Interview with Hannah Rainey of Shady Bug | By John Silva | Photo by Mabel Suen
People don’t give St. Louis, Missouri, enough credit. The Midwestern city has a blossoming arts scene and produces some of the most creative and interesting music along the Mississippi River. One of the latest and greatest bands to come out of The Gateway City are Shady Bug. Broadly, the band play indie rock with just a hint of emo, but even that label might not be appropriate, as Shady Bug are difficult to categorize. Each member’s different style contributes contrasting sounds that somehow, when mixed together, result in something not only coherent but downright delightful.
The band just released their sophomore album, Lemon Lime, in March on Exploding In Sound Records, and vocalist and guitarist Hannah Rainey takes a moment to go deep on the St. Louis DIY scene, Shady Bug’s sound, and their sparkling new release.
What side of the aisle do you stand on when it comes to the sliced bagel debate?
[Laughs]. That’s really funny. It’s weird, because I grew up eating bagels in St. Louis, but Panera bagels aren’t even real bagels in my opinion, so we never got them. So, the sliced bagel thing, I don’t think I’ve ever had that. I think there’s different areas in St. Louis that did that. I’m Jewish, from St. Louis, and Jewish people would not order sliced bagels from Panera, I’m pretty sure.
What’s the DIY scene like in St. Louis?
I like it a lot. I actually moved back to St. Louis after college to live with my parents and save money. Me and my twin sister, [Delia Rainey], play in a band called Dubb Nubb, and we started playing shows in St. Louis. I just fell in love with the scene, and I wanted to stay, even though I kind of just moved here as an in-between thing. Now, I feel like I’m gonna stay here forever, because it’s just really fun, and the community is really supportive. I kind of jumped right in; I started booking shows and going to house shows and going to shows at Foam. Foam is the coffee shop, bar [and] venue that a lot of DIY bookers book at. It is kind of like other cities where it’s cliquey—there’s the punk scene and the indie rockers and folk people, there’s an Americana scene here…
But is there also a lot of overlap? Sometimes Midwestern scenes blend more than in some of the bigger coastal cities.
Yeah, especially with Shady Bug. We can play a punk house, or we can play a brewery; we’re very versatile. But yeah, the punk scene definitely overlaps with the rock scene, and the rock scene overlaps with, maybe, sometimes, the hardcore scene or the more indie scene. So, that’s really cool, and that’s really fun, to have more diverse bills.
You’ve had a lot success recently, from Lemon Lime being well-received to getting to play SXSW. What’s it like to come home and play St. Louis after all of that? Is it like a victory show?
Yeah, for sure. We came back in town, and we had an interview with the local newspaper, and [March 29], we [played] the show at the big record store in town called Vintage Vinyl. Our release show was a big turn out, too, and there were a lot of people I didn’t know, which is kinda weird to me. I’m used to playing shows to all my friends, but we’ve gotten to this point where people who don’t even know me like my music, which is pretty crazy to me.
It’s gotta be heartwarming to have that kind of reception.
For sure, and we’re not even that old of a band. I feel like we’re still a younger band, ’cause we’ve only been together for two years. So, it’s all happening really fast, but it’s really cool, because St. Louis definitely deserves more people looking on their radar for new music. We have really good bands here, so I’m really happy about that for my city.
One thing that makes your music so interesting is the contrasting sounds. Do the members of Shady Bug each have different playing styles? How does that manifest itself when you’re writing songs?
That’s cool you picked up on that, ’cause we all come from really different backgrounds, and that’s why our music sounds so contrasting all the time, ’cause we have a lot of different ideas. I came from classical guitar; I studied classical guitar in college, so I’m coming from a very different side of music, and then, our drummer, Aaron [O’Neill], studied jazz upright bass, so he’s coming from another side of the spectrum. Then, Tom [Krenning], the other guitar player, they’re not really trained in guitar at all, so Tom plays these crazy guitar lines, and I’m playing more melodic guitar lines. On top of that, Aaron is telling us what kind of dynamics would sound cool, and we’re trying to make it as dynamic as we can and kind of make it more like a composition.
Does that classical music background influence the music you make now with Shady Bug?
I would say maybe; sometimes I play the notes that I know from scales, and I know what notes I’m playing, which is really helpful, but I had to unlearn a lot of stuff, ’cause classical guitar is finger style. I was in a folk band before this with my sister called Dubb Nubb, and I was in another rock band in between that I used my hands to play guitar still, so this is my first band playing with a pick, which is kind of crazy. So, I had to learn how to play with a pick, and I had to learn it’s OK to sound dissonant; it’s OK to play notes that aren’t in the chord and kind of go beyond that. Then, once I got past that, we kind of started developing our sound, which is a more dissonant and more loud and distorted sound, against the quieter and more twinkly sound.
The lyrics on Lemon Lime deal with some somber subject matter, such as the effects of climate change. Does putting the words down on paper help provide some comfort when processing those frustrating issues?
Yeah, for sure. I’m usually writing on the notes on my phone, so all the lyrics from Lemon Lime are on my notes. Usually, if I have inspiration, I’ll just pick up my phone and start typing what I’m thinking about, or I’ll type some words that I like. I really wanted to talk about climate change, ’cause it was really bothering me, and I was thinking about it a lot, like “Flood Song” talks about it, and “Make It Up” talks about it. It is comforting, but it’s also comforting to just talk about anxiety in general, because I feel like a lot of people in my generation are struggling with anxiety and feeling insecure—just from social media and stuff like that. Just to make it more visible, it’s kind of empowering.
You previously made music with your twin sister. Was it a step outside of your comfort zone to play music with other people?
It was definitely very different. Honestly, I was playing solo before Shady Bug, and some of the songs that I played solo made it onto the first record, [2017’s] tbh idk, but it was pretty intimidating for me to start a band, even though I really wanted to—and I always wanted to; I just didn’t know how, because the only band I had been in was with my sister, and it was super easy. I didn’t really know how to ask people, “Hey, will you play with me?” I was really shy. So, it was really a spur-of-the moment kind of thing, where I was just telling my friend at a show that I had written some new songs that day, and he was like, “Oh, I really wanna play drums in a band. Do you wanna jam with me?” That’s how it was formed. We picked some more friends to play with us, and then, Shady Bug was born. So, even though I was too shy to ask people, it kind of just happened on its own, which is cool. I don’t really feel like I’m a band leader; I’m really bad at telling people what to do or what I want, so the process is more collaborative for us. We’ll all [give] each other ideas.
