One Half of Shook Twins

Based in Portland, Ore., but originally from Sandpoint, Idaho, the Shook Twins have sang most of their lives but didn’t begin playing instruments until they were almost out of their teens. Since the two sisters began playing guitar, they’ve added several instruments to their repertoire, including banjo, electric and upright bass, mandolin, electric guitar, electronic drums, face drum (beatbox), glockenspiel and ukulele.

But it’s their singing and onstage performance that has gained notice.  The president of the booking agency representing them, Paul Lohr, described the Shook Twins’ voices as being “like crystalline honey” while singer/songwriter Laura Veirs said the girls “have sass and spunk to spare.”  Author Neil Gaiman dove a little deeper in his description.  The husband of Amanda Palmer said, “I love the harmonies of the Shook Twins, the dreamlike songs that seem somehow permeated by the American Folk tradition, without actually being part of it.  They make music that twines through your soul the way vines cover an abandoned shack in the woods.”

With a new album – What We Do – set for an April 8 release, Laurie Shook described her and her sister’s musical upbringings and how making the transition from playing for fun to making music a career was a “gradual thing.”

Laurie also told us how she and Katelyn have played the twins game switching identities.  At least we think it was Laurie doing the talking.  After all, she could be fooling us.

Have you and Katelyn been playing music all your lives?

Singing, definitely.  We started playing instruments when we graduated high school but didn’t become serious with it until we were about 20.  It’s been a nine-year instrument journey.  We’ve been singing in choir since we were in fifth grade.

What was your first instrument?

Guitar.  I started playing banjo when I was 22.

When was the first time you played in public?

Our first gig was in Virginia.  We lived there for about four months. That was when we were 20 [and] we started playing more and writing more songs.  We got our first gig at O’Charley’s Restaurant.  It was like a three-hour gig and we did not know that many songs. We were repeating songs and playing songs we shouldn’t have been playing because we didn’t know them very well.  It was a funny time.

What was the first song you played for anyone?

I think it was “Good Riddance” by Green Day.

Was that when you first considered making music as a career?

No.  When we first started out it was just like, “Oh, this is fun.” And we kind of got addicted to playing. We get asked that a lot – when was the moment we first thought of having a career – and I don’t think we ever had that moment.  We kept going, kept writing songs, kept getting better and didn’t stop.  It was a gradual thing.

What kind of musical training did you have?

Definitely choir.  We consider our voices our main instruments.  We’ve been singing the longest and have had a lot of training with that.  Instrumentally, we’re mostly self-taught.  We took a couple of guitar lessons and took a guitar lesson in college for a semester.

Do you think musicians have an affinity for their instruments and that learning the mechanics of how to play is merely a formality? 

Music is such a wonderful thing that it can come naturally without you really knowing what you are doing.  The sounds just come out.  They make sense without fear.  You don’t have to have all the knowledge of why the notes are the way they are to play them.

Twins are often described as being totally connected with each other, thinking alike and ending each other’s sentences.  Is that true with you and Katelyn?

It’s true.  I think that happens when you spend the majority of 29 years with anybody.  The fact that we have the same DNA helps.

Keeping that in mind, does the creation process only happen when the two of you are together or can you write separately?

We have split up and written our own songs and brought them to the table. A handful of them were written together.  Sometimes we’ll come up with a good music part to a song and the lyrics come slowly.  Sometimes we sit down together … and all the words come out of the sky at that moment.  Those [moments] are the best.

Sometimes you’ll write down something and it will go into a song, later. It’s a funny process.  It’s always different.  When we do it together, it does happen easily and we’re able to bounce ideas off of each other.  It’s nice … to have another mind involved and be able to call each other out.  We always strive to make our songs different from our own songs and different from other songs that are out there. 

It’s not easy.  We start writing a song and it’s like, “I know why I’m writing this like this. I’m super into this Ani DiFranco song.”

I have the looper ability.  I write some looping songs.  I mostly write the songs on banjo.

