What do you hope listeners will get from your music?
An emotional and inspiring experience with an urge to dance.
What’s the best gig you ever played?
It's a tie! Four Corners Folk Festival in Pagosa Springs, CO last Labor Day and playing eTown with Los Lobos for NPR in 2010.
How has social media affected the way you market/promote your music?
Social media helps us put our gigs and band updates online immediately (thanks to smart phones) for our largest online audience on Facebook. Twitter is even more immediate and we are learning to use that more and more. YouTube is a great way to house our many and varied videos and interact with fans.
What’s a creative way that you interact with your fans? Live? Online?
At festivals people relate to us because of our top hats which Eva, our mandolinist and lead singer, decorates spectacularly for each of us individually. We found this out when we played Lilith Fair two years ago in Denver and people stopped us to talk and have their photos taken with us after our set.
Online we have a merch store on shelmusic.com that has items we have designed, most of which we've made ourselves. We create and edit most of our videos, design all of our own t-shirts and craft individual handmade journals and vinyl bracelet cuffs, as well as decorate elaborate top hats for fans. We mail these out ourselves after receiving the orders from an online site. Our CD covers are also lovingly designed by one or two SHEL members. We come from a very creative upbringing.
What’s your next big gig coming up? When/Where?
Old Settlers Festival on April 19th in Austin, TX. We'll be on two Austin morning TV shows on April 18 to help promote female performers at the festival.
Check out more on SHEL here.
