Interview with Indie-Folk Solo Artist Raven Shelley
By Mick Michaels
The
Cosmick View: Hello, and welcome to The
Cosmick View/MBM Ten Pounder! Thanks for taking some time to chat with
us!
Raven Shelley: Hey, thanks
for having me!
CV:
Describe your definition of your sound
and style and how does that definition uniquely describe the music?
RS: I’d say I write ethereal
and poetic alt//indie-folk songs. I have a really broad range of influences,
but the thing that links them all is good quality lyrics – that’s something I
try and achieve too.
CV:
Today, everyone talks about artist and audience connection. Is such a level of
connection actually achievable for an artist and if so, how have you made the
connection to your fans?
RS: I think it is, though
it’s probably harder the more well known you become, since you’ll have more and
more fans across the globe and one to one interaction will become harder. I
tend to talk to people at my gigs quite a bit, so I think that’s a really good
way of connecting. Social media has also made things a lot easier, because you
can just chat to people who are on the other side of the world but who like
your music.
CV:
Is fan interaction an important part of your
inner culture?
RS: It’s important to me,
because I love it when people like my music. It makes me feel good that it has
meant something to someone; someone told me that ‘Sink in Solitude’, my debut release, made them feel at peace
with the world when they listened to it, and that was great, because it means
that someone actually felt something.
CV:
Can an artist truly interact with its fans and still maintain a level of
personal privacy without crossing the line and giving up their “personal space”
in your opinion?
RS: You could probably write
a thesis about that! I mean I think it depends how much of a private person you
are anyway. To some extent you inhabit different roles and personas in
different situations, and with different people. So if your musical/stage persona
is different to who you are in your personal life, then I don’t think you have
to give up much personal space and privacy to interact authentically with your
fans.
CV:
Is music, and its value, viewed differently around the world in your
opinion? If so, what do you see as the biggest difference in such
multiple views among various cultures?
RS: I think music is a kind
of universal language, which transcends everything, so even if you don’t
understand each other’s words, you can still understand something through
music. And the variation of musical traditions within cultures is staggering.
It’s a whole area of study in itself.
CV:
Do you feel that an artist who has an international appeal, will tend to
connect more so to American audiences? Would they be more enticed or intrigued
to see that artist over indigenous acts because of the foreign flavor?
RS: I’m not American, so I
honestly don’t know…haha. If a band has international appeal, often that
includes America anyway…since it’s so important in the musical market.
CV: Has modern-day digital technology made everyone an artist on some level in
your opinion? Have the actual lines of what really is an artist been blurred?
RS: It’s certainly made it
possible for many people to create something – whether that’s art and whether they’re an artist
is an entirely different question. It makes me think of Christopher Hitchens, who
purportedly said something like “Everyone has a book in them, and it most cases
that’s where it should stay” – I do think there’s something in that…haha.
I mean, in some ways, it’s great that you can record a whole album in your
bedroom, and it means that there’s far fewer “mute, inglorious Miltons”. On the
other hand, I think there’s now been a shift in what we consider to be ‘Art’,
so you have people claiming that an unmade bed with a load of crap strewn over
it (not that I’m thinking of anyone in particular here, of course…) is equal to
– or even better than – a technically very good painting like Hylas and the Nymphs, or The
Raft of the Medusa. And
it’s just not. That applies to music and literature too, of course.
CV: How would you describe the difference between an artist who follows trends and one who sets them?
RS: I’d say if someone is setting a trend then it suggests they don’t want to follow one which is already there, and so they may have a more unique and creative outlook on life, with more independent ideas…less willing to follow the herd.
CV:
Has music overall been splintered into too many sub-genres in an effort to
appease fan tastes in your opinion? And has such fan appeasements, in
actuality, weakened music’s impact as a whole by dividing audiences?
RS: I don’t think it’s in an
effort to appease tastes; personally I find it quite hard to categorize music,
and I’m not really bothered about what category it is anyway, so long as I like
it. I think categorization has grown more important because of the algorithms
on streaming services, which need to know what genre stuff fits into so they
can recommend it to listeners who like similar stuff. But if the music has any
substance, then I doubt that categorizing it will weaken its impact…it
shouldn’t do, anyway.
CV: What can fans expect to see coming
next from you?
RS: I’ve got 4 more singles coming out in the next few
months. The next one is called ‘Do You Miss Me Yet?’ and it’s out in September.
I wrote it when I was really angry with someone, and I thought ‘What would I
really like to say to them? I mean really, if no one was ever going to read it,
if no one could judge me for how I felt, what would I want to say?’ I had no
intention of turning it into a song initially, but once I started I just
couldn’t stop, and it kind of wrote itself. It was like word vomit! I’m very
excited for it to be released because it tends to make people laugh whenever I
play it. I was listening to a lot of Dylan at the time, songs like ‘Positively
4th Street’ and ‘She’s Your Lover Now’, and I hope that very
Dylanesque mixture of humor and savagery comes across when I sing lines like:
“I mean how are you not bored of
yourself
It’s bad enough dealing with you as someone else
But you have to put up with you every day of your life”
CV:
Thanks again for taking some time and talking. It is greatly appreciated.
RS: Thanks for talking to
me!
Check out Raven at:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ravenshelleymusic/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ravenshelleymusic
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/55ewiGicaCRrGNqmeLrCep?si=5c3ae96f232c409a&nd=1
YouTube Music: https://music.youtube.com/channel/UCBHhI4jtsLHJ6zPVz5iLQiw
Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.co.uk/artists/B09Z6K2KZC/raven-shelley
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/ravenshelleymusic
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