Was Americana, country and bluegrass genres you grew up listening to?

Not really.  My parents always played the classics – The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell – we grew up on a little bit of that.  But they also listened to the music we were listening to, the pop of the day, like Celine Dion, New Kids On The Block, Alanis Morissette. 

We don’t have a very musical family.  My dad plays guitar, gave us both of his fancy guitars and taught us everything he knew. My mom doesn’t play anything. She sings a helluva lullaby.  So we didn’t really grow up with music surrounding us all the time. I kind of wish we would have. I would have played an instrument earlier.  I wish that all of the time, that we had started playing when we were very little.  We’re a little bit behind on the instruments compared to our bandmates who are amazing.

Do you attribute any particular reason to why you didn’t begin playing instruments until you were almost 20?

No, I don’t.  Maybe we were distracted by singing and being in a choir and it wasn’t in our heads to accompany ourselves. … We started playing because Katelyn had a crush on a boy who played guitar and he bought her a guitar for graduation.  We both got excited.  And I was like, “If you’re going to [play] then I’m going to.”

What are some of the harder aspects for a woman touring today?

I don’t feel a struggle of it very much.  If anything, I feel like it helps us out and that makes us stand out because music is a totally male-dominated industry.  There’s the festivals …. “We only have one slot for a lady band.”  Seriously? It’s a little bit interesting in that way.

Are you finding festival lineups somewhat limited because of that?

That’s what I’ve heard but in my experience I feel like it’s been “We need more women in this festival, that’s why we want to book you.”  I didn’t realize it was a certain amount or something.  I feel fortunate … standing out being a woman.

The music industry itself includes many powerful women working as agents, label execs, promoters managers and in other roles.  In your experience are you seeing a male-dominated industry?

There are definitely many powerful women.  I think, generally, the majority of musicians, shredders, [there are] a lot of males.  Does it come more naturally to them?  I don’t know.  It’s awesome to see more and more women shredding.

Where do you and Katelyn want to be in five years?

We would like to be up a couple of levels.  A little more lucrative.  At these times it’s a little tough.  It would be nice to have more tour support, and ease of mind.  To be able to buy a house.  Be at a level where we can play really rad theatres all over the country. We’re not looking for huge stardom.  That would kind of freak me out.

Have there been any “pinch me” moments where you’re playing with someone you grew up listening to and you’re thinking, “This can’t be happening to me?”

We always dream of sharing a stage with Ani DiFranco.  She’s one of our idols, she’s so powerful.  It would be like being in the presence of a whale, so majestic and beautiful.  We love being backup singers, too. I think it would be so awesome to hop on a tour and back someone else up.  We’d love to sing with Gregory Alan Isakov.  We’ve met him and hung out with him.  He’s a great guy.

We’re mostly influenced these days by our homies and the people we meet on the road.  When you make a personal connection and then see them rise up, it’s really fun to see.  I feel a lot of that is happening right now. There’s so much room for so many different bands to make it.  It’s really cool to see to see the progress of Lake Street Drive, Elephant Revival.

Do you and Katelyn ever compete against each other?

No.  They were always afraid of that. In elementary school they kept us in different classes.  All the way up to eighth grade we weren’t allowed to be in the same classes.  Once high school happened and we could choose our own classes, we chose the same stuff, so we were always in the same classes.

How about switching identities?  Did you ever fool anyone into thinking you were Katelyn?

Oh, yes.  What’s the point of being a twin [ if you can’t]?  We used to switch classes on April Fools and stuff.  We switched on that same boy that got Katelyn her first guitar. …  We had him going for about 10 minutes.

What’s touring for you like?

I feel like we have it really easy on the road.  Our team is so wonderful.  Our band, we’re all best friends and there’s never any drama.  There’s been a couple of times we’ve snapped at each other and we’re immediately sorry.  We work well together.

