Shelley Doty is an artist who is always moving forward. A former member of the eclectic west coast band Jambay, Shelley has continued to build her reputation as one of the hottest guitarists of the nineties. Sometimes guitarist for Pele Juju, sometimes solo musician, sometimes guest for any number of bands around the San Francisco Bay Area, wherever Shelley is playing you can expect to see a virtuoso who brings together a variety of influences into a completely unique style. I was fortunate enough to meet with Shelley on a warm, sunny afternoon in Santa Cruz, where we spoke about her latest e.p., "Opportunity", her new band, her studio work with Booker T. Jones, and other aspects of her life and music.

Shelley has been performing music for as long as she can remember. "I started singing as soon as I could talk. I took piano lessons and flute lessons and violin lessons all through school. The Berkeley school system had a music department and when I was in Hillside, which I guess would have been first and third grade because I skipped second, I was taking recorder. That was when I was first introduced to notes. I was taught that these are the notes, this is what they do. But I was always more into exploring it in an intuitive way. In college, when I actually studied music - that's what I got my degree in - I fought the theoretical in a way. I didn't want to think that way.

"I first started playing guitar when I was fourteen. I was a big Heart fan at that point. I had all of their albums up on my wall. I guess the album that I got when I was fourteen was Baby Le' Strange. I was listening to the acoustic guitar intro to 'Crazy on You.' I was playing my air guitar, which I played everything. And it suddenly occurred to me that I'd like to be able to do that. Just that one acoustic guitar intro, which doesn't get played on the radio a lot. And just that it was a woman playing the guitar. It was Nancy Wilson playing this acoustic guitar intro, just her for forty-five seconds. All of a sudden it hit me like a Mack truck. I was like, wow, I want to be able to do that. I went to my mom and said 'I want to learn how to play guitar'. She happened to be going out with a guy at the time who had an extra guitar lying around. So basically the next day I started learning, teaching myself. So there was a moment when I knew that I wanted to pick up the guitar as a specific instrument. And ever since then I think that my whole musical experience has been very intricately tied into that. So even though I definitely feel that the other instruments can be just as important, that's just the one I've bonded my soul with at this point.

"It's funny though. For the longest time I would learn Pretender's tunes and a lot of rock songs, Led Zeppelin and such. But I never tried to learn any Wes Montgomery tunes. I just didn't feel that I could touch that. It wasn't until I was in college that I started exploring the possibility of playing my guitar as a jazz instrument. I was too much in awe for a long time. I don't think that I am at the moment. Now I think I'm in..... enthusiasm. Eating it up."

Shelley's influences are as assorted as the music she plays. "When people ask me 'What are your influences,' I usually say that I listened to this, this, this, and this. But my musical influences are as vast and varied as everything that I've heard. Whenever I name a few things I always look back and go, 'Oh, but I didn't name blah, blah, blah.' I always try to note that I grew up listening mostly to jazz. Pre-teen. But not completely. I listened to a lot of things. I listened to show tunes. I listened to opera. Jazz to me was always the pinnacle back then. My mother is a tremendous music aficionado. She and Cannonball Adderly were really close friends, for example. Sarah Vaughn was a tremendous influence on me. The way that she sings, her voice is such an instrument, a be-bop instrument. So, from early childhood I was exposed to the love of music. And like I say, jazz was definitely at a pinnacle. But a lot of my influence comes from my mother. She loves Opera and she loves Barbara Striesand. It all came together into just a love of music. When my brothers, who are both older than me, discovered rock and funk I got that by way of osmosis. I can't say how many times my brother Mark used to play 'Flashlight' over and over again."

Shelley's solo e.p., Opportunity is an excellent example of the depths to which her musical explorations have taken her, each track representing a different aspect of her multi-talented persona. The first song, "Teeth" contains a line that says "I've been known to take a sip or a trip/ But that doesn't mean I ever fell for that shit/ 'Cuz I don't want to be another casualty..." I asked her if this relates to her experience of drug and alcohol use and abuse within the music industry.

"I guess when I wrote that, I wasn't making a comment particularly about the music industry. It was more of a personal note. Both my brother and my father died from the byproducts of chemical abuse. That's pretty poignant for me. It's not just theoretical. Alcohol IS a toxic substance. It is. I know this for a fact. It killed my father. So it's not just theoretical. So my commentary on that is that I'm not trying to preach to anybody. It's just something that I've come to realize. It's one of those realizations that sometimes have to happen. The most important things in life that one learns you need to learn over and over again. You go 'Oh yeah... that's right'(Slaps herself in the head) 'Oh yeah that's right' (Slaps herself in the head again).

