So what, exactly, is Shannon Wright singing about? You're intrigued by the unusual, unsettling beauty of her music; you're floored by the sheer catharsis in her voice. But still, you can't really put your finger on what she's trying to say. Wright's songs rarely fail to stir your own sense-memory, evoking certain personal situations rich in feeling — it's almost as if, rather than relating an event or expounding on a particular subject, she's realizing emotion itself, giving form to sentiment.
And that, exactly, is what Shannon Wright is singing about. More or less.
"I've never been one that likes to have my story, from beginning to end, in songs — the story of me," says the Southern songstress. "I think it's more important to come up with a sketch of an emotion, a feeling, something that everyone can touch upon and make his or her own. That's what music does for me, so I really try to respect what it can do for someone else when I write."
Like naked human emotion, Wright's tuneage is not for everyone; her singular artistic bent is as often as jarring as it is haunting and as fractured as it is sublime. Those for whom the role of female singer/songwriter is appropriately filled by the likes of Jewel, or who perhaps believe that PJ Harvey is the guy who writes political criticism for Rolling Stone, will almost certainly be rendered uncomfortable. But a stout heart and accommodating ear may find the self-taught multi-instrumentalist's style one of the most substantial listening experiences available.
Wright's solo debut, Flight Safety, was released in 1999 to instant underground acclaim. Penned in the wake of the breakup of her first and only band, Jacksonville's Crowsdell, Flight Safety served as a somewhat studio-subdued introduction to a startlingly raw-nerved songwriting sensibility. Anyone disturbed by the debut surely risked a breakdown by exposure to the follow-up: Maps of Tacit, an even more blatantly emotional outpouring, chewed through those knots that hold our feelings in check. On each of them, Wright played virtually every note herself, lending the already inimitable songs an added iconoclastic effect.
For this year's Dyed in the Wool, however, Wright returned to collaboration, if only for the actual recording process. The songwriter focused on her vocals, piano and inimitably skewed guitar lines. Man or Astroman? drummer Brian Teasley and noted Southeastern indie-scene engineer/producer Andy Baker provided the rhythm section for most of the tracks. Friends from a host of well-known acts such as The Rachel's, The Glands, The Edith Frost Band, Rock*A*Teens and Japancakes contributed various instrumentation.
"It really takes the pressure off," Wright explains. "I was able to concentrate on two instruments, rather than all of them. That, and I'm lucky to be friends with really talented people."
Though she hadn't worked with many fellow musicians since the days of Crowsdell, Wright reports no trepidation about returning to something of a group dynamic. Working with close friends who already have other band priorities, she wasn't particularly worried about having her authority usurped.
"The people that I recorded with, they have their own projects, and most of the music was worked out already," she says.
The group effort helped to flesh out Wright's sound without dampening its compelling power. While it's her most cohesive and textured album to date, Dyed in the Wool remains bald and wrenching. It being her third album, critics everywhere are naturally calling it a blend of her first two — "the fragile intimacy of Flight Safety coupled with the harsh emotional contrasts of Maps of Tacit," or maybe "her first two records fucking" — and, to be fair, the disc does combine both prior releases' daring elements. But Wright sees the intensity and feel of her third effort as edging closer to the essence of the medium for which she is most highly lauded — her performances.
"I think it's actually more comparable to the live show. The live show has consistently been (intense)," says Wright. "I tend to be more improvisational with certain songs. I don't think (this record) is quite there, but it's more representative of that."
The kind of mesmerizing, visceral ventage that characterizes her live sets is tough, if not impossible, to completely re-create in the studio, which Wright acknowledges despite her ongoing attempts to disprove it.
"It's a different experience. You have an audience, and I feel very expressive with an audience," she says. "When you're in the studio, it's just not as I think I'm just more comfortable not just playing for me. I really enjoy connecting. I think I'm trying harder to get the point across."
She recognizes recording and performance as separate parts of an artist's whole, but where most musicians generally love one and loathe the other, Wright is comfortable and inspired in either environment.
"I thoroughly enjoy recording. I like the process, I don't just go in there and record songs, and then hand it to somebody else. I'm very much involved.
"I feel really lucky," she stresses, "because I really get a lot out of both. They're different, but they're equally as enjoyable for me, just in different ways. So in that way, I'm pretty well-rounded."
The fringe-music community obviously seems to think so. Both her gigs and her records regularly draw critical fawning, and inevitably end up in plenty of year-end Top 10 lists. In slightly more than three years as a solo artist, Wright has built the kind of credibility it takes some acts much longer to accumulate — not bad for the Jacksonville native who sold almost all of her possessions, swore off the industry forever and moved to the sticks of North Carolina when outside pressures pushed Crowsdell to dissolution. Like most creative people, though, it wasn't the art that frustrated Wright enough to quit but the almost unbelievable amounts of associated bullshit that come along with being somebody's "next big thing." She soon figured out, however, that inspiration isn't something you can walk away from.
"It seems crazy to me that the normal, natural process (of songwriting) gets eaten away by all this other stuff that wasn't important," she says. "Once I moved away from all that, I figured out that I couldn't really not play music anymore — that was reality for me."
She adds that her tenure as a singer/songwriter has afforded her the opportunity to discover who she is, and what feels right for her as an artist:
"I feel much more comfortable in my skin now than when I first started, because then, I was desperately trying to find my voice. It was there, but I didn't know how to get to it, what it would develop into or if I would ever find that thing. And now that I've found it, I can really explore all the things about the person I am."
So what's left, then?
"There's still a great mystery," Wright asserts. "The main thing is, I think anytime you create something, you can't dissect it. Just do what you do, and don't question it. Keep moving forward." Scott Harrell can be reached at 813-248-8888, ext. 109, or at scott.harrell@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in Jan 24-30, 2002.