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A Conversation with Shana and Kiran (continued)
PM: So did your song "Bittersweet Faith" inspire the duo's name, or vice versa, or neither?
SH: Well, I guess it did--that song was written around kind of a bittersweet time, I guess. And we were looking for a name, we both actually independently thought of that name. That was the hardest thing, and the last thing to do, was to name the band, because how do you capture what we're about, and our music and everything in a couple or words or a word? It's the hardest thing to do. So much of the stuff we write is just about life. And I feel like life is bittersweet, and it just seemed really appropriate.
PM: Absolutely, I think, more and more as we mature, it's never just sweet, or it's never just bitter. I mean, if you don't have one in each hand you're just missing the point.
SH: Yeah, definitely.
PM: That's just a really incredible melody and a great set of lyrics. The outro of that song is spine tingling.
SH: Yeah.
PM: Who's playing that string harp there?
SH: That's Carol Robbins. She's fantastic. She's actually married to my brother. She's one of the most talented people we've seen or worked with, she's so great.
KS: Probably one of the best harpists in the world.
PM: Oh, really?
SH: For sure. We try to get her to play out live with us as much as possible. It's hard to, obviously, bring a harp on the road.
PM: I've never lifted one of those. How heavy are they?
SH: They're huge. I don't know.
KS: They're just huge and awkward. They're about 100 pounds.
PM: But you can't do it with one person, though?
KS: It's too delicate and they're too expensive. You have a heart attack every time it's being moved.
PM: What does one of those things cost?
KS: A good one?
SH: Oh, God, I think it's 20,000.
KS: Minimum 20 grand.
SH: I mean, it can go up to like, I think 100,000. It just varies.
PM: Wow. Where do they make the good ones?
SH: I know she loves the ones that come from the Middle East. They make them in Chicago too.
[laughter]
PM: Wow.
How did all those great TV cuts happen? Were the right music supervisors just into the band, or were the tunes getting shopped heavily in that scene? Or how did that happen?
KS: I think our sound just really has a cinematic feel to it, and so that's really helped push it along. But we do have these two amazing girls called Melissa and Sanne from Zinc Music.
SH: They're great. They just fell in love with our record, and they've been working it like crazy.
KS: They've been pushing it.
PM: So yeah, I mean, that again is an L.A. phenomenon. We just don't know much about that in Nashville.
SH: Yeah. And that's just another thing, probably back in the traditional setup, you would expect publishing companies to be the ones that really help enable your music to get into the situations. But they're just these hardworking hustling girls that have pretty much licensed us into like probably about 15 TV shows and commercials and films.
PM: Amazing.
SH: It's incredible.
PM: And so in a general way, would you say, "Hey, that's been really good dough," or "That's been all right," or...?
SH: Oh, yeah. That's how we can afford to keep going.
KS: Yeah, that's been keeping the band alive.
PM: Right.
SH: It's helping us to tour, it's helping us to pretty much keep this thing alive.
PM: Because I see some dates now on the schedule--I think the ones I saw were all West Coast dates. Is that right?
SH: No, we're actually getting ready to tour the US starting in August, and hit like 21 cities.
PM: Wow. And I'm sure Nashville is not one of them.
KS: Well, we'll be in Atlanta.
SH: We are going to be in Atlanta, we are, yeah.
PM: When you play live, what's the setup? What's the instrumentation, and who plays?
SH: Sometimes we have violin and cello, sometimes we have the harp. But we'll have tablas, a DJ, percussion, Kiran on bass, five or six people.
KS: When we play closer to home, we've had up to nine people on stage.
PM: So you use tablas live?
KS: Yeah, we use some of that.
SH: We have fun. We really mix it up. We like to bring a different show whenever we can, just to keep it interesting.
PM: And Kiran, do you act as the band leader all time?
KS: Between me and Shana, we lead. She's actually the boss.
PM: Yeah, it's better that way.
[laughter]
KS: I know it's good for me.
SH: Thank you for realizing that.
PM: Just give it up.
SH: It's a collaborative effort. And once in a while the other players come up with cool ideas, too, and we're certainly open to that.
KS: And we're both so passionate about everything, so we both definitely have opinions. And there can be some times we do get in these little fights in front of the band.
[laughter]
SH: They're like, "There they go again."
KS: We just go, "Mom and Dad ain't breaking up."
[laughter]
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