Rosé + Thorns
Join Dr. P. Ryan and friends in unpacking the highs and lows of life, culture, and relationships—open conversations with no off-limits topics.
Rosé + Thorns
Vulnerable (feat. @vshaynef)
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I've often wondered what it’d be like to interview a jazz great. I guess God looked out by ordaining this sit down with V. Shayne Frederick. I’m still in awe of the way he openly explored his relationships with music, self, others, and much more. Get ready for a treat! 🖤
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Tags: COVID19, music, jazz, blues, rhythm, R&B, Black, community, craft, music, education, New York, vulnerability, love, Epic Records, gospel, relationship, friendship, LA, DC, ATL, Atlanta, PHL, Philadelphia, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Sarah Vaughan, , entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, lgbt, queer, Dartmouth, Ivy league
Foolish though it may seem to me that's everything the mere idea of you the longing here for you. You never know how slow the moment goes when I am near to you.
SPEAKER_02You ready? It's Roseanne Thorns. Hey Love Bugs, and welcome to another episode of the Roseanne Thorns podcast. I am P Ryan, and y'all, I'm a little nervous. However, I'm here with a vocalist, a pianist, or pianist, or however we're gonna say that. You choose one. I'm here with a lover, a visionary, a Sagittarius. Everyone, please welcome V Shane Frederick.
SPEAKER_00Thank you for welcoming so warmly. You know, you just do that so well, I tell you.
SPEAKER_02Thank you. So I'm just gonna say this to just put it in the atmosphere. You make me so nervous, but it is what it is. What is it?
SPEAKER_00Oh, we won't even talk about that.
SPEAKER_02We won't. We won't.
SPEAKER_00That's fine.
SPEAKER_02I'm not drinking rose, so we definitely won't.
SPEAKER_00Hey.
SPEAKER_02And so we start the show off by having our guests tell the people about themselves. But before we do that, just a quick check-in. How are you, sir?
SPEAKER_00I'm well. You know, I'm bright. The weather has begun to transition from winter to spring. Um, there are a lot of opportunities that I'm waiting to see happen. And so I'm in a really good space. Um, I'm protected, I am um full of gratitude. Yes, you know, so I feel it feels almost, I think in times when there's so much despair, you feel guilty for being well when other people are not. And so I'll my only fight really is that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I'm just gonna leave that there because I feel like even in all of that despair, yes, there are feelings of guilt, but like you deserve, right? Because if it wasn't in this moment, there was some part of your life that in which you experience despair.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely, right?
SPEAKER_02Or experience suffering. So when the joy comes, why not take what you're owed?
SPEAKER_00And I do know that you know the victories or you know, victories that I'm walking into have already been like fought on my behalf. Um, and I think we spend so much time trying to struggle to get to those victories that we miss the point that um there were people who you know who lived and died, um, such that you could not have to do that, you know. And and they wanted you to be happy. Yeah, so that's what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you know, for real.
SPEAKER_00I I believe that every day wholeheartedly. Yeah, that's a that's my daily ritual to understand that.
SPEAKER_02Love it, obsessed. Tell the people about yourself. Who are you?
SPEAKER_00Okay, what I mean, I don't know. There they're very various aspects. What do you want the people to know?
SPEAKER_02What do you want to share?
SPEAKER_00Okay, um, my name is V Shane Frederick. I was born in North Carolina, I do currently live in Philadelphia. Um, I play piano, I sing, um, I listen to music. I'm a lover. Uh, I write. Um, I listen. You know, I'm an interpreter. Um and I kind of I make plans and I see to it that those plans happen. I believe in not just being a creative, but also being a creator, which uh for me is is as fulfilling and it's also part of the process. So I'm trying to always stay in that flow, in the flux, you know.
SPEAKER_02I love that. You know, we met really randomly, but I really just praise God that we did. And I'll share the story with you. I don't even think you really know the story of how we met. So I think I do. Well, you were there, but I mean, like the story before the story.
SPEAKER_00Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Let's go, let's go, let's go.
SPEAKER_02Okay. So a lot of people in this span of my life who have met me in Philadelphia know that I was a student. Yeah. And so it was like a random weekday. I was down to the schoolhouse working my tail off, and one of my like really close friends from undergrad hit me up and said, Hey, I'm gonna be in Philadelphia for maybe 16 hours. What are you trying to do? And so my first thought was like, girl, I'm trying to go home and rest.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_02But I was like, no, let me be spontaneous. Let's go out, let's have a good time. And so we bounce around the city, get good food. We're walking around um downtown, and we hear random jazz music coming out of this place called Maison 208. Oh, yeah. And so we're just like, okay, the night is still young. It was definitely 11 p.m. on a school night, but whatever. Let's go inside. So we go, we get more drinks, we're just kicking and having a good time. And I hear this voice singing, and my insides just start to melt. And I'm like, what is happening? Who is this person? It was you.
