Shane Tutmarc ::: Photo by Josh Lovseth

We first heard Shane when we heard a demo from Dolour, his long running pop project that put it’s first album out in 2000. When we went to our local record store to pick up a copy of a Dolour record, Shane happened to be our cashier. It’s one of our favorite small Seattle moments, strangely embarrassing at the time I suspect for both of us, but a case of happenstance I won’t soon soon forget.

What I didn’t know though, was that by the time I was discovering Dolour, Shane was already in the process of moving on from that project and from the idealism of his youth and what Dolour represented. Not only that but he was about to have a life-shaking experience, that would launch him in a new direction that would end up leading back to where he started: gospel and blues and the music of the south, by way late-sixties Elvis and Hank Williams.

The result was Shane’s next project, Shane Tutmarc & the Traveling Mercies’, a return to the origins of rock that’s sound quickly cemented his boundless potential in our minds. For the Traveling Mercies, Shane created a family band, consisting of him, his brother (Brandon) and his cousin (Ryan), and together they made old gospel songs new again. Dolour had become a meticulously managed vanity project that no longer represented him as a person; the Traveling Mercies were a cathartic opportunity to pay homage to the musical tradition of his family and America.

This week, Shane has a new record coming out titled Shouting At A Silent Sky, we think his finest to date, and he’s been joined by a new band of ringers to back him up. But we’ll get to the new record in Thursday’s portion of this interview. First of all we thought it was important for him talk about how he got to where he is today and about the details of his life-long one-of-a-kind musical education.

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SOTS: How did you discover you could sing?

Shane: Because every band that I had formed, from like 4th grade, 5th grade, 6th grade, nobody ever wanted to sing. Like my first show that I ever did, my band teacher in 6th grade let my little band open up the school band show. And we played instrumental covers of Nirvana and Green Day and stuff and nobody sang. Finally after that I think I was like, okay I’ll sing, whatever. And just really enjoyed it and loved it.

SOTS: You must have learned a lot about music from your family background and the elders in your family.

Shane: I think one of the biggest shockers for me when my Grandpa passed away (in 2006) was kind of fully accepting for the first time that there was this huge family legacy. All growing up I kind of felt like an alien in my family, I was like, how did I end up in this family? There wasn’t a whole lot of that, at least in my face at least growing up. But through my Grandpa getting sick and then passing away, definitely delved into the family archives just like wow, I was put in the perfect family for what I do. But I hadn’t really thought of it that way until that point.

SOTS: So that was a huge event in your family?

Shane: Yeah for sure. I felt like for the first time like how he had such a big part of who I am, without even knowing it. My whole axis of the way my world turned completely… I was working on a Dolour record at the time that I completely scrapped as soon as he passed away. I got the family band together and I think even up to this new record, the… mortality… the thought process that started when my grandpa passed away still effects me everyday.

The great thing with music, and the thing that is so life affirming, is that I still have like thirty albums of his that I can listen to whenever I want. To a certain extent I feel closer to him now than I did while he was here. Which is weird.

SOTS: You can’t really regret what you were as a kid, but I definitely regret not spending a little more time talking with my grandparents.

Shane: I would have so many questions to ask him now. Just because of what I was interested in when I started music compared to what he did, I just never felt a connection to it. Now I would see so many connections and parallels. He was a producer, an arranger, a writer, and a performer. I mean it’s like everything that I do. He did it very naturally.

SOTS: So you were in the middle of a Dolour record, and then you felt almost immediately compelled to pay homage to your grandfather?

Shane: Even beyond that, totally personally, it just shook my world. I think Dolour had gotten to a point where I knew what kind of songs needed to be written for Dolour. It created it’s own personality sort of more and more outside who I actually was, and what I was going through and what I was thinking about. And I think seeing that sort of life and death right in front of my face I realized I needed to follow a deeper route. And just a more personal and family… Getting my brother and cousin together, I knew it all the way through the process, but now that that is passed, I’m so glad we did it. It’s something that whether or not we ever play again, it’s something we can always share. Every show was a family get together and every trip was a family vacation.

