The best is yet to come…
You may have noticed Poison Apple did not get it’s January 20th release date, but it should be available everywhere within a week.
EC: You recorded 4 albums with Dolour. How did you come up with the band name and what good and not so good memories do you have of this time?
Shane Tutmarc: I was reading Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and I saw the word “dolorous,” which seemed beautiful to me. The way the word looked and it’s meaning. But I didn’t want an adjective name, so I went with Dolour… adding the European-style extra “u.” I don’t think back to Dolour very often, but there “were” many highlights. When I was writing Suburbiac and New Old Friends those songs were just pouring out of me. I got such a high when I was writing back then. I was writing about 100 a year during that period. The hardest thing was that it was a pretty lonely pursuit. Most people from the outside thought it was a “band,” but it was pretty much just me and a rotating cast of players. So I wasn’t able to share the good times as much as I’d like to have.
EC: After Dolour you took a sabbatical from music. Why?
Shane Tutmarc: My relationship with music was not always very healthy, especially by the end of the Dolour era. I was relying so heavily on music and songwriting as my identity and my main source of happiness that it became like a drug addiction. I quit playing music for about a year, got into meditation, took a normal job, and tried putting music in my past. But meditation actually brought me back to music, in a purer, less ego-driven way. Taking a more stripped down approach with the Traveling Mercies was a new challenge and it felt very fresh after spending years making very layered albums with Dolour.
EC: I read in an article about your first solo album “Shouting At A Silent Sky” (2009): “It was written as he was exploring his soul” Looking back on it now, how much truth is in this?
Shane Tutmarc: Well, to a degree every album of mine could be described that way. After dealing with my grandpa’s passing with a lot of the Traveling Mercies material, I was ready to dig deeper with Shouting At A Silent Sky. The themes of almost every song were mortality, aging, and darker sides of life. This record was written very fast, right on the heels of the Traveling Mercies albums… but it felt like a new, deeper, heavier chapter…
EC: At the beginning of 2015 you wanted to release a new album. Unfortunately, this will not be happening. Can you tell me the story of “Borrowed Trouble”?
Shane Tutmarc: It should have probably come out in late 2013 or early 2014, actually. It was recorded between mid-2012 to mid-2013. I don’t want to say too much, because who knows what the future brings… but long story short, the guy who financed the record decided to pull out of the project at the eleventh hour and left me with a finished record that I don’t legally own. It’s a lot more complicated than that, but that’s the basic story. It’d be nice to see it released someday. I’m really happy with the album, it’s probably my favorite album I’ve made.
EC: At least you will release in 2015 a single-a-month series. Can you tell me more about it?
Shane Tutmarc: Yes, a great label out of Portland, OR called In Music We Trust will be releasing a series of singles throughout 2015. The plan is to do a single-a-month. Poison Apple comes out January 20th [sic] to all digital retail outlets, and Tennessee Girl follows on February 17th. These will be a wide variety of songs, all self-produced independently. And the idea is that by the end of the year, it’ll be a full album’s worth of songs. The hope is that releasing one song at a time might help the listener feel more connected to each song individually. I need to get back in the studio to keep up with this goal of one-a-month!
To read the whole interview go to EAR CANDY MAG: The Best is Yet to Come: Interview with Shane Tutmarc.