SPEAKER_00And now I remember that now.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And you sang, sang, sang, and I was just like, okay, two options. I could leave and enjoy the night and just say, What a wonderful evening, or I could go up to this person and be like, Hey, I'm fanboying right now. Who are you? I decided to do the latter, and that is how we connected.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_02And then I just started following your music, following your journey. And I'm just so grateful to have met you.
SPEAKER_00I I um I'm a reflection of that gratitude. I'm grateful to have met you as well, because if um if I if I wasn't, when you said, hey, let's do a thing to podcast, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I would have been like, eh, you know, but first of all, I've watched your work, your being as as work, right? And um have appreciated that. And I, you know, I'm grateful to be able to bear witness to that. But um, I remember, yeah, seeing you various settings, musical settings, and I was like, hey, I'm gonna be at West Philly at this thing, and you pop up in U City at this thing, right? But that's how life works. I like that. I like, you know, you just gotta go with it sometimes.
SPEAKER_02Yes, go where the spirit leads. That's right. You don't know what blessings will come from it.
SPEAKER_00That's right.
SPEAKER_02Now, I mentioned that I followed your musical journey since we've met. Um, and I've been reflecting, and the reason why I invited you on the show is because I know about the music, but I don't know too much about the man. And so hopefully, as we discuss the music, I'll get to know and the listeners will get to know a little bit about you. I'm good with that. Yeah. And so I've seen you play in U City, you mentioned. I know that you've played at places in Philadelphia like Time, the Philly Arts Museum. These are all places that you should go if you visit Philly. Um, that's right. You studied music formally at Dartmouth, right?
SPEAKER_00So is that is that true? I took a few music courses and it was mostly like um it was not music theory. When I was there, um, so to be clear, I only stayed there for like two years. I left and I'd later finished my um my bachelor's degree somewhere else. But while I was there, I walked in as a chemistry major because I was a science nerd, you know. Um and then by the time I left, I was an English major because I was more interested in in the humanities and in and um in writing, you know, creative writing. And at that point I had taken like black theater and I took a class on Stephen Sondheim by the guy who was um one of his biographers. And um, so I was in this whole musical sphere when I left Dartmouth College. Um, and that was when I walked into performing, you know, that when I went to Dartmouth, that's when I walked into performing. I had not performed a note out of my throat, out of my fingers prior to that moment.
SPEAKER_02You lied.
SPEAKER_00Very true, very true, all true. Um, although I grew up around music and absorbed it like a sponge, you know, like a good sponge. I just got these sponges from Trader Joe's. It's like 10 in a little pack, but you got to drop them in water, then they expand, right? Because otherwise it's just a thing. You don't even know what's a sponge. You literally a drop of water hits it, bam, it blows up. I was that. And then I got to a place and they were like, hey, you look like you can sing. You're black. Come to the gospel choir practice. Literally how it happened. I was walking across the green. We got rehearsals on Tuesday at eight, or whatever it was. And I went to the rehearsal at Tuesday at eight, and they were doing like a mic toss thing because they wanted to see what the new people got. And I opened my mouth and they was like, uh, sir, what's you what you're not gonna do is you're gonna take every solo because what? And I was like, Y'all think I can sing? You know, that's how that was. It didn't start for me um prior to that, really. Both of my parents are musicians. My father's a saxophone player. He had a at one point he finally got a record deal with Epic, which he declined because he was in in shambles at that time. My mother is a church musician, plays piano and sings. So there's a lot of music in my life. Is there a siren in my background? In mine. Oh, that's you. Okay. Hey Atlanta. Hello, Atlanta AT ATL Shoutie. Um, yeah, so I grew up in the church, but I also grew grew up listening otherwise. But I had never um had the impetus to be the one on stage.
SPEAKER_02So that's where my like there's a disconnect for me, right? How do you grow up around all of this music and you don't open your mouth to sing, or music really isn't your juzge until college? Have you reflected on that?
