Hailing from the rural landscapes of Kentucky, Elvie Shane brings a unique blend of influences to the country music scene, drawing inspiration from artists like Dwight Yoakam and Steve Earle, as well as genres ranging from classic rock to R&B and hip hop. With his heartwarming sincerity and commitment to authenticity, Shane has become a standout figure in the country music world and on new album ‘Damascus’ he positions himself as a voice for the disenfranchised and rural, forgotten, working communities in a way that is powerful, intelligent and relatable. We were thrilled to interview him all about it.
Read our 5 star review of ‘Damascus’ right here
Thanks for your time today, Elvie, we appreciate what a busy dude you are!
I’m livin the dream, man! Thanks for your time too.
It’s been almost three years since ‘Backslider’ came out. A lot has happened to you in the time since you released that album. Has the time passed in a blur or have you been able to enjoy the milestones and good things?
It’s been a blur, man, to be honest and I’m still trying to enjoy the good things! (laughing) There have been some great things that has happened and, looking back, I wish I’d had the ability to recognise them when they were happening.
It was difficult after putting ‘Backslider’ out for a while there. I actually went to the Country Music Hall of Fame induction for Toby Keith and whilst he was on stage he was talking about how you have your whole life to write that first record and then it gets difficult. I felt like we put out a solid first record in ‘Backslider’ and I didn’t want to be that guy that followed it up with a dumpster fire trash of a second one! (laughing) There was a bit of a struggle getting everybody on board for recording this particular set of songs and getting it all started and we were finally ready in September of last year to start recording and here we are now, with ‘Damascus’ ready to go out into the world!
Let’s talk about the title. Was the title always going to be that because listening to the songs, ‘Outside Dog’ would also have made a great title for it?
It was always going to be the title, from the very first week we started writing songs for it. We put out ‘Backslider’ in October 2021 and in January I headed down to Alabama to a house that my producer had rented out and turned into a studio on the beach. Whilst we were there I was having a conversation with my friend and co-writer, Ryan Tyndell, and we were talking about the apostle, Paul and his journey on the road to Damascus and I was, like, ‘Hell, man, I feel like I am on my own road to Damascus right now, trying to figure out what I’m gonna do next!’ The title was born from that conversation.
The first two songs we wrote for the album were ‘Baptized’ and ‘Forgotten Man’ and they are both really different songs so it was hard to see them on the same project. I happened to be thinking about Damascus steel one day, which is a kind of metal forged from different other metals which is very strong. It made me think that I should approach the album in the same way. Let’s take these different artists and genres that have influenced me throughout my life, from Country to Gospel to R&B and Hip Hop and Rock and forge them into a sonic space where they can all live together. That last bit wasn’t on me, that was on Oscar Charles, the producer, and he did a really great job.
Well then, he’s done a good job because I think it is a really cohesive album.
I was so worried about it, man! (laughing) I was convinced that there was no way we were ever going to be able to make all this stuff come together but once we got it recorded and we started to sequence the songs I began to see that Oscar had killed it! I turned him loose!!
There’s 3 songs, ‘What Do I Know,’ ‘Forgotten Man’ and ‘First Place’ that were the first three songs we cut. We used studio musicians for those tracks and I love those guys, they are so good at what they do but there was some budget issues and a feeling that I should use my friends and my co-writers, who are also fantastic players, so this record was made in a basement studio with nothing but friends jamming with no time constraints. I feel like everybody’s heart and soul came out into it.
That sort of punkish element, now I know how it was recorded, really comes through strong.
I like that! Yes sir! I went out to South by South West in Austin last year and got to see all the new age, punk, hardcore stuff that they have at that festival, which really plays in to what I used to listen to as a kid. There was this one band, in particular, that I really got into called Militarie Gun who were so cool. So I’m not only pulling from historical artists like Johnny Cash and recent influences like Mac Miller but also from new bands like Militarie Gun as well on this record.
A song like ‘Appalachian Alchemy’ was definitely born out of going to South by South West and seeing all this new hardcore punk and rock bands exploding out of festivals like that.
There are some strong narrative themes running through ‘Damascus.’ You’ve definitely become an advocate and a voice for the rural, hard working, blue collar classes. Is that where you feel your platform is?
I feel like the people that I care about the most and the stories that I feel like I can tell come from that space, from blue collar upbringings. Travelling the world, since we released ‘Backslider’, I’ve noticed that those people live everywhere. As I was focusing on those people with this project I noticed a lot of very similar struggles that live within that lifestyle. Which is why we touch on topics like addiction and prison reform on the record.
Talking about prison reform, was the song ‘215634’ inspired by a personal story?
It’s about my oldest childhood friend. We were running round the woods together when we were kids but he went into the prison system in his early twenties. We were running around doing the same stuff but he was always the one getting caught for it, you know? (laughing)
He was out on parole and had pissed some guy off who had threatened to kill him. Where I come from, when someone threatens to kill you, you might wanna listen because it might well really happen! He ended up kicking my buddies door in and my buddy had acquired a gun, the way that felons do, and he pulled his gun out and shot and killed the guy, in self defence. However, since he was a felon with a firearm, he couldn’t claim self-defence and so he’s now doing a twenty year sentence.
