In conversation with Shane Renfro of RF Shannon
Shane Renfro grew up in Grapeland, Texas. It’s a religious town of about 1,400 people who refer to it as the piney woods. He considered himself a late bloomer in his early teen years. He found himself not growing as quickly as his brother and friends, making him less interested in sports. Needing a new outlet and an escape from small town religion, he picked up a guitar.
He was in a hardcore Christian band in high school. When he was nineteen, he moved to Nashville. After becoming homesick, he moved to Austin to be closer to home and his friends. After spending most of his twenties farming and learning trades like landscaping, he felt compelled to pick up a guitar again and RF Shannon was formed.
Their second full-length album — Trickster Blues — will be out on Cosmic Dreamer Music on May 4th. They’re also touring. Dates at the bottom.
Eight tracks and 28 minutes long, the album is the perfect escape from day-to-day monotony. It’s earthy and romantic; etheric and dreamy. It’s groovy but accessible. Trickster Blues maintains a mellow mood similar to the one found throughout their last album, Jaguar Palace (2017). However, rather than focusing on seven-minute jam sessions, this album keeps your attention with catchy pop hooks and more storytelling.
On The Process podcast, Shane shares how RF Shannon got started, the songwriting and recording process, Austin, LA, Trickster Blues, social media, psychomagic and more. You can find a written excerpt of just a part of our conversation below or listen to the full episode below or on iTunes.
Q&A with Shane Renfro of RF Shannon
When you were in Austin and picked up the guitar again, did you feel influenced by being in such a musical city and around your musical friends or were you internally compelled?
Prior to that, we as a group of friends all picked around and were listening to a lot of Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt. We all wanted to be that. But I found my singing voice didn’t sound good with a twain. It didn’t have that roughness and it cracked when I tried to project. I picked up the guitar again because my friends and I had grown apart and I was kind of lonely. I got inspired by Timber Timbre — his debut self-titled album from 2009.
Just hearing the intimacy of his voice — I was like well, if my voice can’t project and be this gritty country thing — can it be up close and intimate? My voice started to work like that. I never tried singing until around the age 28, 29. I got a little microphone, ran it through an amp in my room, put a little reverb on it and I was like, oh, if I just barely push air out, it sounds nice. It was Marty Robbins style but being alone. It was this quiet lonely affair.
It sounds like that moment must have been rewarding. Finally finding your voice.
It definitely changed my life because I didn’t have an outlet at that point. I was working a lot, doing physical manual labor and I enjoyed that for years and enjoyed what I was learning. But I realized something in me wasn’t getting expressed. When I started singing, it was clear I had this whole other world to explore. I asked my brother to join me on this venture. So yes, rewarding.
Are you a full-time musician now or do you still pick up other work?
I’m more of a full-time musician than I’ve ever been, which is a pleasant surprise. I’m still not making a lot of money from it.
For a couple years prior to coming out to LA, I did a couple of gigs. I opened a mom and pop coffee shop in Lockhart, Texas with some friends. It’s a small town south of Austin that is seeing a bit of a boom. A lot of the artists and musicians are moving out there because Austin’s gotten too expensive.
I was also the muscle for my friend’s wedding and event planning company in Marfa, Texas. I helped her set up, tear down — all that. I was balancing these side hustles while trying to write music and play shows. After moving to LA, I started mostly doing music. But when I’m in town, I’m a metal fabricator at a furniture design shop. I still do some work but just not nearly as much.
What’s your relationship with social media, especially as a musician?
Bad. Abysmal even. I really don’t like it. I’m not good at it either. I didn’t realize that it’s actually a skill until the last year or so. But as I started to do it, I saw the necessity of it. You’re not gonna get to play the game at all if you don’t have the equipment. So I begrudgingly put up a facebook and do instagram. I finally got a twitter but I don’t even know how to use it.
I came across the term appropriate technology a couple of years ago. My attitude towards to now is: OK use it as a tool but don’t let your identity get absorbed in this. Don’t go with the waves of the mob mentality that comes with it. I try to use it as an appropriate tool for what I want to do now. I’m trying to have a healthy relationship with it.
You describe your music as dessert blues. Can you elaborate on what that means? How you’d describe your sound?
It’s funny. I used desert blues because it’s not used a lot and it’s easily identifiable. I identify my music with a sense of place, so the desert as good as any. It’s this kind of expansive, meditative place. It has a lonely quality to it.
Our older stuff was this long-form, meditative music. And we have a pedal steel, which I think people equate with country or western music. When I play guitar, it’s kind of rudimentary, blues based — usually minor chords configuration. Desert blues seemed like the easiest way to describe it. But I’m not attached to that. I don’t want to like go around preaching the Gospel of desert blues or anything. I think it mostly comes from one song on our last album called “Hottevilla”. The video and the song encapsulate desert blues to me, but I don’t think it describes the entirety of our catalog.