SPEAKER_00Um, because for me, music is um, I link music and culture very intrinsically. And as a, I consider me to be a cultural practitioner. In that regard, um the largest part of performing is listening. The largest part for me of being an intelligent, qualified vocalist or pianist or whatever else I'm gonna be is knowing, knowing, knowing this stuff. And you can't listen while you're doing all the time. You know, a lot of people want to do everything, but they have no information. Like, get some information. I sat, I like when I started listening to music hardcore, I started collecting jazz CDs at that time when I was like 12, 13 years old. And I would have the liner notes open because you get the CD jewel case, and then I would find who was on the personnel list, and then I would go and find their projects. So I was already a deep listener before I opened my mouth to do anything. And I knew it's not that I didn't know I didn't have talent, it wasn't about me having talent. Um, it was really just about me studying this thing that I loved so much. I grew up in church, so I already knew gospel, right? And, you know, I was listening to RB on the side. So, and that RB transition because you know, RB is related to blues and rhythm blues, which is really related to jazz. And so you got you buy one album, then you buy another album, and it's like, you know, you get you get the Anita Bakers and the Michelle Pharrell's, and they're produced by George Duke in this one and that one, then you learn how who George Duke is, and then you learn that he's legit outside of just being a producer. He plays keys or he played keys, rest in peace. And you do the, you know, the the uh the breadcrumb trail situation. You follow the trail. If you are a scholar, I was a scholar of the music before I was a a performer of it. So I just soaked up the information. For me, it's just about soaking up the information. So when I open my mouth, I want it to sound like I have information. When I sit down to do a song, I want it to, I want the people to know. First of all, I want the audience to know that I'm connected to them. I love my audience, whoever I see, like you know, it's me and you. I'm here to tell you this story or to remind you of yourself. This is the context. We share this really high context situation. Um, I think this song is beautiful. It was written by this person. Um, and this is what I think they were going through at that time. Remember this? Don't you have that feeling? This is the story. Let's look, let's look at the lyric. Let's really talk of, you know, really get into the music of that thing. Um, I want to deliver information. You know, I don't just want to sing a beautiful song and do a million trills and melismas and riffs, because I could do all the cadenzas. That's lovely. But that ain't my that's for me, that's not impactful. I want to communicate, I want to change things, I want to connect to people. And I think all of the tricks, the technical stuff, being a technical vocalist is not necessarily connecting to the soul of a human being the same way that being an interpreter, being some a storyteller is. So that's what I that's what I wanted to bring to the people.
SPEAKER_02So remember how I said when I first met you, I was melting. Here we go again. Because I think so much of what you just said is what I've been reflecting on for the longest when it comes to music. Right. So often you hear people just jumping into music, and it's a lot of, you know, I've studied, I've studied the the technique, uh, I I can do this, I can do the Jasmine Sullivan run challenge. Yeah. Often that's a good thing.
SPEAKER_00And that's that's all legit. That's that's cute. That's legit.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's so good. Yeah, but what sometimes when I hear certain singers, it's like, okay, this is beautiful, but my soul feels nothing. Right? Like, and so that interpretation, for your soul to feel something, I feel like you need to be able to interpret the music, you need to be able to have committed some study to it. And so, oh, I thank you for just showing that process.
SPEAKER_00For me, that's about um, it's it also takes a vulnerable and self-conscious person to um be able to do that because you can put on someone else's tricks and duplicate and emulate someone else, and there's a place for that. Um, but that to me does not show other people who you are. You know, it takes you being clear and conscious of who you are, taking this work and making it your own that separates um, for me, the great from the good or the good from the mediocre, you know. Um anyone can sing any song, and there are some fabulous voices in the world. I I like my voice, you know. I think I've I've become quite intimate with my instrument. Um, but for me, it's not just about what my instrument can do, it's about how my instrument can serve the content, you know, and how when I make an arrangement and how what instrumentation I choose to use, you know, musical, you know, but whatever um who, whatever horn, whatever I'm using, I want everything to make sense. I want this to all paint a story because at the end of the day, I want people to get what I'm saying. And I want what I wanted to do is to connect to them in a way that is impactful and um relevant and resonant. And like it kind of puts you in a zone, it puts you in a place, it tells you a story. I'm a storyteller, I'm an interpreter, I'm not just a person who's going to sing my funny Valentine that you've heard a million times, and then you will turn over, finish your glass of wine, and go back to your phone. You know. Um and those are fewer, those artists, I think, are fewer. Uh I think we're so focused on sometimes the other stuff that we miss the story.
SPEAKER_02And so there is that vulnerability piece. And as you're speaking, I can't help but think how can one be vulnerable in their music, right? And show people who they are if they don't know themselves. And there's so many people who don't know themselves, but still put themselves in in music, right? In performance, and do really well at it.
SPEAKER_00It and so it's also okay to be able or to leave space for growth. Yeah. I'm not saying that, you know, every time I open my mouth, I know everything. Um, I'm just saying that I desire to go to that place. I desire to bring forth information. My desire is not just to present something that's going to hide me. I don't do music just to hide myself. You know, I do music to reveal that I'm connected to this thing and I'm going to show you why you're also connected to this thing. And even though you might not know it on the superconscious level, on a like ancestral or subconscious level, you are connected to this thing as well. Let me show you how. You know, we are all connected to this, whatever this story is. It's universal, it's impactful, it's it's gonna resonate with you. This is why. Give me three minutes and 45 seconds, you know. Although this was written in 1927, I got you, boo. Just give me a second, I'm gonna let you know why this is gonna work for you. You know, that's that's what I'm doing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I want to get into your business just a little tiny bit more. Please. Um, you talked about that desire to kind of expose self, get deeper, get connected. What does that process even look like for you? Um, is it just the study of the music and the history? Is it something else?
