The Nautilus Studio M31 Files interview Shannon Roberts

Studio owners Mr Bill (Nautilus Studio) and Yves LF Giraud (Studio M31) interview singer-songwriter Shannon Roberts.

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:23

Flowers of the night glimmer from the moisture in the morning light.

SPEAKER_03 0:33

Here we are in the Nautilus Studios M31 Files, and we today have a special guest with us, Shannon Roberts, uh Mesa Verde uh Ranger. I have a uniform.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

That's one of the things that I do, yes.

SPEAKER_03 0:49

Yeah, you know, to have a uniform is a good start on a real job. Yeah, fair enough.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

I should say I'm not here as a uh uh official representative of Mesa Verde National Park. That's right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:02

No, we met Shannon, what, uh was it last year or the year before? Uh at an open mic over at the fence line, and uh we were pretty impressed. Uh we really enjoyed you. And uh so we got you back, and you're starting to gig around here now.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Yeah, I'm starting to play out a little bit here and there, just you know, not too much, but just enough, I feel like.

SPEAKER_03 1:23

Yeah, yeah. Well, you need to be showing people, you know, what you do and everything. So yeah, good for you. Yeah, thanks. Now, my interrogator, here's gonna find out a little bit more about your youth. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:36

No, actually, yeah, that's one thing that'd be nice to know. Like, where are you from? Where where were you born? And yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

So I'm born and raised in West Virginia.

SPEAKER_02 1:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Um, I'm literally a person that was born in a little tiny cabin in the middle of the woods in West Virginia. Okay. Um, and I grew up my earliest years on a little tiny farm, really in the middle of nowhere. Um, and then I moved uh with my family to a small town, about the same size as Cortez um when I was like 10. Still in in West Virginia, yep. And then I lived um in you know, West Virginia until I was close to 30, something like that. So in a couple different areas of West Virginia, went to school there, all that fun stuff. Um, and then kind of working for the park service took me around a bunch of different places before eventually ending up in Colorado.

SPEAKER_02 2:30

Okay. But yeah. Uh where did music uh took place? How did you get into that?

SPEAKER_00 2:37

Oh, music was always part of the household for sure. So my mom is a songwriter and um really, really beautiful voice and uh guitar player. She played uh a lot of music growing up, but she played with a band called the Elktones. Um the town that I grew up in for the most part was called Elkins, West Virginia.

SPEAKER_03 2:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

And it was the uh the Elktones, wild, wonderful West Virginia women.

SPEAKER_03 3:03

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

So there were at one point, there were usually like five, but at one point there were seven women in the band. Wow, wow, which they're really good. Like great, great, awesome stuff. Um so that my dad is also a musician, um, maybe not quite as seriously as my mom. Um they're no longer together, but he my dad also does like he performs with like like his like church and stuff. He does he plays like mandolin and all of that. Yeah, a lot of it. And um also growing up, uh so there's the Davis and Elkins College, which is in Elkins, West Virginia, where I grew up. And every summer for the past 20-some years, it's the Augusta Heritage Festival. Um, it's a like roots music festival. It's not just like a music festival, like a weekend, it's like it was tri it was usually five weeks over the summer, and each week was a different like theme of music. So like one week would be like Cajun Creole and Zydeco week, but it's all a certain theme of different American roots music. One would be like uh old time and bluegrass week, but there would be classes, courses people could take um throughout the week, and then there would also be concerts throughout the week with like really world-renowned players that would come within those styles, and then there would be dances and then jams all night on the porches of these what a fun place. It's really cool. It was and so I grew up because I lived literally like right next door across the street from the campus.

SPEAKER_02 4:33

So every single time.

SPEAKER_00 4:33

So there was always a party going on up there, and my mom was a big part of the community up there. So she worked up there, she took classes, I took classes sometimes, she was always up there jamming and stuff. So yeah, that was definitely a big part of my like kind of musical upbringing for sure.

SPEAKER_02 4:49

Okay, very cool. Um in terms of songwriting, you um unless I'm wrong, I don't think I've heard you do a cover.

