Introducing…. Joy Shannon
Tell me about how you got started
I have been writing songs since I was a kid, but I started to take music seriously once I was a teenager and formed some of my first bands. Ultimately, I started creating this solo project composing songs on harp and singing, in about 2009. Finding the harp was like meeting my musical instrument soulmate, and just sitting down to it, is enough to inspire a song in me. It’s just such a beautiful and ancient instrument that feels like is part of me.
How would you describe your sound, and how has it evolved since you first started?
I create dark folk on Irish harp, cello and vocals, with songs inspired by ancient folklore. I’ve always wanted to create ethereal dreamscapes, and over the years, I have gotten better at that, as I have honed better musical skills and been able to access better production.
When I first began writing songs, I started writing from my own life experience. But over the years, as I began to learn more history and folklore, I started to feel that there was vastly greater stories to tell than my own. I was inspired by the stories of goddesses from Greek, Norse and Irish mythology and I found that telling their stories, felt like telling the stories of the history of women. Additionally, telling the stories of how goddesses and their worship was condemned and forgotten, also tells the story of how the divine feminine in us all has been abused, subjugated and silenced.
Over the years, writing my songs have become ways to connect to history and tell largely forgotten stories. This has been healing to me personally. In the end, though I might write about a historical subject, I end up finding the heart in it, that I connect to, and somehow I find a way to make the story personal.
Who or what have been some of your biggest influences, musically and beyond?
My biggest two influences were two performers I discovered when I was 12 years old: Gavin Friday and Nick Cave. Both write beautiful songs with wondrous musicality and lyricism. Both exposed me to other wonderful writers, like those they were inspired by, from T. Rex and David Bowie, to Oscar Wilde, Dante and Leonard Cohen.
Gavin Friday is Irish and had a band called the Virgin Prunes, which was incredibly avant-garde and out there, for the time they were performing in Ireland. Coming from a conservative Irish Catholic family, I was absolutely amazed by his (and his entire band’s) courage to defy social norms and question everything, through music. From there, I also got into Sinead O’Connor and deeply admired her intense authenticity and courage. Sinead showed me that music had the power to speak truth, even when people were afraid to say it otherwise.
Listening to and seeing live performance by Nick Cave, likewise, taught me so much about storytelling through song and stage presence. And he still continues to inspire me, as he shares his life experience with vulnerability and honesty.
Through all these musicians, I found that to write and perform music, authentic to your own self, is a courageous act of healing oneself and sharing one’s heart with others. I strive to this, and I know it is a lifelong pursuit, that we get better at, with determination and grace. Many musicians I knew as a teen and early 20-something, stopped making music, and I knew I never could. I need music, like I need air and water. It is my language through which I speak about all that I learn about and how I grow as a person, and I never want to stop. I admire the artists who dedicate their lives to it and show us that we can continue to get better at it with time and determination to continually challenge oneself.
What does your songwriting process typically look like – is it a more individual or collaborative effort?
Songwriting has always been an individual meditative and trans-like process for me, but I emerge from my cave and share it with other musicians and visual artists I love to work with, and then it becomes collaborative. This album is a great example of this process for me. I wrote it alone, but then I gathered many of my favourite musicians to work with me: Osi and the Jupiter, Emily Jane White, Aerial Ruin, Leila Abdul-Raif, Jessica Way from Worm Ouroboros, Kai Uwe Faust from Heilung, multi-instrumentalist Syd Lewis, singer Amelia Barron and J. Fox from Fox and the Red Hares. All of their talents to deeply enriched the songs. I was also able to work with two incredible producers: Greg Chandler from Esoteric and Dan Malsch who had produced Ghost and Gojira among many others.
The album cover as well, was an amazing collaboration with the Irish artist Sean Fitzgerald. I told him the stories of the songs, and discussed Irish lore and language with him, and he illustrated a visual representation of the songs in the most incredible way. Sean’s knowledge of Irish history and spirituality also influenced and inspired me while I wrote the songs. In fact, Sean gifted me a book about Irish mythology, called “Corr Sceal” (or Crane Stories) by Lorcán Ó Tuathail, that inspired the first and the last songs on the album, which are about the ancient Irish lore about the crane.
Because I am also a visual artist, one of my most important collaborations I have is with my dear friend and music video director Matt Kollar. For the past 10 years, he and I have created music videos together and his collaboration of helping me realize the visual performance of the songs, has been deeply meaningful to me. So often when I write, I dream of a film that would tell the story of the song, as if the songs are scripts to a visual expression. Matt has always been the best collaborator and he and I have grown so much together as artists, with our latest videos for this album, being our best yet!
Tell me about An Chailleach; what are the core themes you were dealing with on the record?
An Chailleach was inspired by the ancient Irish stories of the crone goddess, who rules over the dark time of the year from Samhain, or Halloween, to Imbolc, or the beginning of spring. She rules over the darkness, the storms and destroys and creates. I started writing the first song for the album “Cailleach” when we went into lockdown in 2020. In that song, I felt the vulnerability of entering into a dark and confusing time. In the lyrics, I am asking a grandmother goddess, who has seen so many cycles of the earth, for help and guidance.
From there, the songs unfolded and I told more stories inspired by loss, grief and survival. The songs were inspired my own ancestral history and the lore of “An Chailleach” and other Irish goddesses like Airmid, Caer Ibormeith, Grainne and Corra. What I love about Ireland is that the land itself is the body of the goddess, and each goddess is connected to different ancient sites. To tell their stories is to tell the stories of the land and her people.
I also discovered, through writing these songs, that to tell the stories of the goddesses and the land they are from, is to tell my own family’s stories. If the land is the body of the goddess, it is as if the land has the muscle memory of all that has happened to it. My songs, then, became my expressions of the whispers I felt on the air, when I went to the ancient sites of “An Chailleach”.