SPEAKER_00It's just really for me, the first part is just getting clear about um if I'm gonna do a song, whether I like the song. I can't really do what I do on a song unless I like the song. And for me, that's like listening to the lyric, understanding who wrote it, why they wrote it, the context. Can I flip that context to make it work for me? I should also backtrack to state my father bought me my first um keyboard. I think I was 18. That's the keyboard that I really learned how to play on. At this point in time, rewind. My father was in the military, lived in Japan, came back to the United States, was living in Virginia, married to a woman who is now an ex-stepmother. So we didn't have a relationship or really a real, real relationship at that moment in time, not compared to what we have now. We weren't really actually having real conversations. He knew that I was interested in music. He knew I had musical talent because my mom is a beast and he played the sacks, and you know, so he knew music was there. He was like, all right, son, so here's the keyboard. I sat in the basement and I taught myself how to play, you know, my favorite jazz standards. Um, and then he pulled out his rusty, dusty little saxophone and he would play. We would not have real conversations, but we would play music. So the music served to me as a served, you know, served as a kind of a, I want to say a therapist, a conduit. It was an emotional revelation. Because before we had an emotional relationship, we had a musical relationship. And that kind of opened the door to the conversations that we needed to have at that moment in time because we were never really, you know, and I was, you know, going through all the rites of passage and uh-da-da-da-da, becoming a man. And where were you at? You was in Japan, da-da-da-da. All the anger and all the guilt and all the residual, all of that stuff. It kind of chisel through that. And I learned that music is self-soothing, but it's also therapeutic externally. And so I learned the function of music in a different way than just like, I'm gonna sing this crazy groove song. It's cool. Oh, I'm gonna do that run right there. I can't wait to do that run. And then I'm gonna do that, and then I'm gonna do that, and I'm gonna do that, right? That's cool too. But I knew that there was like a there is a ceremonial, spiritual, there's a work. Music is like a work. And the deeper I got into specific songs and learning how to utilize them to tell stories that people have forgotten that they knew. Um, I learned how to utilize music and use it and not just to do it, you know. Um, and so I that's what I'm always thinking about. How can I take a song and not just do the song but utilize it? What stories am I really telling in a song? You can interpret, you know, an interpreter is going to take summertime. I could summertime and living is easy. You can do that, or you know, you can sing it.
SPEAKER_01Summertime and living easy.
SPEAKER_00Like you can interpret a song in different ways, yeah, you know, and they all mean something different depending on your intention and whether or not you have the attention of the the listener. Um, and so for me, just kind of bringing it full circle, I have to be able to connect to the purpose of the song or create a purpose for a song before I can do anything with it. And in order to do that as an actor, you gotta find what's my motivation. Because it's it's there's a little bit of acting in it, it's interpretation, right? There's some skill sets involved in it. So, I mean, I could go on and on about that, but that's part of the process for me.
SPEAKER_02I appreciate you so much. So you mentioned that toss the mic moment kind of opened the doors to music for you. What was that moment like? Was it kind of like oh, this thing is for me? Let me keep building on this. How did you know music was that girl for you?
SPEAKER_00Um And even at that moment, I didn't. Um, it was just something I realized that I was good at. I was better at it than I thought. Because again, I had no practice. I was never in the choir. I wasn't the choir boy. I was always in church because my mom played for church. So every Sunday and choir rehearsal and prayer meeting, Bible, I was always in church. But I was never the guy in on the choir. So I realized that all my listening had paid off because I could make good choices, you know. Um, but again, so I started college when I was 16. I didn't know nothing about nothing. I had no information.
SPEAKER_02Oh, you're real smart.
SPEAKER_00I I mean, you know, I do a little shum on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I mean, yeah, Tuesday and Thursday, basically. Um, so but again, that was then, and then it took still more for me to actually get to the place where I would really, really take that to the marketplace, as it were, to take my music um outside and um really I don't want to say exploit, but bring it to people. Um and then I realized I think the emotional payoff was what it was for me because it became an emotional payoff for me with my father and for me with myself because if I wanted to cuss somebody out, I would sit down and play a song for myself and be like, all right, nobody got to die today. All right, cool, we good.
SPEAKER_02You keep you referenced your father a couple times, and you talked about how music is kind of like therapy. Yeah. In therapy, we don't just well, proper therapy, take notes, y'all, when y'all would y'all therapist. It's not just about catharsis, but there's also about, you know, there's a space that you need to make for meaning making and learning lessons and you know that piece. What lessons has music taught you?
