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Shaunna Hall gets in touch with her inner geek
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This interview was conducted in three separate sessions, and in three different styles.
I first interviewed Shaunna last spring. And then, we collaborated on a story for Rockrgrl Magazine in the summer months. That was right around the time when I was putting together the breast cancer awareness benefit. Basically, we traded our 'know-how' skills. She advised me on all technical aspects of recording the benefit rock show (see REVIEW page for more info), and I helped her format what became a feature pagearticle called Shop Talk in Rockrgrl (Sept./Oct. 2001, issue 41).
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I remember writing in my online journal something like 'tomorrow the Rockrgrl story is due - I guess I better call Shaunna today so we can get started'. And, lo and behold, Carla of Rockrgrl left a comment on my journal page saying something like she's happy we're working on it. She seemed confident about us making the deadline. Man, Carla's on Vh1 and she's on my journal page...she's everywhere!
Anyhow, I called Shaunna's house all day that day but only got her voice mail. I panicked for a hot minute. I finally decided to call her cell phone - score. She wanted to focus on her gear and all that kind of stuff. So, while she was at The Warp Tour concert she explained it to me. So there she was in San Francisco and I'm typing it in Tucson, and then I hit a button and it gets sent to Seattle. Sometimes ya just gotta go with it, and embrace high tech shit.
Lastly, I spoke to Shaunna in early 2002 to get an update on what she's been doing since the summer. And now, the long-awaited soapbox for Shaunna Hall...
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May 1, 2001
Tucson, Arizona
It's about 5pm and I'm walking through the lobby of Hotel Congress. On the weekends the lobby bar is the place to be. And if there's a band playing in the next room - even better. The rage of San Francisco, STORM, INC., is in town and I'm giddy as hell to see some bohemian friends from my old stomping grounds. I'm here early to schedule some quiet time with the girls in the band. I run into Shaunna right away. In all our years living in the same town and having so many mutual friends, oddly, we'd never met. I introduce myself, and tell her we should do an interview later tonight. And we do.
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First time I saw you perform as a solo artist after 4 Non Blondes, you really were 'solo'. You were onstage and surrounded only by equipment. I was watching you play guitar, but it seemed like I heard so many different sounds other than guitar. It was a trip.
"Yeah, that was about 4 or 5 years ago. I just did that one show with that set up. I was going through a phase where I wanted to learn a lot about sound, and how to be able to come up with a bunch of sounds without having to rely on other people; particularly, in the recording studio.
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Basically, that night, I had two amps and three speakers. One amp was stereo, the other mono. I had all these effects - some were just on one amp, the other was dry. I had two signals - one was dirty, one was clean. And I was able to just kinda fuck with reality. I had some ideas in mind and just tried to get them out. I like playing an acoustic guitar through a distorted amp - it sounded much better than I ever thought it would. Sometimes you just push a button and accidentally discover something cool. I taught myself how to engineer. I got myself a little 8-track, and eventually a computer. I spent a lot of time in my house teaching myself that stuff. Also, going to see my friends that worked in studios."
You produced the TRIBE 8 record 'Role Models for Amerika' (Alternative Tentacles). What does it mean to be a producer?
"Leslie rules! She did this tattoo for me. She's not just a great guitar player, she's also an amazing artist. I love TRIBE 8. I was glad I got to work with them. It blew me away 'cause they'd written all these amazing songs and said 'We need a producer' and I said 'What for?!' They seemed to have a lot of that shit down. The job of a producer could be a lot of different things. But, what I think is that there are four main things. First and foremost is to get the vision of the artist on tape. That means you have to understand what they want - not necessarily what you think would be a great thing for them to do. Second, help make it possible. For instance, if they wanna have a really raw, energy-laden album you're not gonna have everyone come in and record one at a time. You're gonna have to figure out a way to get the whole band in there at once and be able to mic everything. So that you can keep all those tracks and figure out how to get the singer in there so she can sing live. Or, if they want to sound like the White Album you gotta plan the recording THAT way. The other thing is to keep the band together. Studios have this uncanny ability to rip bands apart. I think it's the sensitivity, the frustration that can come from being in the studio. Nine times out of ten, people have no concept how to record. So, if something's not going right you're completely helpless to change it. And you have to deal with your band member, the engineer, or producer. It's stressful - especially if there's a budget and you're spending someone else's money. And then, if there's a deadline.... All those things can exist. The last thing is just to make sure their recording is of the quality the band wants. You don't want to make it so perfect that it doesn't sound like the band anymore. But, you also don't want to settle for less than great takes and performances.
