Ronstandt. You’re talking earliest musical influences this is what I would have been listening to at six or seven. I like folk musicians. We used to see The Carpenter Family a lot. Used to see them at the beach. My uncle was a pretty good guitar player, still is a guitar player. He was a pretty big influence. I knew he knew a lot about rock and roll. Kind of trusted what he said. He would give me records and stuff that I would listen to.

FEMMUSIC: How did you meet Margo Timmins, and what did she do to help your career?

SM: Margo must hate this because it wasn’t like. I gave her this tape after a show and said, “Thank you. I really like what you do.” She said, “Okay. Thank you very much.” She left to get on the bus and Peter picked it up. That was all Margo had to do with it. (laughing)  Margo didn’t discover me. She was an unwitting angel on my road. (laughing)

FEMMUSIC: What one thing would you like to see changed most about the music industry?

SM: Well truthfully I’ve had a pretty good ride in the music industry. I think the music can be what you make of it. I mean there’s a lot of dead ends for a lot of people. I would like to see more people in the music industry who really know what they like, or really know what they don’t like and make their decisions based on that. What they really like. What moves them, but they have to be musical hearted.

FEMMUSIC: As a woman in the music industry, have you been discriminated against?

SM: No, I haven’t. I think every artist who comes in. You’re necessarily putting yourself in a box. The first five things that are the most obvious about you are what are going to go on the outside of the box. I’m a woman. That’s probably the first thing that goes on the box. I don’t have any control over that and I don’t have an issue with it. I have come across people…it is predominantly men but I will refer to everyone as people instead…I have come across a lot of people who do have power trips, but I think men have power trips and women have power trips. If you’re a young woman and you’re just new in the industry and you come up against power trips it can feel like discrimination but it’s just really a power trip. I’ve felt that more than I’ve felt, “Well you can’t do it ‘cause you’re a girl.” I’ve gotten that too, but not a lot, and not from anyone with real character. I mean the best of the best don’t blink an eye.