MUSIC
PET PROJECT
Athens Trio Shehehe Release Seventh Album with a Subtle Nod to the Beach Boys
BY LEE VALENTINE SMITH
S
INCE FORMING IN 2011, ATHENS band Shehehe has been an active ingredient in the music and art communities of the famously creative town. This summer they are releasing Pet Songs, a kinetic collection of bristling anthems, issued by the punk-centric Say-10 Record and Skateboard company in Richmond, Virginia. While not quite a punk band, Shehehe are definitely not pop but a perfect mixture of the two worlds, equaling a tight approach to energetic rock delivered with gritty, call-andresponse vocals, bookended with surprisingly gentle harmonies. Nicole Bechill sings and plays bass, Jason Fusco sings and plays drums and Noelle Shuck sings and plays guitar. INsite spoke with guitarist-songwriter Shuck by phone from Athens. Congratulations on your latest album. Some bands only have one or two good records in them, but now here you are on number seven. Thank you! We’re really proud of it. Our record label is run by our pal Adam, a good friend of the band from over the years. He’s cool because he never presses black vinyl, he always presses color, so it kinda came as part of the deal which is nice. But this isn’t your first vinyl release is it? No, we have a ten-inch split and it’ll actually be our fourth vinyl pressing. Some of the titles are also on CD and some are on cassette, so as we’ve been touring around we’ve seen what the need is for our medium and we’ll kinda fill it as we go. As with any release during this crazy time, it’s unusual to issue a record during a pandemic. But there are a lot of upsides to it because people may have more time to pay attention to it. Yeah, on the digital side of things for sure. That is a real positive. And on the physical side too, in some cases but it’s like, ‘Well who has money and who feels comfortable spending money on music right now?’ But art is essential. Especially these days. True and I do consider music to be art. We have a very supportive base and a lot of them are collectors. People will buy every version because they want to have the whole set. So it’s nice to have fans who are supportive in that way and are passionate about collecting. You’ve definitely lucky to be in a community that is historically very supportive of music and art. Absolutely! Athens has always been such a good place to be supported within the community. Whether it’s R.E.M. or Widespread Panic or whatever. For me, I grew up after that era and I loved a lot of bands that nobody will ever hear of. But still, to be part of that zeitgeist is cool. It feels strange in a way, but it also feels like home and totally normal. It’s a weird juxtaposition for me. To have Cindy Wilson read your name at an awards ceremony is pretty surreal. You mentioned the zeitgeist of Athens. Being a band from Athens brings a lot of baggage or gravitas. You have a lot to live up to because the past is so historic and vital. I guess any town with a rich history of
music will have that but it is sort of like a chip on your shoulder sometimes. But at the same time, my band has always been about making our own rules. We don’t really feel like we have to meet any sort of expectations of any scene. We just make music that we like, and other people seem to like it. So it seems to work for us. We’re not going to ever be the B-52’s for example. You cant live by any one else’s set of metrics. That’s the beauty of the whole Athens “thing.” If you like it, fine. If not, there are a ton of other bands to follow. Exactly! On any night, well, not during a pandemic, but on a regular night there are ten shows happening and they’re all different and they’re all in walking distance. That’s definitely one of the charms of living in Athens. If you want, you can walk from show to show to show and get something totally different each time. And most of it will be pretty good. Some might not be, but most will be pretty good. But you know, even the bad shows are fun. Some of them I remember more than the socalled good ones. Oh yeah, we’ve had that! We were between lead players once. We are a three-piece now, but we had a guy come practice with us and he did ok, but we had a show and he showed up just completely blasted. Playing nothing in the key of what we were doing. It was horrifying. Some of our friends were throwing stuff at him to get him off the stage, and Jason even threw a stick at him. But then it seemed like people started paying attention to us after that! It was like, ‘Oh this band is all right!’ I think we sounded even better once we got him off the stage.
I was active in Athens scene years ago, but I haven’t been back for a while. How is it now? I think it’s fantastic. We have a lot of new bands coming up and one of my favorite things about bands in general is who is in them and we have such a cool variety of players right now. That’s why I really love a mixed bill when it works. A show with all one genre can be stale, but I really like it when it comes together and you can see all the different kinds of people who play music. You’ll have the fans who might not come out normally. That’s something I really love about Athens. The Hip-Hop scene is really blowing up right now. Where does Shehehe fit into the Athens music scene? I’m so bad about this because I’m looking down into it. But I can tell you what we try to be - just a band that works really hard and makes good music and has a relationship with our community. Not just music but our entire city. We’ve played the Girls Rock Camp before and stuff like that, I’ve done a couple of workshops there. But as far as Athens in general, I think people do know who we are within the scene. I mean the people who go to country shows may not know who we are, but you have to maintain a sense of humility about it all and not worry about too much else. Shehehe has been going for a while now. Yeah, it’s almost double digits at this point. Next year will be ten years! We’ve changed the lineups a bit, but Nicole, Jason and I are original members and we’re still doing it. How’d you get together?
I knew Jason from a bar that he worked at. He saw me working on a graphic design project – that’s my day-job – and he was looking for a guitar player. At the time I was more of a bass player. I showed up at a practice and we started writing songs. Nicole who is his wife, grew up in the Florida punk scene, so she loved punk. She started out just on vocals and evolved from there. She learned how to play bass within a year so we could do some shows. Nicole and Jason are married, right? Yeah, they’ve been married for five years now and we have a band baby now and she’s four. Does playing in a band with a married couple change the dynamic? I don’t know. But when we take Ramona on tour with us, we have an honorary fourth member now. So we can’t just sleep on floors or in the van anymore. And we have a band nanny, so that’s different. We have to plan things out a little more than we used to, so we’ve evolved not only musically but functionally. You’ve had other players, but does the three-piece set-up seem to work best? Being a three-piece is very efficient. There’s just something about a power trio that feels good to us. There’s no outside force to wonder about. Are they too loud, or whatever. With a guitar, bass and drums you are really listening to each other and that’s all we have to worry about. The title of the new record obviously evokes the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds album. It does and it was sort of an evolutionary idea at first. We’ve referenced Endless Summer, the surf documentary, a while back and then Pet Sounds was playing in the delivery room when Ramona was born. Then there are three or four songs on the record that actually reference pets. Then to really make the point, we included pictures of our pets and our friends’ pets on the inside artwork. Pet Songs is available from say-10.com. insiteatlanta.com • September 2020 • PG 13