SPEAKER_00That's a good one. I like that. See, see, that's why I like going off the script. See, listen, I'm trying to freestyle here because the whole script is done. See, that's what you sent me that thing. I was like, listen, baby, we ain't gonna do none of that today. No, it's like that's cute and all boo, but um, what lessons? Okay, so music has music has taught me it's okay to make a better choice, to make a different choice. I'll explain. Um, I have been trained, self-trained, as a live musician, a live performer. And then when I started recording, I realized that, no, baby, the first take might not be the one. You might want to go back. You might leave space to be prepared to um make another decision. Give yourself permission to choose again, to define this moment the way you really want it to be, to um manifest your vision and not just say, oh, it's fine, never mind. All right. That's not good enough sometimes, right? That was one lesson, and I learned that, and it was a very expensive uh lesson because when you know, recording, and then there was one way that I was recording from a technical aspect that made it impossible for me to go back and just change my vocal. I couldn't do that, and so I had to learn how to record such that I knew I might not like this, and just in case, let me get everything else and then go back and study, sit in it, and be like, oh, I'm gonna do something different, and then go back and change my choice. You know, so preparing to give yourself permission to make another choice is a that's a strange thing for me because you know, I'm 16 in college, I'm brilliant and perfect, I can't do anything wrong, you know. And maybe trauma told me that I should never do anything wrong, right? Maybe that's trauma, right? And so when I de-traumatize myself and allow myself space for lessons in the process, I learned that, you know, sometimes you do something over again and it will get better. And there's no shame in that. Um, that's one lesson that just immediately came to mind. What else did music teach me? Music taught me, music taught me that I'm a people person. I didn't necessarily know that. I didn't know how much people loved me and how much I actually loved people. Right, right, right. And I love people too. And so it's a feedback loop. Baby, you love me, I love you too. Let's go, let's love each other. What's up, Bo? I didn't know that. I wasn't open to being loved, perhaps because I was closed to being attacked or you know, hurt, right? And so you gotta, it's a both and, you know, there's there's a space where the vulnerability, that's called vulnerability. Music taught me to be vulnerable. If I could put that in like five words, right? Um or six words. Um, see, here I go with that again. Um, that's one thing, vulnerability. Um, it taught me that I have the capacity to love people. Um, and people definitely have the capacity to love me, and it feels better that way. And then that's addictive. That's a beautiful addiction, too. You know, loving people and being loved. That's, I mean, that's like the meaning of life. So music really for me presented life skills, emotional life skills, and not just survival life skills. You know, we learn survival skills, and usually those end up at the end of the day, they're positive because that's how you survive, but then they turned out to be negative in a way because you're surviving, but you're not thriving and you're not interacting, and you're not getting fed in a different way. You working from the root chakra, and that's it. And all of this up here is dead because you just, you know, you just out here trying to eat, not get killed, not kill nobody.
SPEAKER_01That's cute. You'll be all right.
SPEAKER_00But you know, get it, get, put, get dirty with it. What's up, baby? Go ahead, talk.
SPEAKER_02Uh, I need you to get out of my therapy sessions. Did not know you had access to my charts, but I need you to get out because one, that learning skills that aid in our survival. So many of us go through years and years and years of life just surviving. And we've gotten so good at surviving, we start to look at those skills, whether they be things like people pleasing, yeah, being more concerned about other people's welfares than our own. Um counting ourselves out before somebody else can count us out. Yeah. So, like saying, I'm not gonna apply for that job, I'm not gonna do that audition because that's not in my wheelhouse, right? I'm not gonna put out that single because, you know, I made it from home. Yeah. Counting ourselves out before others do. We've been we've gotten comfortable with those skills and they've aided in our survival. But in the long run, we're really not thriving. We're not reaching our highest potential.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. What about that's like that's just that's just level one. That's level one, right? And level one is good because level one, again, survival is survival. So we do need to survive, but then you know, let's complicate life a little bit. Let's live a more complicated, uh uh, a richer, an enriched life by doing more than simply surviving, because survival gets boring, you know. Once we, you know, if if you're about to die, you want to survive. All right, so now we're surviving. What's next, y'all? Let's get some jewelry, let's go have some wine, let's eat something interesting, let's do something besides just survive in this room, you know, with a blanket on this. Okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Time for me to get in your business a little more. Let's go. In addition to giving yourself permission to do things over, another fabulous lesson because so many of us maybe don't receive the outcomes we want the first try and say, well, this is clearly not for me. Woo, read me, get out of my therapy. In addition to being vulnerable, what other ways is V Shane complicating life? Going from surviving to thriving, reaching your highest potential.
SPEAKER_00I'm loving or trying to love and making mistakes, loving, and then making better decisions in loving. And that ain't got nothing to do with music. That's just life, you know. That's like, oh, let me try this thing. Oh, I like this experience overall. Maybe just not this instance. So then again, this just goes back to making another better decision, taking the information you got, because this is just education. Uh, it is trial and error, and we can try and we can have error. We will try and we will err, right? Um, if you if you're smart, because if you're not so smart, you will try and try and try and error and error and error and never grow and develop. Um, that's another way that I'm developing and um complicating life. Or I have, I should say. That was new information for me during the pandemic. Yes, I had a pandemic, boo. Get out of my business. Oh, now you and my therapy said, Don't play.
SPEAKER_02I'm jealous of you.
