It’s said that getting out of your own head allows you to look at the world from a different perspective. There’s a way to lock into the endless wonder of human existence through songs that take the wide view, tell stories that lift us up and remind us of how rich life can be. On Tai Shan’s just announced new album Traveling Show, (out April 3rd) turns the stories she’s heard into music and lyrics you can live with, like a trusted companion who knows just when to talk and when to listen. Fusing soul, jazz, and pop, she creates an intimate space for reflection. Traveling Show is soulful, surprising, and uplifting even when Shan writes about the difficulties and disappointments that everyone undergoes that, by contrast, shine a light on what makes us happy.
A major element of Traveling Show, which Shan started recording in Seattle before making the move to Nashville in 2018, is soul. Shan makes the kind of emotional connections that role models like Aretha Franklin and Marvin Gaye explored. With hints of jazz in her nuanced singing and songwriting – Shan is a serious practitioner of the slightly unexpected chord change, the beguiling harmonic shift – taking the concept of the singer-songwriter to new levels on Traveling Show. She is indeed a serious student of American songwriting, and she’s used her vast knowledge to teach the art of matching words to music to multitudes of students who have learned from her example. Traveling Show is a masterclass in the art of deceptive simplicity. It is, after all, about the stories, and the emotions within them.
The impetus for Tai Shan’s new music comes from the traveling she and her husband Austin Garrison – who contributes background vocals, beatbox, and trumpet to the album – did in 2017 and 2018 while touring. In fact, the 13-foot trailer that’s pictured on the album’s cover is the same one they drove across the crisscrossing roads of the United States, Mexico and Canada during those two years. The songs on Traveling Show are about, among other things, the tension between change and stability, simultaneously striving and being at rest.
You definitely catch some of Shan’s inspirations coming through on the new LP. There’s Ani DiFranco, Alanis Morissette, Joni Mitchell, Stephen Sondheim, and Tom Waits. You can hear how Shan has absorbed Joni’s bracing chord changes and Sondheim’s flow on the album’s exquisite “Trouble Sleeping,” a piano-driven song that sounds like a great lost outtake from the soundtrack to an animated Disney film that was never made. Meanwhile, “You Look Like Love” shows off Shan’s soul-tinged vocal chops, and the song evokes legendary ‘60s singers like Aretha and Lorraine Ellison.
Now based in Nashville, Tai and Austin have embraced the Music City, soaking up the scene and consistently playing shows around town. Shan remains alert to the stories we tell and says her Nashville experiences are influencing her songwriting. On Traveling Show, Tai has taken her stories and turned them into songs – and music – that encourages us to tell our own, and look for the good in all people.
Glide is proud to premiere the first single off Tai Shan’s Traveling Show titled “Burn It Down,” a contagious rocker that churns with the swinging soul of Lake Street Dive, with a nod to the brass pop of the ’60s. With a jubilant groove, Tai Shan serves as a go-to for inspirational anthems and jazzy soul.
“Burn it Down” was inspired by a friend who was having an affair with a married man,” says Shan. “She sat across the table from me, dark circles under her eyes. “I need out, she said, I need this to end, I want to burn it down.” So many of us find ourselves in toxic situations where we are at our wit’s end, we know we aren’t happy and the relationship is like a fire raging out of control.”
