Talking with Kiran Shahani & Shana Halligan (continued)

PM: I'm in the iTunes vortex as far as The Mating Game goes, so I'm kind of without credits. But I get the sense that you're both songwriters on that project. Is that how that is?

KS: Uh-huh.

SH: Oh, yeah, definitely.

PM: When you got to know each other and you started working together, did the process divide in any clean way? Is somebody the lyricist, or is everything done by both?

KS: Shana's always handled the lyrics and melody on the songs. And the only thing that's really changed since we started, she's been helping me a lot more on the music, and putting in her two cents, and we're really even coming up with the beats together now, too.

PM: Really?

KS: Uh-huh.

PM: Now, when you focus on the beats, do you have favorite drum machines, or favorite software that you go to? What's your default?

KS: I really use Protools as an instrument. People find that very strange, but I actually turn it into an instrument.

PM: Really?

KS: Yeah. And then I use this Reason program a lot.

PM: You like Reason, yeah.

KS: Yeah. And then I have a huge sample library that I've been putting together for the last 15 years. So I have my own special box.

PM: Right.

[laughter]

PM: Yeah, and I know guys don't give up that stuff very easily.

KS: No, we don't.

PM: Yeah. I mean, as a guy who writes a lot of country in Nashville, it's totally the other side of the world to me. But it's very interesting. But I had drummer friends that split to L.A., and I've never heard from them again, and I know they've gone into another world. A beat world, but it didn't have anything to do with this town.

KS: Wow.

SH: Yeah, it is very different.

PM: I was going to ask [laughs] Shana--and so I'm still going to ask her as if Kiran is not on the line.

KS: Hey.

[laughter]

PM: Maybe you'd tell us something about him, what kind of a guy he is, and what he's like to write with or record with.

[laughter]

PM: Let's pretend.

SH: He's an absolute lunatic!

[laughter]

PM: How did I know that?

KS: Oh...

SH: No, he's really, really easy, really laid back, very creative and open. It's such a great environment because there's no ego, and there's no control freak in him.

PM: Really?

SH: As much as he'd like to believe he is, he's really not.

[laughter]

SH: That would be me, actually.

PM: It's got to be somebody.

SH: It's just a creative and open environment, and he's not afraid to teach me everything he knows, which is so nice, because in the past I worked with people and they're just so ego driven and they don't want anybody else to tell them what to do. And then they end up making a mess of this music you brought them, that it's like, "Well, this isn't what I wanted at all." And they could really care less. You know?

PM: Yeah, I do.

SH: And this is such a collaboration, and we're both so on the same page musically, and our taste is so similar that it's not really much of a struggle. We both usually agree about what sounds great--or no, take that out. It's pretty kicked back.

PM: It's so amazing when you find somebody who isn't completely ego driven, or completely sick with their control issues, that you can actually do this kind of a thing with them.

KS: I just keep all those in my personal life.

[laughter]

PM: Where they can really flower.

KS: Uh-huh.

SH: Yeah.

PM: It's just a song. Sure, you try and make it as good as you can, and then you write the next one.

KS: Exactly. Our whole thing is just make music we love.

SH: Yeah, that's our thing. We don't worry about what anybody else is going to think about it. If we love it--

KS: And listen to it and pop it in our cars and groove to it and take a road trip, that's all we want.

SH: Yeah, exactly.

PM: Right. Yeah, because you're hipsters; if you like it, it's probably good.

[laughter]

SH: Well, that doesn't always work.

KS: Yeah.

SH: But at least for us thank God it's been working that way.

PM: But it's a good basic rule.      continue

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