Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Shanna Delaney . We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Shanna, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. One of the toughest things about progressing in your creative career is that there are almost always unexpected problems that come up – problems that you often can’t read about in advance, can’t prepare for, etc. Have you had such and experience and if so, can you tell us the story of one of those unexpected problems you’ve encountered?
Ever since I was a child, I felt most like myself when I was performing. From performing in my parents’ living room, to county talent shows, to high school musicals, I always loved expressing myself through music. Fast forward a few years, when I went to school at Kent State University and before starting my job as an English teacher, I met my husband, Eric Ling, and we started our first band, Bethesda.
As a husband and wife team, we spent the better part of a decade leading the indie-folk band, Bethesda, as we toured around the United States, highlighted by stops at The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, CMJ Music Marathon, Bunbury Musical Festival, MidPoint Music Festival, SXSW, and many more, as well as shared the stage with bands, such as First Aid Kit, Sharon Van Etten, Mates of State, Azure Ray, Eisley, and many more. In addition to touring, Bethesda reached the Top 50 on the CMJ radio charts with our album, The Reunion. During this time of growth and success, I was honored to be named the top vocalist in Cleveland.
We were truly at the precipice of breaking through to the next level and had just booked a summer and fall tour when we hit a wall. Our drummer was unable to continue in the band with the escalating demands of family life. After training several fill-in drummers to no avail, we were exhausted and overwhelmed. It was just before that summer tour that we made the painful decision to disband Bethesda.
In the wake of that painful decision, I just couldn’t walk away from music. We had an opportunity to reinvent ourselves, and we took it. My husband and I worked to integrate electronic synths and looping drums to craft a completely new sound. We truly started from scratch, walking away from the Bethesda catalogue and instrumentation, learning new instruments, and slowly building, song by song, a new live set. This time was difficult, but we had a new infusion of creative energy. After a few months of intensive work, we debuted the indie-pop duo, By Light We Loom. We have been playing live ever since! It came full circle when By Light We Loom was named Best Indie Band in Cleveland. This reinvention is what I am most proud of in my artistic journey.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
Music has been a main character in my story since the start. I think fondly back on times with family where every person had an instrument and everyone would play and dance for hours into the night. Music has always brought me joy and has been a way to share love. I honed my vocals in middle and high school in bedroom sing-a-thons with friends, talent shows, opera lessons, and as the lead in several musicals.
When I went to college, I gave up my major in musical theater to pursue a more practical teaching degree, and, over time, I had less and less music in my life. In the summer of 2007, my husband and I got married. I landed a great teaching job that started the following fall. Everything was going right, but I had a deep sadness. I confessed this sadness to my husband on our honeymoon through tears, and he promised that we would always have music in our lives. In fact, we would start a band. When we returned that summer, we recruited some friends to join us, and we started the indie-folk band, Bethesda.
We had a wonderful eight years with Bethesda, where we quickly ascended to be a top band in Northeast Ohio and nationally recognized as a breakthrough band. We played some incredible stages, like Bonnaroo and The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and with some of our absolute favorite bands (see more details in the answer to the last question for Bethesda).
When Bethesda came to its end, as band members needed to follow other paths, my husband and I followed up Bethesda by developing a whole new sound with a new project called By Light We Loom (me on vocals and loops and Eric Ling, my husband, on guitar and vocals) that combines creative beats, vintage synths, big vocals, and intimate harmonies without losing the story-folk songwriting sensibilities. We work to bring a high-energy performance that hopes to move the audience’s heart and feet in equal measures.
Since its origin in 2015, By Light We Loom toured heavily regionally with highlight stops at MidPoint Music Festival, Brite Winter Festival, NEOCycle Music Festival, The Heights Music Hop, and opened for notable indie acts: The Paper Kites, Car Seat Headrest, Maps & Atlases, Telekinesis, Lucy Dacus, Sondre Lerche, Deep Sea Diver, The Mynabirds, Twin Forks, The Kin, Kopecky, Radiation City, Matt Pond PA, Frontier Ruckus, and more.