SPEAKER_00No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Please don't be. Um, maybe I'm just late to the game. But I I guess that goes with the music because I spent so much time focusing on developing this musical thing and putting all of my energy, all of it, so much of my being into what I really, really love, which is this music for the people that I love, um, that I didn't have the time with the energy to do other stuff. And then when everything got cut off, I was like, well, I had a little bit more time. Let's what's let's see what's on you know behind door number two. Um, and so that was an interesting exploration that I had just not had the time to do, you know, because when you operating like at a hundred, like boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, you really don't have the extra to do the extra stuff. I realized that I had the capacity to do the other stuff, possibly two, will put in quotation, right? I can do all of these things and they will all fulfill me and work in tandem and be a beautiful experience. Um, maybe that experience didn't work out, but I know it could happen. How about that?
SPEAKER_02I love that. That really resonates with me. I will say in my journey, I've invested a lot in education, right? And kind of like pursuing that whole thing and you know, really having a tunnel vision on these degrees. But I can't say that I didn't pursue love just because I didn't have the time to. I feel like a part of it for me, I don't know if this applies to you, is that maybe I didn't see love being possible for my life. And when I mean love, I mean like romantic love, partnered love. I feel like there was a span of time where I just did not see that as a possibility. And so the vision I had in myself is, you know, fabulous, given body in all black, maybe a little child on my side, no partner, we're living life. And it took me coming to this new area, right? Leaving Philly, saying goodbye to all of that, and having experiences where I'm just like, oh, love is a thing, love is possible.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, sometimes you got to leave Kansas to find a yellow brick road and then find out, oh, wait a minute, you know, right? Whatever that is. I dig that. I don't I get that. I don't know if my my experience was exactly the same, um, but I understand that completely. And that's also realistic and probably more popular of an idea than any of us would ever realize or discuss publicly. So that is to say, you're not an alien, you're not alone in that, you know. Right, right, right. Um mine was, I think I was just trying something different. I think I was trying a different angle. I had a little bit more time to entertain something, and I said, you know what, the the opportunity is here. Let's see if I can do this thing. And I was like, wow, I actually like being in a relationship or whatever, whatever you decide that is, right? Um, and I have some energy and time to devote to this thing. I actually like me when I'm in a relationship. Maybe I don't like you, but I like me and this. So I know I have the capacity to do this thing that I never thought I had the capacity or the desire to do. Um, and so should that moment arise again and it looks like it's going to be right, then maybe I'll take that moment, you know, um, as opposed to being like, I don't got the time. Because that was easy. It was always easy for me. Again, I just quit a day job. I had a nine to five. I quit that in December 2019. So meanwhile, I'm putting out albums. I have four projects out, and then I'm leaving my job and then going and playing music somewhere, probably at least five nights a week. I don't have time for nothing or nobody except, you know, making this money and then making this money on in a different way. And, you know, all of that requires much more than a lot of people might realize, you know, to try to get uh a burgeoning musical career identity off the ground and be an established artist and the cultural community and blah blah blah. There's a lot going on there for me to be entertaining some foolishness. Hey, where you at? Uh-uh, you ain't asking my text, you know. Ain't nobody got time for that. Heard you, heard you.
SPEAKER_02I'm already really full, but can we travel down to the church house?
SPEAKER_00Lego.
SPEAKER_02All right. You mentioned that your mother was a church musician, a beast, as you call her. I think you said beast. Yeah, I did.
SPEAKER_04Yes.
SPEAKER_02Shout out to mom. Yeah. You grew up with this religious influence. I did some research, some interviews that you did down to various papers. You also had this jazz influence when we have our little conversations, small little check-ins, you mentioned the ancestors and you know, spirit and all of this stuff. What would you say is your current understanding of music? And you touched on this a little bit already, but music, the spirit, the ancestors, the the forces that be that led you to be and to be here.
SPEAKER_00Um so this is another example of me being open to the possibilities, right? Um, and being open to receive information. Um, I can't say I have all of the answers with anything. Um I do know, I believe at this point, and it's too much information to the you know to shake me from believing that, you know, I have been quote unquote divinely appointed to do specific things, and I'm operating in my lane with a specific set of gifts. Um, because the fruit of that tree is um way too profuse for me to believe that, you know, it's not by design. Um, I do, I I understand and believe that when you're operating in a space that you are meant to be operating in, things come to you in a specific kind of way, and not necessarily negative things, positive, fruitful things, it changes other people's lives. Yeah. Just by you doing what you're supposed to do. Um and I also believe that sometimes we are extensions or fulfillment of the dreams of our ancestors. And not in just like, you know, the t-shirt, I'm my ancestors wildest dreams. That's cute. That's lovely. I get that. But like literally, I know people in my lineage who are musicians, were musicians. I mean, grandparents, great-grandparents, and I know and believe fervently some of these people I were connected to before they passed away, before they transitioned, that um I'm operating with that same gift. I believe we pass gifts. And sometimes, even if we don't pass them, you can pick up someone else's mantle and say, you know what? I want that. This is what I want to do. And if it's right, if it's right, if it if the glove fits, you must have quit. As the great philosopher, you know, Johnny Cochran said. Uh if the glove don't fit, um, no, no, no. So um, yeah, you know, I it's interesting to negotiate a specific way of thinking about Christianity, you know, which is definitely the religion I was brought up in. And then understanding a much more expansive view of the great cloud of witnesses that is uh that is referenced in the Bible. It does mention, you know, mention, you know, um that there is a great cloud of witnesses, which I believe refers to our ancestors and those, you know, who have uh passed before us who are bearing witness to our lives, um, you know, and even in Catholicism. They they certainly pray to saints. I think there's a lot that we don't understand, and I think it's okay not to be sure and to be sure of what you think.
