Q&A: Tenci’s Jess Shoman on Building Community Through Music

Graphics By Andie Vigliotti

Tenci is a band with no bounds. Frontrunner Jess Shoman describes their music as soft and folky, but “with a lot of playful and surprising moments sprinkled in.” Shoman’s ethereal vocals encompass a limitless range of emotion, evoking nostalgia, grief and delight. The band started small in Chicago’s DIY music scene, but has recently been gaining traction, having toured with Alternative Rock band Wednesday. As Tenci takes a break from touring, I met with Shoman to discuss her personal journey through music, the band’s activism, and what lies ahead. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

How did you stumble on your love for music? How did you eventually end up in the music industry?

I've always really loved music since I was a child. I was always just like singing and dancing and, like, trying to copy lyrics. I was always trying to figure out how to sing a song. I have very specific memories of me just like sitting with my Walkman, which sounds so ancient now, and singing, and my mom would be laughing at me around the corner. Then around age 14, I got interested in playing guitar. I started just like, learning covers. So I taught myself how to play guitar. I still don't know any music theory at all. 

So the way that I play is very feeling based and emotional. And I think when I'm writing a song, it really has a lot to do with like, a very specific feeling or a specific topic that I want to explore and trying to evoke that through the music, just because I don't really know. So I started at 14, I didn't ever really think that I would be performing. It just [had] never crossed my mind as a possibility. And I think it was around like 2018 or so, I had met my bassist at the time, and I was just showing her all of these demos that I had, just like voice memos on my phone. Her partner at the time, Spencer Radcliffe was another musician, and she showed him the recordings and he [said] we should record these. I was like, whoa, I didn't even think about that. It all kind of just organically happened. We recorded them. And that ended up being the first album. And it was a very relaxed setting. We just did it at his house. At that time, I started playing shows; just me and a bassist and it was terrifying. because I'd have stage fright. At the time, I was like, I didn't know that this was even going to happen.

Have you gone through any sort of vocal training or does it all just come naturally to you? One of the things to me that is so exciting and different about your music is your vocals. You're able to do things with your voice that you don't hear often, that you wouldn't expect a lot from people.

 A lot of people ask me if I've been classically trained, but I haven't. I was in choir all throughout high school, and I really fell in love with harmony during that time, and choral performances in general. I think using my voice as a very prominent instrument is important for me specifically, because it's like one of the main ways for me to communicate what a song is about or the feeling in a song. Since I am still learning a lot about how to play guitar,I think using my voice as a tool is super important in a way that I can get something across to an audience. I love to just play around and experiment. I mean, you could do so many crazy things with your voice. So there really are no bounds for me.

So you started out in Chicago, right? How did you get started out there?

I think my first show was at this venue called Hungry Brain. It's just like a really intimate, small venue. At the time, I lived right down the street. So it felt very familiar and nice to play there for the first time. But then, at the same time, I was also playing a lot of DIY shows, like in people's basements and attics and stuff. I met all my bandmates that way. It was through DIY shows, and I met a lot of other people that I still admire and people who are on the first album.

Can you talk a little bit more about what the DIY scene has like done for you and how it's impacted you. What was it like being in that time, being in that atmosphere?

At that time, it just felt very magical, it felt like people really give a shit about what you're doing. I think that the difference between doing a DIY show or tour, as opposed to playing venues, is that if people are going out to a DIY show, they really are there and committed to seeing [those] artists or discovering new music. And not to say that's not the case for venues, but [there was] a different kind of communal feeling that felt very vibrant for me at the time. And since I was just starting, and I was pretty nervous to perform, I just felt very supported and cared for and uplifted by the people in the DIY scene and other bands that I played with. It just felt very tight knit and community minded. I feel like if I had had a different experience, I could have very easily been turned off by the music industry if it started a different way. So having my beginnings starting in the DIY scene, and meeting people that I'm so excited to make music with today, in that way, it was a blessing for sure.

Tenci has a tradition of supporting local organizations within your community and the ones that you tour in. Could you talk a little bit more about how that idea came about and what it means to you as an artist to be promoting these causes?