When I was a child, I was told that songs were floating in the air and you must be quick to catch them, just like a snowflake in the wind. These songs felt like they floated to me in the air of Ireland.
There’s a lot of Irish folk lore throughout your work, both visually and musically. Tell us about your connection with Ireland and what draws you to Irish folk lore.
I grew up in California, to Irish parents. We would go back home frequently, and I always felt that Ireland was my true home, and I was just visiting California. My dad, who left Ireland in pursuit of all the creativity and dreams that seemed more possible in a place like California, used to ask me why I loved Ireland so much. As a child, I told him that it was because I felt like in Ireland “the ghosts were happy to see me.” I do feel I have always connected to the spirits of the ancestors there and they have deeply inspired me to sing, and to play the harp, and spend time amongst the ancient standing stones there.
I am grateful that I grew up in California during the 80s and 90s, because in California, at the time, I was afforded the freedom to become my unique self. Ireland it was not always as open-minded as it is now. Now, I can be myself in Ireland, but years ago, I would have not been so welcome to be so witchy or interested in the “forbidden” pagan past of the land.
Interestingly, my love of ancient Ireland- this mysterious and, once forbidden, pagan past- has been extremely healing for me to openly create songs and art about. To connect to this past has been like a way to heal ancestral wounds, for myself and my family line. For example, on this album, the song “The Crone of Loughcrew” was written about the ancient site of burial mounds at a place called Loughcrew. It is a site dedicated to the crone goddess “An Chailleach”. This ancient site of reverence of the divine feminine, stands above a site of the Magdalene Laundry where my grandmother was imprisoned for having my father out of wedlock. Those institutions were abusive places where women were forced to do hard labor, for insane reasons that are shocking today, like being too pretty or rebellious, or being pregnant out of wedlock. I wrote this song about this because I wanted to express the strange paradox of the ancient site and this terrible institution being so close to each other- one reverent of an ancient goddess, and one abusive to women. It showed to me how far society had gone to forget to honour and protect the beauty and strength of women. While the Magdalene Laundries are now closed, we still have much further to go to protect the rights of women around the world.
How do you approach experimenting with new sounds or ideas when creating music?
I always try to push myself into new realms every album, so that I grow as a musician and songwriter. I usually start each album with that current goal- whether it is to write more complex harp parts or to be a better and more flexible singer. Whatever the goal, I start practicing for this, before I begin writing a new album, and then the songs naturally come out of that pursuit. For this album, I challenged myself to learn to sing in Irish more than ever before. Though, I have a long way to go with learning the language and singing in it fluently. The practice has helped me feel more connected to my ancestral home and understand ancient Irish spiritual beliefs more, as the beliefs are right there in the language itself.
What’s been one of the most memorable moments in your journey so far?
One of the most memorable moments so far has been to have Kai Uwe Faust from Heilung, come to my home and record in my home studio for this album. He’s been a dear friend for many years and we had talked about collaborating for a long time, but I am also a huge admirer of everything he does and his incredible talents. So, having him throat sing and drum in my home, was such an incredible experience. It felt like he blessed my home and my album with his incredible energy.
How do you prepare for live shows, and what do you aim to bring to your performances?
I practice my harp parts so they become automatic and then I am able to focus on my voice as my most organic and emotive instrument. My ultimate aim when I perform is to express love and truth through my music, and especially my voice, so that the audience connects into the songs with their hearts. I hope to reach others’ hearts by accessing the deepest truths of being human in my songs. Of course, this is a huge goal, and I work at it every show. The true work is for me to hone my skills, stay present and to be open-hearted when I perform, which is challenging, with so many distractions in life.
How do you balance creative expression with staying connected to your audience?
It is challenging, because I do feel like I can sweep off into another world when I sing and then between songs, I come back to the moment now. I do tell stories to the audience sometimes between songs and that can feel like a lovely moment to connect, before I go off into another world again when I sing. I don’t always look at my audience when I sing, but when I do, I often find the youngest kids in the crowd, because they are so full of wonder and love, I can really connect to them when I sing.
What do you hope listeners take away from your work?
It’s always been my deepest hope that my music helps others know that they are not alone in this world, with anything they struggle with. Other people’s music has helped me through my toughest times in my life. Then, when I went on to write songs about the tragedies in mythology, it made me realize that our greatest challenges in life- our losses and griefs- are what link us to all of human history. We are all the expression of all our ancestors who came before, and to tell the stories of my grandmother is to tell the stories of me, and vice versa. I heard the quote that when we heal something, we heal it in all directions of time. So, I hope that to heal myself, I do so for my grandmother or her grandmother, and also for the generations that come after us.
I think one of the most isolating pains we can feel is when we forget that we belong to this earth and that we are in a great line of amazing ancestors who survived so that we could live, and create and thrive. My music is the way I come back to that belonging- to my homeland, to my ancestral line, my ancestral language- and I don’t feel alone, but instead feel a sense of purpose. I hope somehow my music can inspire others to find their sense of selves, belonging and inspiration, to add their special beauty to this great celestial dance of life.
What does the future hold for you – any plans or goals you’re excited about?
For this album, I still have one more music video to finish and release for the song “Corr Bán (Tar Árais Dom)” that I recorded with Kai Uwe Faust from Heilung. The music video and extended mixes come out on November 29. Then, we have one more release of two remixes of the songs “Mo Corra” and “The Crone of Loughcrew” by the incredible producer Dan Malsch, who had worked with Gojira, Ghost and lots of amazing metal bands. That comes out December 21.
After all that, I will continue to play shows and find my inspiration to write more. I am always creating more… after this album, I will create another. I am not sure what the theme will be, but I will begin again, and go deeper into the research of the ancient world that inspires me so.