SPEAKER_00 4:59

Uh I'll do a few, yeah. But yeah, mostly I'm just really interested in writing music. Yeah, and sometimes how did that start?

SPEAKER_02 5:06

Like what what why a lot of people start playing covers, but I have a feeling you were interested in writing.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Yeah, I've kind of always been really interested in writing music. Also, just I just feel like a lot of the time I will I will not do justice to a cover song. So I'm like, I don't even want to mess with it. Um but I do I do some covers. Some not often, not frequently, but I do. But yeah, it's just something about it that interests me about trying to like write a song. It's just um I don't know, it just kind of always reminds me of like when you're like whittling something, or it's like trying to like take away just enough until you get the exact thing that was like it was supposed to be, and it really interests me. Yeah, that's kind of how I feel it. For me, it's like taking away always. If you do too much, and for me, I'm like it's like there's too much going on.

SPEAKER_03 5:55

Well, it works, it it works, and uh I I think that's a a real good strategy, and a lot of stuff is subtractive and uh did did your mom and dad help uh ever co-write some of the early stuff or did what no, not really co-writing.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

My I mean my mom is a songwriter, so she's got some really good tunes. Um and we've played together, but we've never written anything together. Um we she'll sing harmony on some of my tunes sometimes. She's got a few that she really likes to sing with me. Yeah. Um but uh yeah, so we just we just did two gigs together um back near Christmas time. So when I get home for the holidays in West Virginia, it's great having a mother that has like a beautiful Gibson songwriter deluxe and a Fishman loudbox amp and all the gear. So then we can book gigs back home. Yeah, yeah. So we would just do split bills. So cool. She'd play for a half hour, I'd play for half hour, she'd play for half an hour, I'd play for half hour.

SPEAKER_03 6:52

And that that went over well, I imagine, huh? Oh, yeah, it's great. Because she's already kind of a hit out there.

SPEAKER_00 6:58

Yeah, so back in my hometown, um, she can definitely bring a lot of people out. That's cool. And then in the town that I lived in in West Virginia for like 10 years, I still have a lot of friends there. So like I can bring a lot of people out.

SPEAKER_02 7:10

So we did a little bit of both, which is super fun.

SPEAKER_00 7:12

Yeah, it sounds like a pretty neat place to be and grow up and everything. Definitely. Good artist communities, a lot of a lot of fun stuff going on for sure. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:22

Awesome. Shannon, do you have um another formula because I hope you don't uh I don't think people should have formulas to write songs, but do you have do you do you have a uh where usually what inspires you, or is it words, or is it the music?

SPEAKER_00 7:37

Is it the how how I think I don't know. I would just it's kind of hard because I don't really have any type of maybe necessary formula. I think for me it's just kind of the way that I feel a little bit, the kind of the vibe of it. Um I very rarely go into writing anything with the idea of like I'm going to write a song about this. Right, so that's super rare for me. Sometimes, sometimes. But a lot of times I'll just start either start with a couple of words or something that's been in my head or a tune, and then almost always, I would say 99% of the time, I'm just sitting at a table by myself with an acoustic guitar in my hands, and then just repeating over and over, trying to find something that works, or didn't getting frustrated and stopping, and then every now and then finding something that's that's actually working. Yeah, yeah, sure, sure, sure. Okay. But yeah, that's what like earlier we're talking about like not playing a lot of covers, which I do, I love covers and uh I love live music too. For me, it's a big part of my life. I love to go see music, I love dancing, like all of it. Um but yeah, I I I uh for me it's really more about songwriting, and when I perform my songs out in public, it's really uh it kind of feels like to me, like just like so that there's a life for them. You know what I mean? But for me mostly it's about writing the songs. When I get that and I finish something, then I'm like, yes, that's what I was you know, that's what I was going for. That's what it's all about for me, and then I'll play them out sometimes to like be like, well, it's for something.

SPEAKER_02 9:12

Yeah, you know. I mean it is, you you one person is enough, you know, to justify what what you're doing. Um You ended up here, you said you were 330 when you left.

