Shana Cleveland | The Acoustic Guitar Podcast Sessions

Catch up with singer-songwriter (and La Luz lead guitarist) Shana Cleveland in this bonus Acoustic Guitar Sessions episode. We talk shredding, open tunings, playing guitar outside, and enjoy a performance of “Quick Winter Sun” from her latest album, Manzanita.

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Transcript

Joey Lusterman 0:00

Welcome to the Acoustic Guitar Podcast . I'm your guest host , Joey Lusterman . Usually I stay behind the scenes of the show , but I'm filling in while Nick is out of the office . For this Acoustic Guitar Sessions mini-sode , I'm joined by singer-songwriter and quote-unquote secret shredder , Shana Cleveland , who you may also know as the lead guitarist in La Luz . Before our conversation , Cleveland kicks things off with a performance of her song Quick Winter Sun from her latest album , Manzanita here in the valley the hours are cut Down from the hills up above Double the dark .

Shana Cleveland 1:06

Now the new season's come , there goes the quick winter sun . Woke up too late . Now the day's almost done . There goes the quick winter sun . All of the others around us have gone . Look , we're the last humans Out on the trail . Too far , we feel our way back to the car .

Joey Lusterman 2:55

Swallows return to their houses of mud . There goes the quick winter sun . Do you have a different approach when you're , when you're playing or writing for acoustic versus electric ?

Shana Cleveland 3:13

yeah , the biggest difference is when I play electric I use a pick and , um , when I play acoustic I never really use a pick , pretty exclusively finger picking on acoustic and using a pick on electric . On acoustic I use a lot of open tunings , but on electric I never really do and it's honestly just probably a convenience thing . Like with Laloos , I don't want to be switching guitars in the middle of the set , so I just kind of keep it simple . But with my solo projects on acoustic it feels a little more relaxed , I guess . So I just kind of will allow myself to do several different tunings and just kind of make people wait a little bit .

Joey Lusterman 3:58

I noticed you made a bumper sticker that says I break for alternate tunings .

Shana Cleveland 4:03

Yeah , it's surprisingly popular .

Joey Lusterman 4:05

I bet . What is it about playing an alternate tunings that you like so much , and do you have a favorite ?

Shana Cleveland 4:12

Yeah , I do so . My favorite for the last two albums I've been really into Open G minor , and so for Manzanita and for my album Night of the War Moon , both have several songs in open G minor . I I feel like for the next record I have to like give that one up cause I've just been so into it for so long . But um , but yeah , open tunings . I feel like for me it's like open tuning , open mind , like I can just kind of let my mind wander easier . It's so easy to make something sound good right away in an open tuning . I think it kind of takes the pressure off and it kind of lets the inner critic take a break . And for me that's the best place to start writing a song from , where I'm sort of just wandering around and not too worried about really what chords I'm playing or you know doing something right or wrong . It's just sort of you can just kind of noodle . I feel like in a way that is is is really inspiring for me .

Shana Cleveland 5:18

I read that you like , really like , to play guitar outside , and so I'm wondering what the role of nature or the wilderness is in your artistic practice yeah , I feel like it's kind of a similar thing that I get playing outside as as uh is playing in an open tuning , where it's just kind it just is an environment where I feel like I can kind of get outside of my head a little bit when , if I'm sitting inside of of a room , that's that's really sort of controlled , I feel like I I can hear , I can hear mistakes better , I can sort of it's . There's something a little intimidating I think about , about too much control , and so when I'm outside there's there's other things going on and the world just seems to be going on without me and sort of uninterested in what I'm doing , and I feel like that's just a really nice environment for imagination .

Joey Lusterman 6:22

Going back to a little bit about the differences between the Solo Project and the La Luz thing .

Joey Lusterman 6:27

I know La Luz isn't like a surf rock band necessarily . I don't want to pigeonhole it like that , but it strikes me that fingerstyle acoustic guitar and surf rock are both really guitar-driven . There's a lot of emphasis put on technique and speed and and kind of flair , and so I was wondering if you see a correlation between that , like kind of surf rock riff , lick , shredding , and fingerstyle solo stuff yeah , I mean , I , I , I think so I , I think that I am sort of drawn to a a bit of like .

Shana Cleveland 7:04

I think that I am sort of drawn to a bit of like showiness with guitar . I think that , like , I just hesitate with that because I am , you know , self-taught and I've always I don't really know anything about the technical aspects of music or guitar , and if I'm in an environment with people who do and who want to talk to me about playing the fifth or whatever , just very simple music theory stuff , it's just completely over my head . And so I but I don't know , I am like I've always just been really into interesting guitar and and guitar solos . I love guitar solos . Um , so , yeah , I think that like that is , uh , that's always just kind of what's interested me about guitar . I've never really been a big , a big , uh , strummer and I feel like I'm getting farther and farther away from that . You know , as , as I go , um , yeah , it's , yeah , I don't know it's funny to think of it that way , because I do I think I'm like a secret shredder .