"I'm glad you brought up the White Album, 'cause I've actually lost sleep over this question: Was George Martin the puppet master or the puppet?
"I think somehow the roles probably changed. In the beginning, it was probably George Martin taming these wild little rocker guys into this perfect pop, polished stuff. And then, eventually, they were able to use him to facilitate all their ideas. Who knows? Maybe George Martin had some of those ideas. I just think that at some point those guys started coming up with their own ideas and were able to - through this genius of a producer - get them on tape. I mean, what if George Martin said 'no'? Just imagine."
Don't ya think someone like Janet Jackson is ready to put out a real rock record?
"She did 'Black Cat' - wrote and produced it. I was like: wow, is THAT what's brewing inside her?! Shit, I'd produce her ass in a minute...."
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So, when you weren't playing in any of Eric McFadden's mind-blowing bands, is this what you've been doing since your 4 NON BLONDE days? Producing bands?
"I took a lot of time off to teach myself how to engineer. I started computer-recording with Pro Tools - audio for talk shows, worked with George Clinton a little, did a bunch of work with rappers. I did a little bit of digital audio work for Shockwave, on a video game called Tamale Loco.
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I worked on the music and the sound effects. Recorded all the voice-overs for it at my house in my studio. Eric McFadden did all the male voices. I got Storm the job of doing all the girls' voices."
There have been some interviews I've done where the chicks have brought up the subject of using Pro Tools to record their music. I pretend I know what they're talking about.
"It's a digital-audio recording system that is totally professional quality. Lenny Kravitz and Metallica and half the records out there are made with it. It's basically recording into a computer instead of on tape. Being in the computer it affords you a lot of possibilities that you wouldn't have on tape. (NOTE: Instead of ignoring the blank look on my face Shaunna breaks it down for me.) Think of it as a word processor. With a word processor, if you misspell something you just address that specific issue and fix it. Or, you can take a word and move it over there; take a whole paragraph and move it down. Well, you have the same capabilities with music. You can see the music in graph form. You can look at these wav forms and find beats. You can see drum rhythms. And you can take a four bar... (Shaunna stops for a moment to break it down for me again) ...you know, a section, and turn it into a loop and make it the basis for the whole song. Or, you can have a whole song and then say 'that bridge is too long, man, we should've only played two measures instead of four' and then you just cut out two of them. They could do that before with tape, but you'd have to cut it and splice it. And, if you made a mistake you were fucked. With Pro Tools, you make a mistake and you just hit Command Z. And you get it all back. It's an old trick. The first tape-looping that people probably wouldn't even recognize is 'Bitches Brew' by Miles Davis. They literally took sections of like an 8-hour jam section, they took out sections and created parts of the song and then completed the album by editing all these hours of jamming. That was in the early '70s. Now, y'know, it's like: copy, copy, copy on the computer. But, you know what? The 4 NON BLONDES producer, he cut hella tape. He had us record 12 Takes of a song, and then he took, like, the first verse of Take 2 and the chorus from Take 7 and cut them together. And then, use the ending from Take 9. He had this reel of tape that was all spliced together. It was crazy. We had to play those songs over and over again. Today, if you ask a producer to cut tape they'd be like WHAT?! I love Pro Tools. It's great - hear that, Digi Design?"
