Duo who spends extensive time on the road – including living in an RV – but also play at Disney twice a week and they’ve played at Busch Gardens too. They’re working on their second album and talk about topics ranging from their first house concert to recording in Nashville, performing at colleges and universities, thoughts on Open Mic nights, and what it’s like to perform with your spouse.
(Shane) “‘Where you belong,’ which is on our first CD as well, was the first song we ever wrote together (Emily) – in a Starbucks parking lot.”
(Shane) “I did a couple solo gigs – she was going to pick me up at a gig – and she just jumped on stage, sang some harmonies, and I said, ‘I think you should do this full time with me.’”
(Emily) “I was working as a waitress at the time and I loved my job, but, after doing a couple gigs with Shane I was like, ‘I can’t go back to Cracker Barrel after this. I just can’t. It’s not the same anymore.’”
(Shane) “For the college market it’s a lot more, it’s a more professional market than your typical, like, bar gigs and stuff around town.”
(Emily) “Even when we are background music we’ve learned to kind of, like, make it more engaging, ya’ know, like we’ll play the theme song from 'Gilmore Girls' or 'Friends' to kind of do an icebreaker and give away a free CD if people can guess what shows the song are from, and from there we kind of have their attention. We tell the story about how we wrote this song or why we like this one.”
(Emily) “We end up always doing more originals than we do covers at the universities and we’ve been surprised at, like, the positive feedback that we get from the students and they actually come up and buy our CDs afterwards and I’m like, ‘I didn’t even know you guys were listening!’”
(Shane) “During your time off go to Open Mics and find other places to play because you do wanna get your name out there, especially when you tour.”
(Shane) “I want people, when they think Shane and Emily, I want them to think, ‘Man, we hired them, but they’re the ones asking, What can we do’ because I want people to know that we’re hospitable and we are literally just so lucky and blessed to be able to do what we do.”
(Shane) “We were recording in Nashville and we were trying to have a certain sound so we could get on the radio and do all these different things, but when we realized we weren’t reaching a lot of the goals that we had for ourselves, we decided, ‘Ya’ know what? Let’s forget the goals for this CD and let’s just do what we really, really, really want to do.’”
"Carry Me"
"Wait"