The RF Shannon Interview

Are you originally from Lockhart, TX? What was your childhood like? When did you first begin to fall in love with music, more specifically songwriting and the guitar? Was music relevant around your household growing up? What would you and your brother Jeff do for fun growing up?

I was born in Plainview, TX in the Texas panhandle. My family moved to Grapeland, TX when I was 5, or so, which is in the piney woods of East Texas. I was a sullen child, but found joy in wandering the woods and playing baseball. About the most exciting thing that ever happened was when dad would take me and Jeff on back roads to chase storms, and we would listen to Jerry Jeff Walker. We were always a little scared of the lightning, but when the storm would pass we would pick wildflowers for mom. The first music I ever got into on my own was Nirvana, and that pretty much started my obsession with music. Later that year I got my first electric guitar, a black synsonic short-scale guitar with a shitty little amp built into it. My dad played a little acoustic at the time, and the first songs he taught me on guitar were “Pipeline” and “Walk Don’t Run” by The Ventures. I wouldn’t end up writing songs for a few years, but I did start paying more attention to what made songs feel good. My older sister was in high school and showed me TLC, so then I tried to figure out how both Nirvana and TLC could be so different yet shared a fundamental quality to it that resonated with me. That was around the time my brother Jeff started to learn drums on a make-shift drum set: pots, pans, and empty two liter soda bottles for toms. I think that’s the nearest to an origin for all this that I can figure.

Who were some of our earliest influences in your more formative years? When and where did you see your very first concert and when did you realize you wanted to spend your life making music?

The first real concert I ever went to, my dad took Jeff and I to see Metallica in San Antonio when I was in 9th grade (1997). Jerry Cantrell and Days of the New opened. Makes me feel ancient to recall this lineup. Even though I loved Metallica, that show taught me what I didn’t want to do. I also don’t know that I’ve ever realized I want to spend my life making music, just that I like to make music. There’s so much more to life than making music to me. But I didn’t feel compelled to “make music” to this extent until I was 29. A late bloomer. Before that it was just porch music with my friends. Getting into Guy and Townes and all the Texas greats in my 20s got me picking guitar more, but after trying to write songs to contribute to that tradition, I realized my voice and varied tastes don’t sit well staying firmly in that roots tradition. The trick has been finding out how to honor all of my influences through my sound without any one genre or tradition limiting its expression.

Did you participate in any groups, or projects prior to forming RF Shannon? What initially inspired you to put the band together with folks such as Ignacio Guerrero and Kitty Beebe and your brother? When and where did you make your live performance debut and what was that experience like for you?

I played in many groups before I decided to form RF Shannon. In high school my brother and I were in some really awful and hilarious Christian hardcore bands. When I was 19, I joined a power pop/indie band called The Connotations in Tyler, TX. We moved to Nashville for a year to get a record deal. We succeeded, but the label was awful and the scene in Nashville at that time wasn’t my thing, so I moved to Austin. I played drums for a stoner metal band called “Armageddon-it-on” with fellow east Texans Mark Woods and Greg Enlow, Greg went on to join The Strange Boys. I played bass in Comanche Club, which was a loose amalgamation of friends playing my friend Chris Hoyt’s songs. Chris lives here in Lockhart too, and just recently contributed “Bellafatima” to the Plains album. Then I spent a lot of years playing guitar for Jess Williamson, and that would bring us up to around the time I decided to start RF. Largely because Jess encouraged me to. I think I needed a push. We played our first show as a duo with Jeff and I at Sahara Lounge, January 24th 2013.

