We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Shane Tutmarc. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Shane below.

Shane, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

Coming from a very musical family, I’m a 4th generation musician in the Tutmarc family, it was probably inevitable. But my earliest memory of admiring a musician was seeing the movie Amadeus at around 6 years old. As a kid I had lots of artistic interests, from drawing, painting, making movies, and creative writing, But after discovering Elvis when I was around 10 years old, that looked like the good job for me! I started learning guitar around that time, I played drums in the school band, my dad was a bass player, so I borrowed his bass a lot, and my mom played piano and showed me a few things, so it didn’t take long before I was making little home demos playing all the instruments. When I was around 12 years old my family had this karaoke setup with two tape decks, and I discovered that I could play one tape, while singing or playing something into the microphone and I could record it onto the other tape – so I started doing that – cycling back and forth with two tapes – until I made a recording with me playing all the instruments. That was my earliest “record production.” In so many ways, I’m still doing the same thing, but with a laptop instead of a karaoke machine.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I started putting bands together around the same time I was recording one-man-band demos at home. When I was 16 I put together a group I called Dolour and we put out a 7″ on a friends indie label. By 18, the band members had all moved on, but I continued the project myself – putting out Dolour’s first album Waiting for a World War in 2001. Coming out of Seattle during the aftermath of the grunge scene, there was still a lot of attention on the city, and Dolour had a lot of interest from major labels and subsidiaries. I saw quite a few friends of mine take that path, just to have it not work out for them in the end. After exploring that world for a couple years, I realized what was best for me was keeping it more under my control, more DIY, with less artistic compromises. After 4 albums with Dolour, I got the bug to explore American roots music, and that led me to relocate to Nashville in 2010. After a string of solo albums, and collaborations in the studio and on stage with other artists, I returned to Dolour in 2020. It’s been a very creative time for me, releasing 5 Dolour albums in less than 5 years, while continuing to collaborate with other artists – such as The Explorers Club, Sean Nelson, Jessica Lea Mayfield, and my wife Tanya Montana Coe. It’s probably not for me to say what makes me stand out, but I imagine since I’m a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and producer, whether I’m making my own music or helping another artist make theirs, I have a very comprehensive view of the music-making process, and that might translate to the scope of the sound as well as the nuance and detail work that listeners will hear with stuff I work on.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

I think word-of-mouth is still the most powerful tool out there. If you hear a song you like, share it! Everyone has a pulpit now with social media. While I feel like streaming platforms have taken away some of the personal connections people used to forge with artists, there’s also never been an easier time for folks to share the music they love. As much as physical merchandise might still bring in the most money, at this point, it’s probably more helpful to me as an independent artist to see someone share my song or album through social media to their followers, instead of just buying a physical album and keeping it to themselves. But ideally they’d do both!

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Making the music is a reward in itself. I’m addicted to the buzz I get when I hear all the pieces come together on a song or album I’m working on. Songs have always been there for me through the many ups and down of life. Once the music is out in the world, it means so much to hear from a friend or stranger that the song moved them in some way. Whether it helped them deal with a traffic jam, or it helped them get through a messy breakup, or it just gave them a beautiful listening experience. I love hearing how people connect to my music, because it has already served it’s main purpose in my life, so it’s rewarding when I hear it is serving a purpose in other people’s lives.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://shanetutmarc.bandcamp.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dolourofficial/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DolourMusic
• Twitter: https://x.com/shanetutmarc
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/dolourvideos

Image Credits

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