Me and my brother, Jeff — he’s the drummer — were obsessed with the swampy R&B sound. I’m really into old school R&B and he loves Creedence Clearwater Revival. So we just like swampy sound and then you throw the pedal steel and the soft area vocals on it and it has a desert quality.
How is this album different from Jaguar Palace?
It’s very different. The last album was supposed to be a double LP. It was going to be long-form, very orchestrated album with lush musical textures — very cinematic. One song is almost 12 minutes long. I would find moments in these songs where there would be a catchy part or a hook, then it’d dissolve back into like the instrumental long-form stuff. I’m really into that. I like to listen to what I call passive listening music. Something you put on to drink your coffee and read or meditate. That old stuff was influenced by that.
But Trickster Blues was triggered by my friend Jessie Woods. He has the voice of an angel and he’s a great songwriter and he’s just a groovy dude. We rented a house in Marfa Texas and brought a tape machine. He got excited about the catchy stuff I had and suggested we make a record of it. We trimmed the fat to create pop format songs. Not for any reason other than wanting to see if we could condense my songs into catchier formats and make them as creamy and sweet sounding as possible. That’s basically what we did and it felt awesome.
I realized we don’t have to be this weird, trippy, serious, long-form band. The two albums are like the difference between a short story or a poem. With a poem, you’re trying to say the most profound thing with the least amount of words. So it was like, can I just distill my music instead of rambling on, rambling on? Can I just get to the point and still have the same feeling? That’s Trickster Blues.
You recorded and cut this album much quicker than the last. Was that easy for you or are you still battling with letting it be?
I’m still battling with it. At the time it was freeing. I attribute a lot of it to the vibes at the house where we recorded it. We were all just feeling happy to be doing something different and it felt really good. Going back to those demo days in Marfa, me and Jesse were into this gritty, almost seventies a.m. radio sound. We went and listened to Neil Young and hear a wrong base note or little flubs. I never noticed that. I’m not sitting there like, oh, this song sucks because they didn’t nail that part. It goes back to distilling it to its core essence. If the song comes across with the broody, moody vibe we want, it’s fine. We don’t need to sit here and pick at it.
There are times I regret it a lot I’m glad I can’t go back and change it because I am a perfectionist. With Jaguar Palace, it took a year to record because I kept going back in and redoing everything and I didn’t like that process. It wasn’t fun. So with this one I was like, we’re not making any money, we may as well be having fun. So we did it very fast, very run and gun.
What’s your songwriting process like?
I always starts with the music. Well, that’s not always true. Actually, “Gates of Paradise” started with that lyric ‘at the gates of paradise’ but generally it starts with the music. I have rituals I do. If I’m in my own zone, I’ll have a beer and just one hit of marijuana. I don’t smoke a lot, but I do it as kind of this medicine. It opens me up in a way and I just start playing whatever feels good. When I find a cool riff or a chord progression that feels right, I usually send it to my brother. If he gets excited about it, I keep working on it and if he doesn’t then I’ll table it for later.
I usually don’t write a song in one sitting, except for “I’m Only Dying” (on Trickster Blues). I usually let them simmer. I’ll work on it for an hour or two until I get to a good place. Then I don’t think about it for a while until I get in the zone again. It’s very much something that I feel out and it has to feel good.
Is there anything else about the new album that you’d like people to know?
I hope that grooves for people. I hope too that when people listen to it, it makes you curious about the natural world. And I don’t mean like going to national parks, although that could be a part of it. I mean I hope that it doesn’t just get mixed in with all the rest of the noise of this music scene or music industry. I hope it kind of stands out as like wow, these guys are really trying to honor a place and a process. I don’t know. I can’t put that out there because people will it what they want, but I guess that’s where my stand is on it. I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t think that there’s an importance to relationship with the world as it is now. You know?
Any advice for emerging musicians?
I myself probably needed needed advice, but I would say definitely have guiding principles. You’re going to meet a lot of people going through this system. Most will ignore you. Don’t take anything personally. When those people come to help you, take it.
Tour dates
5/16 AUSTIN, TX — CHEER UP CHARLIES*
5/17 MARFA, TX — LOST HORSE SALOON*
5/18 TUCSON, AZ — EXO
5/19 LANDERS, CA — LANDERS BREWING COMPANY*
5/21 LOS ANGELES, CA — THE RESIDENT*
5/25 SAN FRANCISCO, CA — AMNESIA*
5/27 DENVER, CO — LION’S LAIR*
5/28 TAOS, NM — PARSE SECO*
5/30 DENTON. TX — TBA
5/31 DALLAS, TX — SMALL BREW PUB
6/1 TYLER, TX — EL GUAPO*
6/2 LAFAYETTE, LA — THE PLATFORM
6/4 NEW ORLEANS, LA- MUDLARK*
*WITH JESSE WOODS