SPEAKER_02There is so much we don't understand. And I as I was preparing for this talk, I was just reflecting on my own religious upbringing, also in the Christian faith, but a more conservative Christian denomination. And as I look back, I think I wouldn't describe it as like sterile per se, but it was really like rigid. Yeah. So when you think about like vulnerability and emotional expression and all that, that wasn't always in my church, I feel like, as I look back.
SPEAKER_00That's interesting, yeah. Because I I I come from the conservative, but it's conservative in one way, but in the other way, it's very ecstatic. It's very what you think of African worship. I mean, because I'm again North Carolina, and I mean backwoods like town of 2000. So whole holiness, Pentecostal, and you know, the dancing, and you know, this is not like you know, criticism. Uh-uh. I didn't come from that. I came from that. I came from you know, I came from that. And if you ain't doing that, you ain't living right. That's what I came from. You you actually had to go off just to prove that you was living right. You know, it's one of those things. So it's more, it was Pentecostal holiness, more the what they would, you know, the cogic, that that vein of life than the you know, the uh the very postured and peaceful and dignified. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You had to show your complete black in order to prove that you were closer to God.
SPEAKER_02And that pulls me back to like there's so much we don't know. And so as I'm now making the intention to try to know more and try to understand more, I see the necessity of that emotive piece, that vulnerable peace. And I find that now being incorporated in the ways that I worship, in the ways that I talk about and approach religion, in the ways that I talk about and approach music. And yeah, so I just love that. Thank you for for touching on that. You talked about you also touched on this idea of being extensions of your ancestors, yeah, and how throughout your background there is music. Time to get in your business. What will you be leaving for future generations to pick up and carry on? Other than music.
SPEAKER_00Well, I mean, I think even if it is just a music, if you just take a close enough inspection at what I am doing, what I have done, and what I'm about to do, because y'all ain't seen nothing yet. But um, I think there's so much texture to it. You know, you can look at a person's body of work, an artist's body of work, and you can like feel the intention or not. Sometimes it just is what it is, you know, but sometimes you can just tell, like, Stevie's still here. If you look at his body of work and listen to certain things, overall, if you can just if you're a person who studies music or just or a human being who likes music, and you just listen to the trajectory of his work and just like you just know what kind of a person he is, right? Um and then you know, I this next, I'm gonna just FYI, this next project. I'm about to go there. All I'm saying. That's all I'm gonna say. But like I want to create music that really just like is it's just so I I can't even explain. I can't even, I literally, and I'm usually never at a loss for words, but I want to, at least through my music and also through my living, but especially through um, because not everyone's gonna have access to my living, but they will certainly have access to my music, thank goodness, based on you know technology, you know. Um, and as long as I'm alive, that's what I intend to do. To create music that is artful, to curate black experiences, global black expects black experiences that are very human and conscious and loving and sensuous and um intentional and positive and it's all those things. That's what I want to do in my music, and that's what I have done, and I'm that's what I'm going to continue doing. Just with other people's money, you know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_02I heard you. Yeah, complete the sentence, D Shane. Sure.
SPEAKER_00Happiness is happiness is peace.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate you for coming on, for sharing yourself, for giving yourself to this podcast. And being a season one guest of Rose and Thorns. Before we wrap, we're just going to switch gears a little bit and play a little game called Let's Spin the Rose Bottle.
SPEAKER_00Let's go.
SPEAKER_02Let's go. I spent this entire time asking you questions, getting into your business and all that jazz. Now it's your turn to get into mine. You can ask me one question. It can be juicy, it can be dry, it can be nothing at all, and we'll just move on. But if it is something, I have to give an answer.
SPEAKER_00Wow. Now you're really, I didn't know this part. Okay. I might see. Come on, man.
SPEAKER_02See, that's because you throw away the outline, because it's on the outline.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I did miss that. Yeah. No, because I was reading through that, like, no, I'm not just gonna uh because I didn't want to, I didn't want to be infected by like what I need to say.
SPEAKER_02I appreciate it. This was wonderful.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it was it was absolutely fantastic. Um, why are you doing this podcast?
SPEAKER_02You want the cute answer or the real answer? I want the real answer.