When you joined Storm's band, was it hard as a lead guitar player and songwriter to fit into a band that has a large body of work already written?
"If Michael wrote a song, I'm not gonna go change his song. With this band, yeah, there was material that was already there, so I would play the song the way it was. But then, over time we've changed a lot of it. Particularly the song that I think has transformed the most - that I didn't actually write myself - is 'Beautiful'. All of the guitar work that I'm doing in that song now, except for the bridge, is completely night and day from where it started.
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The whole vibe of the song is changed. I'm pretty proud of that. It was not easy. I was just jammin' on a riff, playing the notes for the song but in a different way. See, there was a drum machine going and the drum machine inspired me to play it differently. It was kinda slower and had a cool groove. So, Storm started singing along and we thought it sounded really cool. We were in the studio and we were supposed to be working on another song that day, but we ended up rearranging 'Beautiful' completely. So, in that respect I re-wrote what was already there."
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It's frustrating to me when I see writer's credits on songs 'cause I can never really figure out how much of what was written by whom, y'know? I obsess about it.
"Yeah, well, in 4 NON BLONDES we wrote stuff in all different ways. Some songs I wrote the music and Linda wrote the lyrics. Like, 'Morphine & Chocolate' I wrote all of. I wrote a song when I was really, really young about the guitar player in The Pretenders when he died. The song, which is now 'Spaceman', was a song for James Honeyman Scott. Of course, I had these really dumb lyrics that someone would write when they're 18 and the guitarist of their favorite band just died. I really liked the music but never brought up the fact that there were lyrics or a melody to it. I just told Linda to go for it. So, songwriting works all ways. Somebody might write a half of a verse and somebody else might write all of the other lyrics and the music. You can't really tell by looking at that 'written by' credit. That just doesn't break it down or analyze it. But, that's one of the things I like about working with Storm - writing music. I try to stay away from lyrics, but I'll get involved with melodies. It's so cool when you have a progression you think is cool and then you let somebody else sing along, and suddenly they start singing something that you never in a million years would have ever thought of doing yourself. With me, it's like, two heads are better than one. The funny thing is, I can do everything. I sit at home and make up drum tracks and play bass and play piano and sing all the parts and write every little note - like the Prince thing. But, like I said, I just like the interaction, y'know? Music is a communication. I love playing live - especially when you get the chemistry with other people. You go home and say 'wow, that was cool'. You can't get that by yourself."
Y'know, there's a lotta people lookin' for you...
"Why? What'd I do?"
I mean, the fans. You have fans, you know. I get a lot of mail from people asking about you and when you're gonna come to their town on tour, and all that...
"I got this email just the other day from this kid in Brazil. Talking about - in broken English - being a fan of 4 NON BLONDES since he was 12, or something. He's like 20 years old now, and a college student. He's like 'I finally found you!' He just typed in 'shaunnahall.com' and found my site."
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Speaking of fans and all, what was your take on that Eminem dude? Like, did you feel his ranting was art or just promoting violence?
"Freedom of speech should always prevail. Unfortunately, you might not always agree with what someone has to say. I have mixed feelings about it, personally. I mean, there are so many songs - 'Under My Thumb'. Mick Jagger is totally misogynist. I'm a gay person of color - I'm half black and I'm half white. I'm a gay person that will occasionally sleep with a guy if I feel like it. I play guitar, and not a flute. I'm a woman in the digital arts, which is like rock and roll 500 years ago. So, I'm not really in a position to start, like, saying 'You can't do that 'cause I don't like you'. I was up at the Rockrgrl conference and on the last day Courtney Love decided to pop in and do a Q&A.
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Someone asked her the same thing, and she said 'Where's the girl Eminem? Where's the girl that's talkin' shit and scaring the shit outta people?' That's her answer - fight fire with fire."
I know you record at home a lot, so I gotta ask: should the record industry be shittin' bricks right about now?