We have great tour vehicles, too.  Our guitar/mandolin/electronic drum player, Niko [Daoussis], came with a Sprinter.  Our bass player, Kyle Volkman, comes with an awesome converted school bus that is so fun to tour in. … It’s like a log cabin inside.  He totally redid everything.  He cut off the roof and raised it a foot and added more windows, bunk beds, a kitchen.  Whenever we do tour in it we stay in the bus all the time. … It’s so cozy.

How large is your touring ensemble?

We mostly tour as a four-piece.  This upcoming tour we’re touring with the full band that’s on the album, [including] our drummer Russ Kleiner and our fiddle player Anna Tivel, they are really awesome. They’re both in other projects so it’s kind of tough to lock them down at times. … We’d love to start touring more with a bigger ensemble.

What’s different about your new album, What We Do, compared to past releases?

It’s a lot different.  It’s recorded, probably, more correctly. … We worked with wonderful people in Digital Studios in Santa Cruz, it’s an awesome place, great homies, really talented people.  It was our choice to kind of piece together this sort of jam experience.  Our last album, Window, was created with that mindset, to recapture these jam experiences we have with our friends.  We had a lot of guests on it, Elephant Revival and stuff.  We flew to Colorado to record Bridget [Law] and Bonnie [Paine] and ourselves on our laptops and bring it back to the engineer and say, “Put this together.”  And he’s like, “This isn’t how you make an album.”

But it worked.  It was great and fun. This time we were lucky and raised $25,000 on KickStarter and went up to Woodinville and recorded at Bear Creek Studios with [The Lumineers producer] Ryan Hadlock for 21 days, [starting] with the foundation of drums and bass/  [We] just kind of played it live together and captured everything really well. … Ryan was able to help us tone in our parts, think about [how] it’s going to hold it together and get the big picture.  It’s cool to trust somebody like that. Other albums we definitely did 50 percent or more of the producing ourselves.

When you finished the album, did it sound as you first imagined it would?

Yes.  There was part of me that was wondering and expecting it to take a whole new life on its own. … It came out like a live show.

If you could give a 20-year-old Laurie Shook any advice, what would you tell her?

I would tell myself to play my instrument more. Develop a strong understanding of it and a connection to it through ritualistic playing RIGHT NOW!

Upcoming shows for the Shook Twins:

April 11 – Portland, Ore., Mississippi Studios
April 12 – Bend, Ore., Downtown Bend (Bend Spring Fest)
April 13 – Applegate, Ore., Applegate River Lodge
April 16 – Felton, Calif., Don Quixote’s Int’l Music Hall
April 17 – Berkeley, Calif., Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse
April 18 – Sebastopol, Calif., Hopmonk Tavern
April 19 – Arcata, Calif., Humboldt Brews
April 24 – Bellingham, Wash., Wild Buffalo House Of Music
April 25 – Seattle, Wash., Tractor Tavern
April 26 – Sandpoint, Idaho, The Hive Music & Event Space
April 27 – Missoula, Mont., Top Hat
April 28 – Bozeman, Mont., Peach Street Studios (Live From The Divide)
April 30 – Garden City, Idaho, Visual Arts Collective
May 2 – Eugene, Ore., McDonald Theatre
May 3 – Olympia, Wash., Olympia Ballroom
May 5 – Redding, Calif., Vintage Wine Bar & Restaurant
May 6 – Chico, Calif., Big Room
May 31 – Ogden, Utah, Fort Buenaventura (Ogden Bluegrass & Acoustic Music Festival)
June 4 – Boulder, Colo., Fox Theatre
June 7 – Pagosa Springs, Colo., Reservoir Hill Park (Pagosa Folk n’ Bluegrass Festival)
Aug. 30 – Pagosa Springs, Colo.,  Reservoir Hill Park (Four Corners Folk Festival) 

The Shook Sisters will also play the “Northwest String Summit” at Horning’s Hideout in North Plains, Ore., although the festival scheduled for July 17-20 has not yet released its daily lineups.

Please visit ShookTwins.com for more information.