Joey Lusterman 8:12

I feel like I try to kind of hide how much joy it gives me , that's awesome when you're playing songs like Quick Winter Sun or Evil Eye and Sheriff of the Salton Sea . They have this like really intricate and propulsive fingerstyle playing and I'm just curious about how you develop patterns or , if you have like , if you hear it in your head first or if you're playing and they kind of develop naturally .

Shana Cleveland 8:36

Yeah , I don't , I don't know really , I feel like it's . I feel like it's , it's so much it's . It's . What I love about open tunings is that sort of getting to a place where I'm I'm , I'm composing without thinking and so I think that , yeah , a lot of the guitar parts , especially for my , my acoustic solo work , are so , so intuitive . It's almost .

Shana Cleveland 9:03

It's almost a hindrance at times , because if I go to play the songs that I haven't played them in a while , I'm relying 100% on muscle memory and , uh , and sometimes that doesn't come through , you know , and it's just like this crazy puzzle . I feel like that what's like the beautiful mind where there's like equations flying by or whatever . I feel like I'm just like lost in guitar land with like no map to get out . Yeah , so it's . I , it's totally . Yeah , it's , it's intuitive and I . That's what I love about it . But it is a little scary for me because if I don't sort of practice every now and then , then it can be hard to kind of find the songs again . Luckily , I'm really good at learning things by ear , so that's kind of what I have to do again is like relearn the songs if it's been a while do you have a regular like practice routine ?

Shana Cleveland 9:57

not really . I mean , I like to practice in the sunshine and so I like to go outside and and like sit , sit in an office chair chair and play guitar in the sun . That's my favorite thing . I feel like I kind of hate practice . To be honest , I love just roaming around without any intention , but practicing for shows feels like so boring to me . But when I'm actually doing it I always find that I do in fact love it .

Joey Lusterman 10:27

You know , but it's hard for me to get the motivation sometimes to to practice and then can we talk a little bit about the like specific gear that you use , like what's your main acoustic guitar uh , yeah , I , my main acoustic is , uh , it's this Alvarez from the 70s and it's pretty unique .

Shana Cleveland 10:48

It's got like a classical guitar neck and headstock but it's a steel string . I usually use silk and steel strings on it and it just sounds really nice and I've got a LR Bags pickup inside . I kind of like the wide neck and , yeah , I just like the way it sounds . I like the way that silk and steel strings sound , how they're sort of a midway between a classical and a steel string and , yeah , I'm not much of a gear nerd . So I found this one and I just sort of was immediately drawn to it and I never really play anything else .

Joey Lusterman 11:33

Well , it sounds really good on that record , especially with all the other instrumentation .

Shana Cleveland 11:38

I've worked with a lot of the same people for most of my solo records , and there are people that I've known for a long time , and so it's just it's mostly improvised . Um , I'll , I'll send them the songs a couple of weeks in advance and then we'll just go into the studio and , um , I'll have my guitar parts , you know , laid down first , and then they'll just kind of try stuff and I'll say , yeah , like that or maybe more like this , and yeah , we just kind of feel it out . Do you ever record outside in the sunshine ? And I'll say , yeah , like that or maybe more like this .

Joey Lusterman 12:07

And yeah , I would just kind of feel it out . I don't Do you ever record outside in the sunshine ?

Shana Cleveland 12:11

No , no , that would be great . That's the thing about studios they don't usually have much sunshine .

Joey Lusterman 12:18

Yeah , and it's always so weird . I haven't done it in a while , but going into the studio , it's like you want me to make music in here .

Shana Cleveland 12:28

It's like you want me to make music in here . It's like so dead . I know you go for a lunch break and it's like it's blinded .

Joey Lusterman 12:34

So one thing we like to ask everybody who comes on here is about like words of wisdom . So is there a piece of advice that was given to you that really resonated ? And it can be specific about like guitar technique or songwriting or just life in general ?

Shana Cleveland 12:50

I guess I I just try to not put too much stock in in uh rules in general and I think that , uh , you know , I think that there there's a lot you encounter a lot of snobbiness . You know , in different realms of the music industry , just from , like , going into a guitar store and asking a question or you know , or taking lessons it's you'll run into people who say , oh , this is the way that you have to do this and that's never true . Never true .

Shana Cleveland 13:34

When I started finger picking , I started by playing banjo and I was like , okay , I got this banjo , I want to go take a class because I don't know what I'm doing on this thing . And I went into a store and they were like , well , you have to choose . Whether you're doing Scruggs style or claw hammer , everybody's got to choose . And I was just like that sounds like such BS . And I just started learning on my own and that really ended up being the best guitar lesson I could have taken is to just learn banjo . I feel like it was , but I don't know if anyone would have ever told me that . I think there's just a lot of there's so much freedom and just kind of coming up with your own rules to hear more from shana cleveland .

Joey Lusterman 14:13

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