"Well, you can sit at home and make your own record for like NOTHING these days. But, no, I don't think the record companies should worry 'cause as a lot of people are finding out - and this is one of the reasons I get work in the digital world - is, you know, that just because people own their own (computer) tools doesn't mean they know how to use them effectively. You still have to be able to, y'know - an engineer doesn't just record stuff. The engineer knows what to listen for and has the ear. I think the record labels have to worry, maybe, a little about dollars that are going to the computer industry. That's disposable income that used to be spent on records and movies. Now, there are DVDs and Nintendo and all that stuff. And computers in general - that's taking a lot of money out of pockets. Not so much just the ability for artists to record themselves. It's also that people have other things, other options to spend money on. And with the computer people then can satisfy their need to explore music, and not have to go waste fifteen bucks to see if they like something. On the other hand, if you're a music fan you might want to download something off the Internet but ultimately you'll want to have it in your hands, so...."
Are you gonna release any of your stuff, like a solo record? What stuff have you done outside of the projects we all know about already?
"Dogg Butt Studios is in my backyard. It's where I experiment. I once had this crazy idea I was gonna write commercial songs and sell them to Hollywood. And, y'know, I've done demos. I did a Bad Dog Play Dead demo in 1993 with Wanda Day and Janis Tanaka and Pat Wilder after the 4 NON BLONDES broke up. We recorded at Hyde Street Studios. I've done two Alcohol of Fame demos - one was recorded on ADAT at a cliffside rental house in Mendocino in 1994, and one was at Neil Schon's studio in Alameda in 1995. Cara Crash played on both, and Becky Wreck played on the '94 demo. I have a lot of stuff recorded, actually. But, I've never put any of it out. I'm just really busy doing other things. I'm always working on somebody else's project, I guess. I like to play 'on the team', y'know? I like to be part of a collective group of people. I'm starting work on a batch right now, which might see the light of day."
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July 2, 2001
San Francisco, California
"Songwriting is my first love, and probably the thing I labor at most. My favorites are 'Morphine&Chocolate', 'Macaroon' on the Eric McFadden record called Our Revels Now Are Ended. 'Macaroon' was a 4 Non Blondes song. And, 'Ruin Everything', which I wrote with Storm for the record The Calm Years. My guitars? I used a Strat in 4 Non Blondes. The acoustic I use in The Eric McFadden Experience is a Gibson AJ-45 reissue. For Storm, Inc. my main electric on the CD was a Les Paul '57 reissue Black Beauty with 3 pick-ups. You can hear it on the track 'Beautiful'.
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You can hear it on the track 'Beautiful'. It kills. I also used a vintage Tele and my friend's SG. My traveler is a vintage Yari Parlor named Guitarra. I sat on Brighton Beach in England and wrote the seed that grew into 'Here We Are' (off The Clam Years) on her. She's my girl. Bruce Zinky, the guy who makes those little 'smokey' amps, is bringing me his new 100 watt Zinky head to try out. It's serial #69, and belongs to Billy Gibbons (ZZ Top). I hear
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they rock. But for the last 11 or 12 years Mesa Boogie has ruled my amp universe. My rock outfit is a 100 watt Trem-O-Verb head into a Recto 4x12 cab. I use 6L6's, and switch between the modern high gain and clean channels. I usually run an EQ box into the FX loop to make it extra phat. For acoustic situations, I use a V-twin 2 channel pre-amp into a stereo power amp driving two 12" wedges. This gives me independent volume control for each speaker. I use one for a monitor and the other is miked, or whatever. This helps keep the stage volume down and helps control feedback when working with distortion. The V-twin pre-amp is great fro acoustic guitars. It has two channels with independent level, EQ and gain controls. You can switch between clean and distortion or combine the two channels. You can even control the mix. I use a ratio of 10% dirty / 90% clean to get a gritty sound without feedback or muddy chords. My standbys are a Jim Dunlop 535Q Wha Wha, a Small Stone or some type of flanger. And, a Line 6 D4 Delay Modeler. You can hear the D4 on 'Beautiful'. It's the outer space sound. 'Ruin Everything' is awash with guitars run through sweep filters, sweep echoes and backwards delays. Very trippy. I love that stuff! I just got the Warp Factory - it's a vocoder/talkbox. You can wank for hours, and I do!"
