Shaela Miller talks changing genres and her upcoming project

Shaela Miller is a genre bending artist from southern Alberta that took a few of the stages at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival. After her Friday set, Miller sat down to chat with The Gateway. 

She said that, although Lethbridge is a small city, she finds the community to be a positive thing for her career. 

“My philosophy is it’s like the big fish, small pond,” Miller said. “It’s a lot easier to build a community and be a part of a community that’s smaller. [You] do things for the community, they do things for you.”

She said some people have told her she can’t stay in Lethbridge, but she never saw a point to leaving. “It’s a good home base.”

Miller started her music career in a more alt-country style, but has more recently shifted to a hybrid of country and new wave with her album After the Masquerade. 

“I kind of felt like I made really great country albums and I was like, I’ve done that now. I did that, I’m not inspired to do it again,” Miller said. 

She said she still plays some of her country songs on stage and likes doing that, but “it was kind of an epiphany” she had to change genres.

So she went out and bought a synth. Her lead guitarist, Taylor Ackerman, grew up playing piano and was totally onboard when she asked if he would play the synth. Miller’s whole band was down to make the shift with her.

“It was scary in that way, but it was like, I love making music more than anything and I’m just going to continue to evolve,” she said. 

“I’m still writing the way I write, in the way of my heart on my sleeve,” Miller said.

The approach to her songwriting didn’t change with the genre shift, but the subject matter of her album After the Masquerade was different. She said she had lost a friend and she wrote a lot of the songs for the album after he had passed. 

“I’m still writing the way I write, in the way of my heart on my sleeve,” Miller said. ”There was a lot more grief and mourning and processing [on the album]. But it’s always like I write about the processing of emotions.”

Miller said she’s working on releasing a few remixed songs from After the Masquerade. “I won’t say names, but it’s a hip-hop artist rapping in one of them.”

But Miller said she’ll also be recording another record really soon. As she’s still exploring her new sound, a challenge she faces when writing is making songs that translate well onstage. 

“When you record something and then play it live, you don’t want to use tracks,” she said. “We’ve worked really hard to not use tracks and I want to continue that way.” 

She said they sometimes program samples from her records into the synth, which can be played in live performances. But trying to steer clear of using tracks makes it hard to record an album with more synth.

“Wanting to move more in that direction, but still keeping in mind that you still want to be able to play this replicated live without using track,” Miller explained. “And then also, maybe I need to come around to use a couple of tracks.”

“It just starts to be this freak circus show, especially because I wear crazy clothes and I do this crazy glitter eye,” Miller says 

As for the subject matter for the next record, Miller said she’s been inspired by her experience touring.

She said she’s spent a lot of time touring with men, who don’t have to do much to get ready to go on stage. But recently, she was on tour with a friend of hers and it was her first time being on tour with another girl. Being with another girl who had to do her makeup, hair, and put on a dress, wondering what looks good and what doesn’t, got her thinking.

“It just starts to be this freak circus show, especially because I wear crazy clothes and I do this crazy glitter eye. I’m like, am I a clown that’s like ‘everyone come on down, come watch me pour my heart out on stage for you. See you later, come again next time.’ It started to feel like there’s certain interactions that feel really soul sucking.”

She said she doesn’t want to seem ungrateful, but the more success she finds, the harder she has to work. And on top of her music career, she runs a hair salon and has two kids. 

“It just feels a little bit like this cynical uphill battle, ‘running up that hill’ as Kate Bush would say,” Miller said. “It’s just a bit exhausting sometimes.”

Miller said she’s only written a few songs for the next album, but that concept is top of mind.