We released our debut EP, The Ignition, in May of 2015 to critical acclaim and local radio play. Maturing our sound through live performances, we quickly released a more realized EP, Caught in the Tide, in January of 2016. Caught in the Tide received nationwide radio play, landing the album in the Top 100 of the College Radio Charts. The success of this album resulted in By Light We Loom being named Cleveland Magazine’s “Best Indie Rock Artist of 2016.” Songs from Caught in the Tide were also featured in episodes of PBS’s “Roadtrip Nation” in 2017 and 2018.
In 2018, we released our most recent EP, Canopy. The album is comprised of four songs that are dedicated to Eric’s father’s memory who had recently passed away suddenly. Despite the heavy lyrical content, this album was our most mature and danceable music yet and kicked off a series of high energy shows, a lyric video release, and a feature interview on NPR.
When COVID-19 started, we took a couple of years off from performing live. However, we wrote and/or performed songs for a few local EPs, such as Cleveland Verses Foundation’s EP tribute to Bob Dylan where we covered the song, “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Additionally, By Light We Loom composed original music for the feature film The Enormity of Life that was nominated for the Best Soundtrack Song at the Paris Arts & Movie Awards. In 2024, we were honored to be commissioned to create an original song by Cleveland Public Theater. The result was the release of the single “Fire & Smoke,” which received widespread critical acclaim and was a streaming darling. Additionally, we partnered with game designer, Cory Sheldon, to compose and perform the soundtrack and background music for the pending release of the PC game, Merry Bear.
About one year ago, we decided we wanted to jump back into playing live shows. There is nothing quite like sharing those moments with an audience, and we truly missed it despite having creative and industry success writing and releasing music. After years of playing out as a duo, we really wanted to add back a live rhythm section and reinvent our sound one more time! We reached out to two of our former bandmates/band fill-ins, Evan Storey (drums) and Jesse Scaggs (Bass/Guitar), and asked if they wanted to be a part of our next reinvention, and to our delight, they agreed!
We are now performing dates all over Northeast Ohio as the four-piece and are heading to the studio this summer to record brand new songs for our next EP. It is such a joy to get to play and perform music with this group! We absolutely love one another, and I think that synergy comes through on these new songs.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
It is a blessing to have two passions in life. I love impacting people through my music and my teaching. However, it is a difficult life balance to strike. At the peak of Bethesda, we were doing around 100 shows in a year while I was teaching full-time and completing my masters degree. I distinctly remember writing essays on my laptop at the bar of the music venue before we went on stage in New Jersey. We would get home from a long week of teaching on Friday, quickly load the van, travel to a place like Pittsburgh for a show on Friday, travel to NYC for a show on Saturday, and then drive home on Sunday just in time to work on school and get a few hours of rest to teach again on Monday. While that time was a whirlwind, I also got to experience some really incredible moments that I wouldn’t trade for anything. Even though we are not touring as heavily in By Light We Loom, the experience is still similar. In between writing, performing, and releasing music, outside of the school day, I am always grading papers, inventing the next lesson, or supporting students through attending their events. Music and teaching are similar in a lot of ways. They both are full of gratifying moments that leave you grateful that you get to do what you do and soul crushing moments that sometimes leave you questioning everything. However, it is through these ups and downs I have learned music and teaching are an essential part of who I am, as they fill my life with adventure, impact, and purpose.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
The most rewarding aspect of being an artist for me is creating lyrics or instrumentation that is important to me or singing and performing my heart out on stage, and then those lyrics or that performance resonating with a listener or the audience in a way that makes a positive difference for them in even just a small way. People define success in different ways, but for me, making a meaningful mark in someone’s life, even in just a small way, makes me feel like I have given back to the world in a helpful way and my life has been successful.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://linktr.ee/bylightweloom
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bylightweloom
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bylightweloom
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCs4x-cXsPBkKJ46wqKr_bqg?si=16bT7BAjySp6pHsc
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/by-light-we-loom
Image Credits
Shanna Delaney, Eric Ling, Evan Storey, Jesse Scaggs, Sydney Slovisky (album art)