SPEAKER_00 9:28

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 9:29

West Virginia. That's right. So was was the other son of the bulk. Right. You said you're working Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:36

I I first came to Colorado when I was working um for Black Cannon of the Gunnison National Park and Kuracante Recreation Area. Okay. And then I went back east, I traveled around, did some other places working, and then eventually came back out to Rocky Mountain National Park.

SPEAKER_03 9:53

Oh boy.

SPEAKER_00 9:53

Um then I was there for a few years, and then came down here to Mesa Verde, and I've been here for four years now. Okay. So it's like I I came to Colorado working for national parks, and I was like, this is great, I love it, don't want to go anywhere. Sure, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:08

Yeah. Um how how did you uh adapt to the music uh now that you can play? Did you for a while did you try to play? Did you play it on the city?

SPEAKER_00 10:19

Yeah, not so much. Like I would every now and then play like open mics and stuff. I used to play a lot more uh back in West Virginia. Um I had a band, an amazing band. Um uh we were originally called Tabasco Bostello, but through legal disputes with the Tabasco Hot Sauce Corporation, no wait the Meckle Haney Corporation, yeah, uh we eventually ended up changing our name, and it's a long story. I I don't really want to get into all that here. Um, but yeah, it was great. We had um a great lineup of all the rest of the guys in the band were really good jazz musicians, but we played my music. So it was kind of a fun, interesting thing. So it was like upright bass and drums, um lead guitar and a little bit of banjo, and then another multi-instrumentalist that played saxophone, piano, and accordion. So it was it was it was really fun. It was a lot of fun. Um pretty raucous, a lot of good stuff. Um so I'd done that, and then I think I got just a little bit um I don't know, maybe like burnt out of the business end of things. It's just like got stressful to me trying to like book gigs and negotiate pay and things like that. And I'm like, this is not what I like. That's not the fun thing. Not what I like doing. Exactly. So I kind of like we kind of went our separate ways, and I started traveling more for work. Um, and then it was like, I'll just play every now and again when I totally feel like it, whenever it's like totally on my terms, you know.

SPEAKER_02 11:45

Well, I'm glad you came to the open mic, man. Yeah, that's how I met you the first time, yeah, as as Bill said. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

Yeah, I mean there's and there's a lot of talent in this this whole area, too.

SPEAKER_02 11:53

A lot of good players, so you know that's what we uh part of why we do this, it's just it's so much of it that I'm not gonna run out anytime soon. It's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_03 12:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:04

Um I was wondering if you um well before I ask you that. Do you have albums? Do you have recordings? Do you uh no nothing?

SPEAKER_03 12:15

It's all in your head? All in my head. Really? How many uh songs would you say that you have that are finished and polished up with an intro and an ending?

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Um that I would be confident to play just right now. I don't know, maybe fifty?

unknown 12:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

That's something like that, maybe? I've written a lot more, but there's a lot, you know, that fall by the wayside, you forget, they're not good enough to remember, you know, how does some of them seem to be a little bit more than a little bit? But I could probably play for if I really wanted to scrape the bottom of the barrel, I could probably play for about four hours straight.

SPEAKER_02 12:53

So that's uh but I wouldn't want to play for four hours straight, but it might be possible. If you go to Florida, you have no choice. Yeah, oh okay, yeah. Well at four hours. Yeah, I don't think I don't think they'll want me for four hours. We'll see. Um so I was gonna ask you if uh we'll be up for you to do one of your songs. Yeah, absolutely. Whatever you want to sing. Yeah. And uh we're just gonna do it right here. We're gonna take a pause for the cars, and I'll let you grab your guitar, whatever you need. Totally. Sure.

SPEAKER_00 13:25

Absolutely. Okay, I'm gonna play this one.

SPEAKER_03 13:30

Is it a fairly current or it's a more recent one?

SPEAKER_00 13:34

Yeah. Did we give it like a little intro or something?