It was terrifying, I had never sang before in public, and had only recently started trying to figure out how to even use my voice. But, something about it felt electric, something about leaning into that edge of terror and potential embarrassment sent a much needed jolt of life into me. I had spent most of the previous few years learning the trades of farming, landscaping, construction, and welding and I was beginning to think maybe that was all I would ever do again. So, it was rejuvenating for sure. Austin Burge and Luke Dawson soon joined the band, in 2014, and remained the fixtures until 2017. Austin started a family and Luke moved to Landers, CA. Nathan Dixey of The Dan Ryan briefly played keys for us. Between then and now, its just been a constant juggling act finding people to play with. Jesse Woods and Will Patterson, Ignacio and Kitty, they’re all dear friends, but they all have their own brilliant music and lives to tend to, so its just a blessing when I can get them in a room together for a show, and only now am I beginning to get a set line up together again. Luke now lives in Lockhart, and Chazz Bessette here is an amazing musician who has become a good friend, so we’re cooking out here in Lockhart now.

Tell me about writing and recording the band’s debut LP “Jaguar Palace” back in 2017. When and where did recording begin and how did the deal with Cosmic Dreamer Music come about? What was the overall approach and vision for this album and what was most important to express with this being your debut album?

To talk about writing and recording Jaguar Palace I have to mention its predecessor ‘Hunting Songs’ which was our very first recording, a 10” EP that we released with a local label called Punctum Records. Since I started writing songs later than most people, and had only recently began singing, I called the EP “Hunting Songs” because I was literally (magically?) “hunting” for songs, and for a sound. So, when I set about writing ‘Jaguar Palace’ I named it after something that I was zeroing in on… hunting a jaguar… metaphorically. I still didn’t really know how to write songs, or use my voice, so we really lingered on space, emptiness and expansiveness… perhaps to an absurd extent. We recorded it with Michael Landon at Estuary Recording and it took forever and was often difficult because we didn’t know what the hell we were doing. Michael was a champ, he is so talented and had so much patience with us and made it sound dope, maybe too nice. Its still the most hifi recording we’ve made to date! But, I was definitely leaning hard into special moments of songs, lead licks that were obtuse and transcendent, sort of anything to take the attention of the fact that I hadn’t learned to sing yet! Over time, the album has grown on me. I can see where it fits into our evolution and I am at times inspired by some bold choices I made as a new songwriter and guitar player. 

Cosmic Dreamer came about because Nathan Dixey who played keys with us was good friends with Andy Beyers who ran the label. We didn’t really have any prospects at the time so I asked Nathan to poke Andy a bit and see if he’d be interested in putting out JP. Andy came to see us play and afterwards said “I love you guys because its so damn boring!”, but meant it as a compliment, somehow? So, they put it out. I signed a terrible deal because I was green and desperate to keep moving forward. Luckily, Andy is a kind person and it hasn’t affected anything too poorly to date, he told me it was a standard deal and I believe he thought it was. But, I later learned its a standard deal for major labels. Which are notoriously unfair to the bands, especially if you’re at an indie level. But when I look back on that album, and think about what the ultimate vision was… it was to sort of tantalize the senses, as if in a dream, with a soundscape that felt something like Texas with the pedal steel, but an unseen, or unknown part of it. I think that’s still my prime directive. A sense of place that transcends one’s personal narrative. The immanence of what surrounds you.

‘Trickster Blues’ is still my darling. It was the easiest and most fun of all the albums we’ve made, and it led me to forming relationships that would change my life. Jesse Woods had been putting out albums and playing around town a little before we got into the scene, so when he asked to play a show together at Spiderhouse Ballroom we were already fans. We hit it off and he asked if I had any new material to record because he was learning to use his Fostex 8 track tape machine. I’d been working on a new batch of songs and suggested we rent a cheap casita in Marfa for a few weeks so we could really get into it. This was before Air BNB caught on so we were able to find something reasonably inexpensive. A few weeks turned into three months, we had such a blast. We got most of the tracking done in those first weeks, but just got into a groove staying there and exploring the vastness of West Texas. The recordings were just demos, but something was unlocked in the process of making them. If you listen to our previous albums, there’s quite a change in my vocal delivery on ‘Trickster Blues’. We listened to a lot of JJ Cale, and Jesse suggested that I experiment with landing my vocals a lot more softly, just to see.

