Getting to Know… Raven Shelley | Interview 🎤

In the 286^th  Q&A in our Getting to Know… series, we get the inside scoop from UK singer/songwriter, Raven Shelley.

“I’

ve always said that I hope my lyrics make me stand out from the crowd; I try really hard to stay away from the banal, and the typical stuff you hear.” Yes, 🎙 Raven Shelley, YESSS! In response to our first burning question, Shelley expounds, “I have songs about all sorts of things, from Sylvia Plath to monogamy through to vegetarianism and the bombing of Dresden.” What a compelling musician we have on our hands for our 286^th Q&A (onward to 300)! Like our many other Getting to Know interviews, we get the inside scoop on Shelley’s beginnings, goals, musical influences, and of course, current, and future musical endeavors. So, without further ado, let’s jump right into 🎤 Getting to Know… Raven Shelley: Interview No. 286!

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For those who may not be familiar with you, what would you say makes you distinct or unique? How do you rock the audience’s socks off?

🎤 I’ve always said that I hope my lyrics make me stand out from the crowd; I try really hard to stay away from the banal, and the typical stuff you hear. And I read an awful lot of poetry, plays, novels, and I know they make their way into my lyrics. Literature is one of the backbones to my music; I studied English Literature at university, so it’s only natural. Sometimes that’s just snippets and phrases, and sometimes it’s full songs that are based on novels. But I have songs about all sorts of things, from Sylvia Plath to monogamy through to vegetarianism and the bombing of Dresden. So, I hope that when hearing my music, people can stop and consider the lyrics for a moment; perhaps they’ll even recognize some of the literary allusions.

I’d never thought my voice was that special, but since the single has come out, people have been coming up to me and saying how much they love it, and that it’s unique. It’s a lovely thing to hear, I’ve never had a huge amount of confidence in it. Someone said to me that they felt at peace when they listened to 🎵 “Sink in Solitude”, which is a beautiful thing to hear because I don’t often have that sense of peace in myself!

Someone said to me recently that something happened when I started playing live. They said that people actually quietened down, and listened, and the emotion of the room shifted. They said that it was strange to watch, because it was just me and an acoustic guitar; it wasn’t loud, but there was something that made them stop talking and take notice. I want that to be what people remember. I want my songs to have that power to silence a room, not through being louder than the room, but by subtly commanding attention, and demanding to be heard.

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Okay, let’s explore some juicy backstories. How did your music career get started and what were some of the goals or the visions you had as a band early on?

🎤 I grew up in France, and this was where I first held a guitar when I was about 10 or 11; every place offering guitar lessons was full though, so I sat in on my friend’s lessons instead, and started picking it up from there. Once it started, my passion for music was like my passion for literature; voracious. The more I read, the more I listened to, and the more I learnt about playing guitar, the more I wanted to discover.

Upon moving back to the UK as a teenager, I formed & played in several bands, and although performing live was great fun and really increased my confidence, I didn’t have enough confidence to play my own material until I reached uni and started playing open mic nights. That also kick-started a different way of writing; more mature lyrics, way more literary references, just better poetry in general. And this has only increased as I’ve focused on improving guitar playing and lyrics.

I’m also much more confident now, having played solo gigs where people came specifically to watch me, and then said how much they enjoyed it. People don’t need to say that, but if they genuinely believe it, they will. And the response from the single has been absolutely fantastic!

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Let’s talk more about goals. Have your goals or your perspectives changed since first starting out? What do your aspirations or goals look like now?  

🎤 Yes, massively. When I first started playing music I really wanted to be in a band. But now, whilst I want to have people playing music with me, I realise that I want to have total control over what it is I’m writing and performing; I need to be doing my own songs. And I don’t want to be tied to the success of a band, I want to be able to rely on myself.

I’ve become much more confident in my own abilities as a songwriter; when I was younger I didn’t have enough confidence to perform my own material. Because it is scary to stop and say “Hey, listen to this. I wrote this and it’s good enough for you to listen to”. Plus, you’re exposing aspects of your personality or your life, you’re putting out these songs which you may have written when really sad or angry, and as a very private person sometimes that can be hard.

I was always passionate about music, but the past few years have been really instrumental in making me realise how important it is. At uni & before, it’s almost like you’re playing at life half of the time. I mean, you’re in these fake bubbles essentially, and you think you’re an adult but then when the institution spits you out into the world with nothing more than a degree and a load of debt then you realise ‘Oh, this isn’t a rehearsal, this is my life’, and you start to get serious about it. That’s what I did anyway. So, since coming out of uni, I’ve realized I am never going to be entirely happy unless I can be playing music, so I might as well make a go of it, and at least if it doesn’t work out then I can say I tried.

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Everybody is influenced by somebody else. Whom would you consider some of your biggest musical influences and how are they influential?

🎤 I have a really broad range of influences. Musically, I’ll always say it’s those artists whose lyrics are so exceptional they could be described as poetry. Namely, Bob Dylan, Ani DiFranco, and Leonard Cohen.

However, I also love Lou Reed, the Velvet Underground, Edie Brickell, Suzanne Vega, 10,0000 Maniacs, Wolf Alice, Marika Hackman, Cat Stevens, Joni Mitchell, Loudon Wainwright, Tanita Tikaram, Donovan, Billy Bragg, Ian Dury, Glen Hansard, Fleetwood Mac, Against Me, Kate Bush, Nico, T. Rex, Phoebe Bridgers, Stevie Nicks, Blondie, Pulp, the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Florence & The Machine, Iron & Wine, The Postal Service, Death Cab for Cutie, and many more.