The name itself, The Traveling Mercies, is something my mom used to say, “Let’s pray for the traveling mercies” on every road trip we would take as kids. So it was definitely taking from every aspect. Early, early in the Traveling Mercies we took poetry from my grandma’s turned them into songs that didn’t end up making the record. But it was trying to grab at every bit of our family story into a project.

SOTS: I didn’t realize it was intended to be so autobiographical. At least with regard to your family.

Shane: It felt like something we had to do. When we did the record, there was no trying to send it to labels. I was barely coming out of retirement after taking some time off from Dolour. I was just kinda ramping up Dolour again when I decided to quit that and start up the Mercies thing. So we recorded that album purely for fun. Sent it to KEXP, and they started playing it, so we thought maybe we could start doing something with this. Totally accidental and pure intentions all the way through it. But it gave me the bug again too. I still am carrying on from that.

SOTS: So the new record even is much more personal to your experience then…

Shane: I guess the Mercies was more educational for me. And I feel like this [new record] is the culmination of… I feel like I have a palette now, of options to work with. And using those is where I’m at right now.

SOTS: So Dolour might be described as romantic pop, but you said you were no longer feeling that. Did you lose the romance? Or were there other elements of working with the band or the music that you lost interest in?

Shane: It was always a struggle for some reason. I don’t know, maybe choosing a name that means suffering and strife, you know, might have had something to do with it. From the get go there was a million different lineups. it then became just me and I’ll bring some friends in. It was always just kind of a lonely pursuit. All the while I was on my own educational journey through of what I thought was the true American music: Brill Building, Tin Pan Alley, Cole Porter and Irving Berlin. I loved Bernstein and Brian Wilson, people that were more arrangers and what I thought were true songwriters.

I was totally thinking I was on this American journey. And it’s just funny, because it took kind of like hearing Elvis’ gospel music… once my grandfather passed away I found this CD of Elvis’ gospel stuff. It woke me back up, on just a live, passionate performance aspect, that’s completely unrelated to all those professional songwriters I was enamored with. He led me right back down, and he was one of the first people who freaked me out on rock and roll anyway, so it was kind of coming full circle for me anyways. He led me right back to Hank Williams, Howlin’ Wolf, Chuck Berry, you know, music that I feel like still just jumps off the turntable when you put it on. So, I feel like I’ve always been doing American music, but now I’m just doing a different version of American music.

SOTS: When I first heard the demo of “I’m gonna live the life I sing about…” I thought it was so raw, really deep tones. Electric.

Shane: I kinda wish we could have released that version, because, in the studio… sometimes those moments happen spontaneously. That was song where we knew we were a band now. We’d done a bunch of old covers and written some stuff together, but once we tackled that Mahalia Jackson song, we said OK, this is something new. It’s not just a matter of playing the chords, a vibe happened that was a new feeling.

SOTS: So do write a song, record it and then your done? Or do you marinate on it for a while…

Shane: Something that was totally different from… Basically around that same period of time where stuff was changing, my grandpa passed away and I was scrapping Dolour, my laptop that I recorded everything on died. And with that I kind of let that whole era die. There’s a whole record that I haven’t listened to since then, and just let got completely fried in my computer. And I haven’t got a home recording setup since. So I demoed everything with the Mercies on a tape recorder. And then plugged that into a computer to record.

I used to make these ridiculously ornate demos that I would be constantly frustrated with. Because I would have to re-record them in the studio. Or to make it a final product I would have to at some point re-record it. I wouldn’t be able to play half my songs live because I didn’t know what was going on… with this [newest] stuff all I had was my acoustic guitar, vocals and a tape recorder, so it allowed the songs to form more organically.

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In part two of our interview to appear Thursday June 11th, we discuss Shane’s new record Shouting at a Silent Sky (out that same day on iTunes), his new band, and consider the consequences of idle hands. Until then you can listen to “Never Turnin’ Back” at the top of our mainpage.

Additionally that same day, Thursday June 11th, Shane Tutmarc plays the Sunset Tavern in Ballard as a part of Noise for the Needy, with Jack Wilson and the Wife Stealers, Widower and Adam Stephens of Two Gallants.