I was talking to him on the phone and he said, ‘Man, they changed my name. I’m now just ‘215634” and it hurt me to hear that. He also said it was ‘just like the hollers and the streets in here, man’ which is where that line came from. I started to try and write a song about working in the factories, which I could relate to but it turned out to be something much more personal. It’s about growing up in a place where there is no opportunity and people are stuck.
Listening to Hip Hop music I get the feeling that there is a very similar feeling growing up on the streets and in the hoods of urban sprawls and cities too.
Shows like ‘Dopesick’ on Disney+ blew my mind in how it dealt with the opioid crisis that ravaged so many communities across the southern states of America. We just weren’t aware of the scale of it over here in Europe. Songs like ‘Pill’ and ‘Appalachian Alchemy’ address that head on.
‘Pill’ was the first song I wrote for the album. It was written during the ‘Backslider’ sessions but didn’t really fit on that album. The first verse of that song is me. The second verse is an apology to a girlfriend that I had back then that I kinda pulled into that lifestyle. That song is very much the most personal song on the record.
With ‘Appalachian Alchemy,’ I definitely know a little bit about that, you know? I was a 90s kid and that was when crystal meth started to be a real thing and a big problem in rural Kentucky. I was seeing family and friends that were going down that path. I started noticing things like cars pulling up to the trailer at the end of the road at all times of the day, you know? I started to hear about people I knew that were good, hard-working folks that were getting in trouble. I went down that road a little bit in my early twenties but luckily I didn’t go down it too far, like so many other people I knew did.
I saw that problem and I saw how it effected my community and many communities like it and I wanted to represent them in the song.
‘The First Place,’ a song about drinking, features Little Big Town. I was a little surprised to see them on such a punkish album that deals with such heavyweight issues. It speaks to their characters that they were willing to do it I think.
Yeah man. I felt like it was an important part of the record to give Nashville a little shout out in terms of sound and style. Everybody needs a good drinking song and Little Big Town have recorded some of the best that there is, right?
Adam Wood, one of the co-writers on it, really came up with the idea of putting in all that first place effort and still coming in last, which is something that I could definitely relate to. We wrote that song at a writers retreat in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee and on the way there I had been listening to Little Big Town’s ‘Boondocks,’ so it was stuck in my head. Dan Couch, one of the other writers on it, grabbed some ice from the fridge, turned round to me and sang, ‘A little less ice in the glass, bartender,’ and I was, like, ‘Damn, what song is that’ and he said that it wasn’t but we should write it!
In the middle of writing the song I told the other writers we were going to cut this song with Little Big Town and they were like, ‘OK, buddy!’ (laughing) So, we get done with it, I’d had a little bit of liquid courage so I got on Instagram and sent Karen Fairchild a video of us playing it and just said, ‘Hey, I listened to ‘Boondocks’ today, thanks for the inspiration.’ 20 minutes later I was still pissed off that I was too chickenshit to say what it was that I actually wanted to say so I went back on and asked Karen if her and the guys wanted to sing on it! The next morning I woke up with a headache, a hangover and a message from Karen Fairchild that said ‘We love it, let’s do it!’
In amongst all the punkish elements and the rock-leaning sounds on the album, I have to say that my favourite song might well be ‘Winning Horse’!!! What a huge song.
That’s mine too, right now!!! (laughing) That song has kind of a funny story behind it. I had a meeting with the head of my label and we were arguing about whether or not I was going to record these songs and when I left I went into the studio and we wrote ‘Winning Horse.’ It was initially aimed at him, you know? I just wanted him to let me do my thing and let me record these songs that I believe in but I ended up putting a girl into the chorus and turning it into a love song.
I sent it to my wife and she messaged me back in tears! The only song that I’ve ever wrote for my wife that is a love song that made her cry started off being a song I wrote to a dude at the record label! (laughing)
It’s an election year in the States and things are going to get crazy over there. Do you worry about songs like ‘Forgotten Man’ being appropriated as political statements and being seen as divisive or politically motivated at all?
I mean, any publicity is good publicity, right? People are free to take these songs and apply them to any part of their lives that they see fit. If you listen to the heart of these songs they are open to any and all political beliefs rather than being about one side or the other. With songs like ‘Forgotten Man’ and ‘What Do I Know’ the common denominator is the working class struggle that we all go through. Hopefully people will see the similarities in these songs and their lives rather than any elements of division.
What’s the plan for the rest of the year in terms of promoting this superb album?
Right now, we are doing some shows with Travis Tritt then we’re with Blackberry Smoke at the Ryman and then doing some shows with Parker McCollum and Chayce Beckham. We’re trying to get out there as much as possible and hopefully we’ll get somebody to holler at us and ask us to go out on tour with them, that would be really sick. We haven’t been on a big arena tour as yet so that would be really cool if somebody would take a chance on us, I wouldn’t let them down.
Elvie Shane’s 5 star album, ‘Damascus’ is out in all the usual places right now.
