Shana Cleveland | The Acoustic Guitar Podcast Sessions
Jun 12, 2024Season 3Episode 9
Acoustic Guitar magazine
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.
Support the show:
Join our community on Patreon, where you’ll find bonus podcast episodes, exclusive guitar workshops, and plenty more great perks.
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.
Support the show:
Join our community on Patreon, where you’ll find bonus podcast episodes, exclusive guitar workshops, and plenty more great perks.
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:
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:
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:
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:
I noticed you made a bumper sticker that says I break for alternate tunings.
Shana Cleveland:
Yeah, it's surprisingly popular.
Joey Lusterman:
I bet. What is it about playing an alternate tunings that you like so much, and do you have a favorite?
Shana Cleveland:
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:
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:
Going back to a little bit about the differences between the Solo Project and the La Luz thing.
Joey Lusterman:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
Well, it sounds really good on that record, especially with all the other instrumentation.
Shana Cleveland:
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:
And yeah, I would just kind of feel it out. I don't Do you ever record outside in the sunshine?
Shana Cleveland:
No, no, that would be great. That's the thing about studios they don't usually have much sunshine.
Joey Lusterman:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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