SPEAKER_03 13:36

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I'll play this one. It's called whatever.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

Uh this one's called First Star, and uh I was living, I've now moved down to Cortez, but I was living in uh inside of Mesa Verda National Park for like three and a half years. Um, and uh the mesa that I was sitting on my stoop right out in front of my house, I would sit on it at night and it faces the west, and you would see a little tip of a youth mountain popping up over the mesa to the west, and then during the summertime every night Venus would come up uh come up first.

SPEAKER_01 14:18

So uh this one's called First Star On a mountaintop like a purple thumb, Venus sat high on her throat. Oh, she said, desire like an August fire, it'll burn you down to coals. Oh, so hot it burns the oceans of the world, couldn't quench its fiery flames. Many a young heart found it so hot they turned to ash blue away. Oh first be my lover, leave me alone no more in the dark sky, be mine, be mine, wrap my hands in yours honey wine it flows from sugar lips to those ears that would be leave little poison wine. No, it won't cloud your mind and bring you in bless sleep inside of your dreams, the faces you will see, they will all have no matter where you turn, you are gone there, stop me my love, leave me in the dark scabby, wrap my hands in yours all the gods will watch the agony they wrought down a part of the earth, and the worlds of men battle till the end, hands all red with war all the blood that shed know it won't begin, begin to settle the storm all the damage in the first beat me in the scappy man be my hands, wrap my hands in yours, wrap my hands in yours, wrap my hands in yours.

SPEAKER_02 18:58

Awesome, man.

SPEAKER_03 18:59

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 19:00

Very, very nice.

SPEAKER_03 19:02

But uh oh, I had I had a good question for you. Oh, um uh do you have any intention on recording some of this stuff?

SPEAKER_00 19:10

Maybe. Um, we'll see. I just bought a house, so I don't have a lot of extra money for recording at the moment. But I might I'd I would like to at some point. You should. Um it's just been hard with like traveling a lot for work. I'm finally settled down here and I'm settled at a bought a house and I'm really settled. So Where are you at? Well in Cortez.

SPEAKER_02 19:29

Yeah, okay. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 19:31

And in in town? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Cool. Yeah, no. Which I love Cortez. I think it's great. I mean,'Cortez, both awesome. Yeah. Everywhere in South Africa is a great.

SPEAKER_02 19:40

Well, we've got that try. I I see that's three towns, you know, with Dolores. Totally.

SPEAKER_03 19:46

And I think uh really do uh looking at uh all of the um property prices all through the state and everything, Cortez is one of the last places that you can find. Yeah, totally to to buy a pretty nice house. This mancus is getting pretty tough. Uh for sure. And um uh I think uh you probably did a good timing and everything on that. Good for you. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, because boy, it's nice to have a a home base. Definitely, you know, yeah. Definitely good good for you. Yeah. Um, you know, and another thought I would think for you for recording would be maybe to do something like an uh unplugged live type of thing where we're not spending a lot of time setting up all of this stuff and just kind of what we just did here. Yeah, but uh, you know, allow you to have some stuff that you could say, well, here's a a CD or whatever. Yeah. Because you you have a lot of stuff that I'd like to hear more of, and I'm sure that once uh uh like uh we're gonna ask you, but I know you're playing at Fence Line uh real soon. Uh people that listen to you are gonna want to hear more of your Yeah, I know for sure.

SPEAKER_02 20:52

And yeah, it's just it's it's a wheel town because of also, you know, all of this uh um multimedia, I guess, world where uh it's it's an uh love and hate thing where should you be on it? Should you be totally I'm not like that's what like I'm not on any social media and I don't really want to be.

SPEAKER_03 21:12

So I'm like you and me both, bro. Like, do I need to use it?

SPEAKER_00 21:16

So you know, I say I I don't need to.

SPEAKER_03 21:19

So far you've survived without it. Yeah, yeah, good for you. Yeah, yeah. But uh uh I think that uh it might not cost as much to record uh half a dozen songs figures then.

SPEAKER_00 21:33

Yeah, and that's what I was thinking about maybe at some point doing something kind of like that because that's oh but something.

SPEAKER_02 21:39

Um do you have something coming up show wise that you can maybe uh in a couple of weeks?