I personally feel like it's my moral obligation to use the space that I [have] to draw attention to those causes, especially with those bigger shows, like the Wednesday shows. There's gonna be a lot of people [there] that could be reached, and it would be such a great opportunity for an organization to come and talk about the very important work that they do and collect donations and stuff. We started doing that all throughout our own pipeline tours with abortion organizations, and we had a lot of success with it, even if our shows were more mid-size. They were able to reach a lot of people, and we kind of just started doing it for every show. It's just been really inspiring. We've just been so grateful that these organizations are able to come out. I'm a very strong believer in using any platform to talk about these things, and meet people where they're at already, like I said, if there's going to be a huge crowd of people at a show, I definitely want to make the time to give an organization the space to talk about what they're doing.

It feels very hard to just put the focus on music when there's so much fucked up shit happening in the world, and so I think I feel a lot better when I can kind of turn things to people who are talking about and doing very important things to make the world better. 

Can you elaborate on one song in specific that had a notable songwriting history or is special to you?

The one that's coming to mind right now is Blue Spring off the first album. That song has a voicemail from my grandma, who is Tenci. When we play that song, we've been recently playing it more with a voicemail at the end. And it's like, I really had to train myself to like, get through it. Because it's just, I mean, she's still alive and everything, but it makes me so emotional to hear the voicemail at the end. And I really like incorporating stuff like that. I also did something like that in the new album with the song memories. And it's just a lot of sound bites from like, home videos. I think in both those songs, like just exploring my past and identity and familial things is really potent for me and something that I think I will always keep exploring.

Your songs are so poignant and seem to carry a lot of emotion- what is songwriting like for you? Does it help you process emotions?

Yeah, I think it’s shifted. I think it started off with processing emotions, like in the beginning, especially with the first album. I was just processing a lot of trauma and the hard things like growing pains and stuff like that, and it was more so an outlet for me to do that and kind of put all these experiences into their own containers. But now, I'm trying to figure out how things are shifting because I think my songwriting process is changing. It's hard to put my finger on how right now, just because I've been writing a little less. So when I do write, it's more of an exercise in creativity and seeing what I can come up with rather than processing, just because right now I feel very stable. [It’s] a completely different process when you are experiencing a time of stability as opposed to a time where you're feeling kind of cuckoo, you know. So yeah, I'm experimenting with different ways to write that don't have to do with a specific painful moment or anything like that.

Something I had a thought about is that there are some people who glorify pain and trauma and say that it's necessary to produce good art, sort of like the tortured artist phenomenon. Now that you're sort of in this phase where you're less so relying on that, has your perspective on [songwriting] changed? 

I definitely don't think it's necessary, but for me, it's really hard to come back. I'm always comparing the songs that have to do with painful experiences to the ones where I'm like “Oh, this song is more about a concept that I came up with out of nowhere, rather than a specific experience that has to do with pain. And so I definitely have to overcome that hump- just because it's not about a painful and deeply emotional subject doesn't mean that it's not a good song. I've definitely had to really get out of that, and I feel like I'm finally kind of like seeing the light at the end of the tunnel that I can just write for fun and it can still be good. It doesn't have to be super sad. There was a very long time where I could not sit down and write unless I was just so beat up about something.

As you mentioned the name Tenci comes from your grandmother, could you expand on why you named it after her and what she means to you?

To put it simply, at the time I was really struggling to come up with something that felt really genuine to me. I don't even remember what the other options were at this point. But they were all just so corny to me. So I just asked myself the question, I was like, what's something that is, what's one of the most important things to you? What's something that you feel very, very connected to and she came to mind, and her name is unique enough where I think it would work for a band name. Her full name is Hortencia but everyone calls her Tenci. So yeah, I just felt very drawn to that. And I felt like it was the most genuine thing I could have come up with. And like I said,I write a lot about of familial things and I feel like she's very emotional and dramatic and I feel like she is a very good storyteller. So I feel like it just all fit with what I’m trying to do.

Do you have any ambitions or goals for what you want to do in music in the future?

Right now, we're just focusing on writing a bunch. I think this past year since we had been touring a lot, I got kind of burnt out by touring and having to do things in a very cookie cutter way. I think the music industry has kind of put a lot of artists in like a box where if you don't do things in this way of releasing an album, touring the album, writing more and producing, constantly producing and having to do things like that, then it's hard to be successful. And so, my goal right now is to kind of break out of that and to kind of fall in love with making music again, because I think I became a little disenchanted. So we're working on some new songs, and we're hoping to release at least a single or something in this next year.