It felt more natural to me, and for the first time I actually liked the way my voice sounded. Right off the bat, even in the demo stages, I found a confidence and curiosity that made this album different. We ended up tracking the actual album some months later in Lockhart, Texas. Jesse Woods, Will Patterson, Jess Williamson, and I all moved into a massive yellow Victorian house right off of the Lockhart square. I had just helped build out Chaparral Coffee on the square, so I was helping run the shop and we had these quaint little lives going on, we stayed 8 months, or so. We tracked the album in that house in three days in early spring, and I think every song was one-take, except “Silver Woman” which I recorded in LA by myself once we moved there. My main goal with this album was to prove to myself that I didn’t need a super nice studio to make good songs, and in fact, it was the first album where I felt that I was beginning to write decent songs. So it was a huge shift for us. It also signaled a new era in many other ways. New friendships with Jesse and Will that would turn into an enduring community that I’m still blessed to be surrounded by.

In 2019 the band released its debut with the fine folks over at Keeled Scales, “Rain On Dust”. My favorite record if I may say. Can you tell me about writing and recording songs such as “Wild Rose Pass”, “Snake Oil", “Buzzards On The Breeze” and “Don’t Be Shine”?

‘Rain On Dust’ was the same crew. Jesse and I had both moved to LA, with our respective then-sweeties, and both struggled to feel at home there. While I liked it more than I thought I would, most of these songs were written with that longing for home. All in all I was there just over three years, and we recorded this album just before I knew I was going to move back soon. It didn’t come as easily as Trickster, because the “band” as it were was scattered around a bit, but it was certainly a continuation of a quick recording style with soft vocal delivery. Jesse set a standard in my mind during Trickster which was… don’t over think it. Just keep tracking. If it sounds fine, move on, don’t obsess over it. I obsessed on things with Jaguar Palace and it took me forever to record. So we moved pretty quickly on ‘Rain On Dust’ as well, beginning with “Wild Rose Pass”. I just played that on a nylon string guitar, sang as softly as I could, and we brought in drums and the other elements later, so that the other instruments had no choice but to play to that level of intimacy.

That was the pattern we used for the whole album. For the record, I think “Wild Rose Pass” might be my favorite song we’ve done, though “Dublin, Texas” is sneaking up on it. In a way I feel like ‘Rain On Dust’ was heavily inspired by our time in West Texas when we were tracking the demos for ‘Trickster Blues’. Weird how things lag, but naturally so. Also, it seemed to foreshadow a grief that I would come to feel a few years later, after moving back to Lockhart from LA to begin working on our latest record ‘Red Swan In Palmetto’. By far the most difficult album to write and track so far. I began tracking it at home in 2020, and for obvious reasons, there were many hurdles. Many questions, the kind that have no answers. I feel that I’m only just now fortified enough to address it, and at this point I’d just like for the album to speak for itself. We’ve gotten damn near no press for it, so I’m hoping it can learn to walk on its own. I’m just grateful for the help I received to see it through, especially from Rob Barbato. I don’t think this album would exist the way it does without him, on many levels. At this point, I can finally say I feel the wind in my sails again, and we’ve already set to work on a new body of material. I feel at home, and I can’t wait to see what that sounds like.

Is there anything else you would like to further share with the readers?

On a lighter note, I helped with a few other albums while wrestling with Red Swan, like Scott Ballew’s first two releases. It was a blast, he had just started to write and record songs, so his fresh energy about the process sort of inspired me to reframe what I was doing and approach it with more joy. He’s a good guy, and for some reason the only person I feel comfortable answering phone calls from, even though he wears Uggs. Chaparelle came to be, as Zella Day made her way to Wimberley with Jesse Woods, so I’m lucky enough to get to sit in writing sessions here and there. Mark my words, those two are going down in history. I finally got to meet Kevin from Cactus Lee a few days back and fan boy out to him. I feel like we’re in a magical window of timeless music being made right now here in Central Texas. I know there’s tons of great music coming out all the time, but here, I feel like I could hit it with a rock.