SPEAKER_00 21:45

Yeah, so I mean it'll actually I mean uh I don't know when this is released, but it's actually this Saturday.

SPEAKER_02 21:51

Oh, yeah. So uh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:56

Yeah. Maybe someone will be there and be like, hey, I was there. Yeah. It's uh May 23rd. Okay. Fence line cider from six six to nine. Okay. Okay. Fence line. I'll be playing, and then my good friend and amazing musician and co-worker, Bonnie Schmader, will be joining me um on flute for at least one set. Bonnie's awesome. Yeah, she's up there. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:18

She's she still has her hair.

SPEAKER_00 22:21

All of it, yes. Uh yeah. So that I'm looking forward to that. That'll be super fun. Okay. I usually just try to do at least like one kind of like May show because it's when all the seasonal folks get back to the park, a bunch of people together. So just get people out to hang out together and the fence line's always super fun. Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_03 22:40

Are you playing up there in the park? Is there a venue for you?

SPEAKER_00 22:43

Actually, yeah. So I'll be um I'll be playing at the Farview Lounge in the park.

SPEAKER_03 22:51

Yeah. Is that a nice place to play?

SPEAKER_00 22:53

It's great for me.

SPEAKER_03 22:55

Um I mean uh a good vibe uh.

SPEAKER_00 22:59

It's beautiful. There's an outdoor patio area and stuff, and I'll be there um every Wednesday.

SPEAKER_03 23:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:05

Every Wednesday evening. Is that on on the plateau? It's all the way up. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:09

All the way up.

SPEAKER_00 23:09

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_03 23:10

How long does it take to get there from the entrance?

SPEAKER_00 23:13

Um I would say from the entrance plan for at least a half an hour.

SPEAKER_03 23:16

Really? It's uh it's way it's far view. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so doing that. I'll be there every Wednesday, and then Dwayne from uh from uh Make Us Brewing also comes up and and on Wednesdays and does like uh beer tastings with visitors and stuff and chats with people. We're here, but yeah, yeah, yeah. We were doing it last year on Thursdays, but this year we're doing it on Wednesdays. Wow, so we got local live music and some yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:46

Yeah, we'll have to do uh go up there and make a a trip up there. What what's the time? What when do you start?

SPEAKER_00 23:52

I play I'll be playing throughout the summer uh every Wednesday from 6 to 8 p.m.

SPEAKER_03 23:58

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 23:58

Nice, okay. And most of the time it's outdoor because it's a beautiful patio that looks out across the mesas and all the mountains and stuff. It's rarely by that time of night bad weather, but sometimes I'll be inside, but not that much.

SPEAKER_03 24:11

Wow, very cool.

SPEAKER_00 24:12

Awesome, man.

SPEAKER_03 24:12

Yeah, I look at the same uh uh West View. Uh I'm uh a little east of Mesa Verde and get to see all those sunsets and everything and Venus rising and all of course yeah, all of that good stuff that your song is about. Yeah. So I I I know what you're looking at.

SPEAKER_02 24:32

Yeah, very true. Is there something, uh Shannon, that you wanted to to say that maybe uh I was thinking uh you don't have a website, obviously, but from like what you've said, right? So um shows we talked about that coming up.

SPEAKER_00 24:49

Yeah, I mean for the most part, I just love music. I love getting out, I love I love hanging out with other musicians, I love g going to live music, I love dancing as much as possible. I love making music. Um kind of all of it, yeah. That's just how I feel about it.

SPEAKER_03 25:05

You guys keep your eyes open for Shannon. He's he's a entertainer and he's a dancer too. So that's good. We just found that out, yeah. Yeah, but uh uh he's worth following and seeing, and he's hard to find in this social media world, but uh he's worth finding.

SPEAKER_00 25:22

So I'll see you in Cortez, Mancas, maybe Dolores. Yeah, and some other yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 25:28

Awesome, awesome. Hey, thanks for coming, but thanks, appreciate it. Appreciate it, enjoyed it. Thanks, buddy.

SPEAKER_03 25:35

Oh, that's fine.