They’re all influential in different ways, but I know that I always look for good & unusual lyrics, as well as honest music. I want to feel that someone genuinely believes in what they’re singing, it’s not just that they’re writing what they think people want to hear. That’s what I really admire about Dylan, DiFranco and Cohen; they’ve always refused to be ensnared by what their fans want to hear, and they have continued to evolve and to change, continued to experiment, even if it means being called ‘Judas’!

Literature and poetry also have a profound influence on my music, and a few favourites include Thomas Hardy, John Irving, Charlotte Bronte, John Fowles, Shakespeare and Homer, Graham Greene, D.H. Lawrence, Blake, Philip Larkin, Milton, Brian Patten, Sylvia Plath, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Literature makes its way into my songs in all sorts of ways. I tend to read with a notebook and pencil in hand. That way, if something I read kickstarts an idea, or I particularly like a phrase or word, I can underline it/write it down, and either run with it right then and there or come back to it later on. I have plenty of songs which are based on books that I’ve read too, the most recent one was called A Spy in the House of Love, based on the book of the same title by Anaïs Nin, about free love. I’ve also got one on the go now based on Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, which I intend to call ‘Blighted Star’.

I am also enamoured with visual mediums, my favourite artists being Schiele, Klimt, Van Gogh, and Turner, whilst my favourite director is Nicholas Roeg. I am drawn to images that strike the mind, that are unusual and memorable, commanding attention and demanding to be noticed.

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Ah, the fun stuff.  What’s your craziest tour story or the wackiest thing that’s happened during a performance?  Feel free to be creative.

🎤 That’s quite a tough one to answer because I’ve only recently started playing live shows again; during Covid obviously it was impossible, and last year I moved to a small village in the Peak District to take a year out of the city. I’m heading back to Manchester this Autumn to focus on my musical career, but until then I’ve only been playing the small venues and pubs around here! Though I will say that the last place I played here was quite fun; I finished my setlist with a song I knew everyone would know. The beer had been flowing all evening and everyone was singing along, everyone was in a great mood. That set the tone for the rest of the evening, and it soon turned into an all-night karaoke/sing-along party!

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Up until this point in your career, what would you describe as your favorite song you’ve recorded or performed live? What makes that song special?  

🎤 Well, 🎵 “Sink in Solitude” will always have a special place in my heart, because it’s the first one to be properly released, and I remember the time period when I was writing it very well. It was one wet afternoon in Manchester; I’d woken up late, having been out the night before, and was annoyed with myself for wasting most of the day. It was winter, and (as usual) raining. The light was flat and dull, and I stood looking down at the grey urban street, at the litter, the sludgy brown leaves, and skeleton trees, at the other houses, wondering about the individual stories and tragedies that could be unfolding just meters away from me.  

I’d been reading Shakespeare’s Richard II, and a lot of Shelley’s poetry, so many lines from the song are influenced by these two great writers. It’s a song I wrote to myself, trying to rouse myself to get on and do something, rather than wasting the time that I have been given. Whenever I listen back to 🎵 “Sink in Solitude” I remember that time very clearly.

But there’s plenty of others which mean a lot; 🎵 “Ariel”, is about Sylvia Plath, and I think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever written, lyrically. We’re timing the release to be around the 60^th anniversary of her death.

My favourite song to perform live is 🎵 “Do You Miss Me Yet?” (which will be released 28^th October). 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 every 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. I’m very excited for it to be released (keep up to date with that via Instagram and Facebook, or the Mailing List!), 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 4^th Street” and “She’s Your Lover Now”, and I hope that very Dylanesque mixture of humour 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.”

I tend to preface it at live gigs my saying it’s for “everybody’s ex” – it makes people listen! At one gig several people came up asking if I had the lyrics with me so they could read them.

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Is there anything else awesome, cool, or left of center the world should know about you? Secret talents or surprising tidbits?

🎤 Growing up in France means I’m fluent in French and have some basic Spanish. It’s great because it means I can also sing and write stuff in French, and that always tends to make people listen during live performances because they’re not expecting it. I’ve also been thinking about doing some French versions of my songs.

I also make sterling silver jewelry; it’s only a hobby because music is my main focus, but it’s nice to do something creative that is visual rather than sound-based, just to have a break. And I write plenty of things that aren’t just songs. I write poetry, short stories, and have a couple of longer projects on the go as well.

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Closing out, what are you currently working on, promoting that you can share with us or want us to know about? We love secrets, but there’s no pressure.   

🎤 I’ve been focusing on the release of 🎵 “Sink in Solitude”, and now I’m going to put all my energy into the next 4 singles that are going to be released, as well as continually improving my guitar and lyrics, and writing more stuff, playing more shows. In the long run, I’d like to get a backup band and play bigger venues, creating a stable following.  I also want to record an album or EP after the singles have been released.

In terms of spotlighting stuff that’s coming up, I’m very excited about the release of the next single, because this one has had such a great response! So don’t forget to follow my Spotify and Amazon Music, as well as the Instagram page so you can keep up to date with future releases! 

Thank you so much for sharing taking the time to answer these questions, and best of luck moving forward. 

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Getting to Know… Raven Shelley: Interview No. 286 [📷: Alfred Derks from Pixabay, Brent Faulkner, Darkmoon_Art from Pixabay, The Musical Hype, Raven Shelley]

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