Incessantly prolific in both San Francisco and Brooklyn’s music scenes, Kingston-based artist Shana Falana is set to release her latest psychedelic fueled and mesmerizing record, Darkest Light, on Friday, October 25th. Ever expanding and peeling back layers of atmospheric intimacy, Shana’s nine tracks are captivating and powerful in their commanding messages of rebirth and redemption. With a deep friendship spanning over the years, Shana and Alyssa DeHayes joined forces for the release of Darkest Light. Keeping her hands busy in various realms of the music industry, DeHayes owns and runs not only her label Arrowhawk Records, but also does PR for bands and teaches courses about publicity at a local college. “It feels really refreshing to be on a new label and with someone that’s spread out in many ways throughout the industry and well known as a great publicist”, remarks Shana. “It just feels like family. I feel like my music has a good home.”
Shana’s project is comprised of her long term partner Mike Amari, iterating how working together on Darkest Light has been their most collaborative album to date. Both Amari and their producer, Dan Goodwin, played and wrote a generous amount on the tracks throughout the record. “A lot of people warn you about playing music with your partner but it was always a dream of mine, and it’s actually a dream come true. It’s such a joy,” gushes Shana. Shot in one astounding take, Goodwin also directed their music video for “Come and Find Me”, a hauntingly reflective visual and song expressing heartbreak with no holds barred.
Working with women in recovery for the last seven years, Shana has been nearly a decade free of drugs and alcohol yet still wrestles with aiming to find just the right balance of sobriety and creating an intoxicating live experience for her audience. “There’s a track on the record called “Who We Are”, and it’s really this big embrace of how complicated we are as people on this planet”, she states. Reverting back to her ties to Buddhism for inspiration, Shana constantly strives to find more compassion and empathy in a ceaselessly intricate world, holding the paradox of existence closely beside her. “My way is in the middle and I’m always trying to flatline duality. I don’t think [duality] is a helpful place to stand in trying to navigate yourself in the world. Darkest Light is about that complexity, and it’s also about hope. I feel like in parts of society there are these little embers left, [and] Darkest Light is about finding those embers and blowing on them to keep them alive.”
A thriving artist in her forties, Shana brings much needed attention to the music industry’s capacity to diversify when it comes to race and gender, but tends to overlook and ignore viewpoints concerning agism in a rapidly changing environment. “It’s almost 2020 and we all need to get a little more honest. Not just with ourselves, but who we are as people so that the more we expose of ourselves the more people will feel comfortable exposing themselves.” In regards to social media, Shana isn’t interested in the glamorous side of things or hyper-fine tuning their social media presence. “I want to see the ugliness, I want to see reality […] I want to see people my age that are still playing music and are creating new material. I know that we’re all out there, and I want us to all be lifted up and celebrated.”
With a string of November dates ahead of them, you can catch Shana Falana on the road at the following cities below as well as purchase Darkest Light here ahead of its release date tomorrow.