SPEAKER_00Oh, give me all of them. Okay, give me, give me this is what I would say, but this is what I'm really gonna say right now.
SPEAKER_02All right, let's get messy. I will give you the cute answer first, the cute answer being, and the genuine answer as well. All things are welcome in this space. I wanted to build community with people that I knew and did not know, um, to kind of just talk about their navigations of life and relationship, right? Um and maybe hopefully my my intention was also for listeners to possibly um identify with some of the experiences shared on the show. Messy answer. I left a podcast and I wanted to prove to myself that I could do this on my own.
SPEAKER_00And here you are.
SPEAKER_02Here I am. That wasn't so messy. That's just my truth. I don't even think it's that messy.
SPEAKER_00I don't think it's messy at all.
SPEAKER_02At all. Yeah. I just wanted I felt really low after I left it. I wanted to prove to myself that I could do something on my own, do it well, do it the way I wanted to do it. And here you are. Here I am. Do you want to share any upcoming projects? Do you want to share your social media handles? Where can the people find you?
SPEAKER_00Sure. Um, so I do have a project. I have a title and I have a look, and um it's crazy because like three months ago, to be clear, I I've done like four projects in like two and a half years, which is I think is a lot. But then again, I don't know what people are doing these days, you know, because I come from the album. In my mind, I come from the album generation, although I'm not like that old, but um, but now I know I know people are doing singles and eps. So I did one full album, then I did um a single, which was actually two songs, but technically that's a single because it's not an EP. Then I did two EPs. One of those EPs was done during the pandemic, literally from conception, um, manifestation to release date. That was Black Light. Yes, black light. You know, that was like me thinking about it in May, recording June, July. I think we were done in August. And I put that joint out in September, September 2nd, the first year.
SPEAKER_04And it's wonderful.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, thank you, thank you. Um, you know, I was like, all right, let me stop putting music out. Let me just like chill, like not like stop forever, but like, all right, don't do nothing, L Shane, don't do nothing else. And I had this idea because people kept saying stuff, and I was like, oh, that would be cool, but how can I do that in a Shane way? So my next project, which will be an album, and that will happen this year. And I'm saying that publicly out loud. I've said it a few times, but this is probably the first public space. Um, it will be entitled King, K-I-N-G. Um, and it will be based on um some of the repertoire, some of the obscure stuff and some of the more popular but not really popular stuff of Nat King Cole. However, it's going to be complete reinterpretations and let's say a globalization of the Nat King Cole repertoire and image. So the look of what I see, and I'm taking this back to Africa, I'm taking it to South America, I'm taking it to the Caribbean, I'm doing some stuff with some stuff. So this will be in the trajectory that I've been going, um, this will follow that space and as far as um stretching the boundaries. You know, yes, I'm a jazz musician, you know, and I love jazz and I study, I know jazz, I'm legit. Um, however, not even however, and I'm influenced by a lot of other things. And I want to incorporate that into that repertoire um and really um broaden the outreach of this project. And so I already have, like I said, I have one and a half of my compositions already arranged by one of my co-conspirators, and I'm working on another one, and I'm going to go in the studio at at the latest by like late spring. And um there's some monies that may be coming in. Yeah, like there's there's a possible grantslash fellowship that I'm not really going to mention that may be coming through, which will be some monies, and there's gonna be a film element, and it's gonna be popping, and there's a lot of things happening in the history of the world that uh I'm very excited about. Anyway, King, let's look for that by the end of uh 2021. And um, so my social media is there all my name vshane. I think they're all v Shane, yeah. Uh maybe vshanef. That's Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. I don't have anything, I don't have nothing else besides that as far as social media. So don't look for nothing. I'm gonna show the visual board on the screen just so you can see what I'm what I'm talking about. That's that's for that. You see what I'm talking about?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'm already melting.
SPEAKER_00I'm missing it. It's gonna be crazy. I've already talked to like my my photographer slash like cinematographer, collaborate, collaborator person, and she's already like, I'm ready. Like, what's good? Let's go. You ready? And you know, I got some stuff on deck, so this is about to go down. Whether I gotta spend my money or some white folk money, I'm gonna spend some money to get this thing done. So that's what's going down.
SPEAKER_02I'm super excited. I can't wait to support the project.
SPEAKER_00Thank you.
SPEAKER_02Thank you for being on this show, for being on this episode. Love you down. I love you so much. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Y'all, this has been another episode of the Roseanne Thorns podcast. See you next week. Bye. Thank you for listening to Roseanne Thorns, a P Ryan podcast. You can find Roseanne Thorns on Instagram and Twitter at Rose and T Pod. That's R-O-S-E-N-T-F-P-O-D. And you can find P Ryan on Instagram and Twitter at I-M-P-Ryan. That's I-A-M-F-E-R-Y-A-N-F-O-F-S-F-O-S-O-S-O-S-O-N-S-C-S-S-