Tai Shan is a singer-songwriter who’s hard to pin down to a single musical genre – her stories want to expand out of a folk or rock constraint in order to pull in soulful elements and a tap-tapping of jazz flecks. It’s a rounded sound. ‘Wishing You Were Here‘ comes from her new album ‘Travelling Show‘ which will be released on April 3rd.
‘Wishing You Were Here‘ is a love song, which sits somewhere between breakup and “why won’t that damn man just come home?“, although Shan knows the reasons well enough: “I know you’ve got you own path to take” but freely admits “I keep wishing you were here“. Its key phrase is “The only reason we do anything is out of love or out of fear” as Tai Shan explains “a few months after my husband and I were married, we hit an impasse. I found out that my husband deceived and lied to me. It was a devastating and very dark time. I couldn’t understand how he could betray my trust and why he would lie to me. At the time, a friend sat me down and told me, “The only reason we do anything is out of love or out of fear.” I clung to that statement and soon found out how much pressure and fear my husband was under. During those dark days, I sat down and wrote this song. It was a way to process the pain. I am still with my husband 3 years later and we have a baby girl. We are learning to repair our broken trust and be honest with one another. We are not perfect but love is a process, and I love my husband. You have to work for every relationship you value and I have learned its okay to fail so you can find what will work for both of you. ”
All of the songs on ‘Traveling Show‘ came out of the travelling Tai Shan and her husband Austin Garrison – who contributes background vocals, beatbox, and trumpet to the album – did in 2017 and 2018 while touring. The 13-foot trailer that’s pictured on the album’s cover is the very 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.