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January 27, 2002
Barcelona - Spain
Why did you move to Spain?
"I've wanted to live in Europe ever since my first visit in '85. I went to Spain in '99 on vacation and kinda knew I'd be back. It's a cold start, but I'm excited. Barcelona is about the coolest place I've been to for a big city. There is culture for days. Beauty in everything from the sidewalks to the apartment buildings. Music is really happening there. And then, there are the women...."
Do you speak Spanish?
"I'll have to learn the language as I go. I expect to learn rapidly under the circumstances. People, especially young people in the big cities, speak English. But, one of my goals is to learn fluent Spanish as soon as possible."
What happened to your involvement with Storm?
"I left Storm, Inc. in May 2001 because Storm wanted to make us her employees and have all decision making power - creative and business. After having worked with her for 18 months and seeing her in action, I did not believe she was capable of handling that much responsibility. I didn't have enough confidence in her to just hand over my career like that. We had just finished recording and were just leaving for a tour. After I said I wasn't comfortable with her proposal she told me that after the tour I would no longer be in the band. My instincts were right on. The record has done nothing, and Storm just broke up the band last week. Too bad, 'cause I think she has a lot of talent. And I am very proud of the songs we wrote, and the work we did together."
Got any other musical ideas at this point?
"I want to play guitar with the P-Funk All Stars. I'd love to write songs with lots of people, especially singers. I want to do some live performances with DJs and electronica types of units. You gave me an idea to do rock stuff with Janet Jackson. And if Ann Wilson sang one of my songs I'd be pretty thrilled. I would love to produce FABULOUS DISASTER. Oh, and Joan Jett. I'm a slut, I'll work with anyone."
I know your name was one of the names that came up when BETTY BLOWTORCH was looking for a guitar player just before Bianca was killed. Did you even know you were a candidate?
"I didn't know Bianca personally. Our mutual friend Jozie (of PSYCHEDELIC WEDDING) called me when Bianca's band split up on the road. I volunteered to go out and help, Becky and I were going to go if she wanted us. I had a 20 minute phone conversation with Bianca, mainly trying to help her feel like things were gonna be OK. She was very determined to not go home defeated. And she didn't, did she. She was dedicated to her music. That was her life. Although, she ended up using Jennifer Finch, I was glad to know I was considered."
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I never asked you how you met ex-LUNACHICKS drummer Becky Wreck...
"Beck and I met around '93 in San Francisco, by happenstance. Nancy Kravitz had just told me Becky left the Lunachicks and was in San Francisco. I was looking for a drummer for the Alcohol of Fame.
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A few hours later, I was standing in Slim's (night club) near the front door and saw my friend Alice B. Brave walking by out on the sidewalk. I shouted out and she stopped. She said, 'This is my friend Becky Wreck'. It was definitely Fate. Becky and I worked on ALCOHOL of FAME, and a project called Crocodile Tears. We did a two-woman show in NYC at Kitty Litter, or whatever that place was called in the summer of '97 or '98. And then we just did DOGG ASS last year - the power trio with Cristy Michelle on bass."
Yeah, at my rock show benefit you also had Christa Hillhouse playing with all y'all on one song. Is that the first time onstage with Christa since the 4 NON BLONDES days?
"We did a show with Linda a few years ago for a benefit."
Yeah? How's your relationship with Linda these days?
"Amicable and respectful"
Okay, lastly, the question that everyone wants the answer to: What would it take for there to be a 4 NON BLONDES reunion?
"Wanda would have to come back from the dead, I guess. Or, a million dollars - which ever comes first. Really? Who knows?!"
www.shaunnahall.com
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