"If it's something as big, for instance, like 'Oh yeah. One day I am going to die.' That's a big thought. You think about it, and then you get this huge mortality issue. And this happens periodically over and over again. It gets you. And maybe you can't move, you can't think, you can't do anything. Then... it passes. Because you can't be there all the time. But eventually it's going to come around again and you're going to go 'Oh wait a minute.' That's something I learned a long time ago, just in terms of the whole learning process and how we grow.

"But in terms of your original question. To me that concept of recreational drugs and some of the byproducts of what they can do to you is something that comes around once in awhile. This is something that I really need to have balanced in my life. In MY life, because I'm not preaching to anyone else, I'm not telling anyone else what to do. I'm just saying in my life this is something that needs to be balanced. And so I remind myself of that periodically. Especially after losing my brother. That really hit me. My father died when I was 13. My brother died four years ago. It's been a pretty major event for me. In my life, and therefore in my music development, because the two are inextricably intertwined.

"When I look at some of the songs that I've written in the last four years, and interestingly enough, right up to before he died - not that I had any pre-knowledge that it was going to happen - but I look at songs I started writing before he died, then after he died, I thought, 'Whoa... this has got some new meaning to it'. A song like 'Crossroads' -which isn't on my solo album- is a really good example of that."

The next track, 'Sparrow Song' is one that Shelley has been playing live for years. "I wrote it in San Diego, when I was in college. I remember sitting out in the sun. I remember where I sat down and the first line came to me. I was sitting in the driveway at a friend's house and it was just a beautiful day. It was one of those San Diego scorchers, but it was in the morning, probably like 7 or 8 in the morning. And the first words came to me, 'There's something here worth listening to, but there's not that much to do.' I think I was probably listening to some birds actually. But it's part of the story. That was just the kernel that started the thing, but other than that it's kind of peon to unrequited love. Which has, and probably at some point or another always will, come up as a theme in some of my music. It's a pretty powerful one."

The third song is the title track to the e.p. A song that seems to be about missed opportunity, I asked Shelley how it related to the fact that the e.p. itself represented such a positive opportunity for her career. "That's an interesting concept actually. My first comment is that I wish I could say that there was a lot more grand design to my e.p. than there is. I think that grand design might come with age, just like a fine wine. I should probably pretend that I had a grand design. I had never really thought about that until you just now mentioned it.

"Yeah, 'Opportunity' is about missed opportunity, I guess. That's sort of a tongue-and-cheek tune. People seem to like it too, it's not just me when it comes crushing down to that dropped 'D' and it's hoh. Hoh. Hoh. Hoh. There's something about that. I wouldn't say I had any deeper significance to titling the track and titling the e.p. 'Opportunity'. That's one of the reasons I put those lyrics on there, made sure the lyrics were on there. Because I would like the people to come up with these connections on there own. Other than that, if you just were to pick up this e.p and it just said 'Opportunity' on it, I think that in itself is a separate issue than what the actual song is about. Then you pick it up and you get into it.

"The song itself came to me really, really quickly. Which was really cool. Sometimes, songs take a long time to mature and develop. And this one... BOOM. It was one of the first songs I wrote on my four track just diddling around. Then the rest of it just kind of came to me. I was actually just making a test sound and that's what happened. I said, 'Hey, let me play around with this some more.' And the words came really quickly too. I really love it when that happens. There's certain tunes that I can identify that .... BOOM..... just emerged full fleshed and I have a feeling that those particular tunes I don't analyze as much as some of the others because I don't have to. If they come that quickly then I don't need to try to figure out where do I go from here, as with other tunes where I may have written the first verse three years ago and I'm still thinking, 'Oh where does this go?' But with something like 'Opportunity', it came all at once. So I didn't have to pick it apart as much in the artistic process."

I then told Shelley that some people had reflected that the song may be related to the break-up of Jambay. "That's funny. I'd love to hear this. How come nobody ever tells me that? I have a crude analogy for the way that I relate to music. When people ask me what my inspirations are, I say, 'You know, everything I eat.' I'm going to get in trouble for this one- it's like a transduction of energy: it comes in one way and it's going to come out in another way. Every experience, depending on how much of a channel one as an artist is, at that moment depends on how twisted things get coming out the artistic process. Some experiences may come through very clearly. I think in my case I have a tendency to twist things. To be honest with you, 'Opportunity', in my conscious mind, was definitely more of a direct relation to a Star-Trek: Deep Space Nine Episode than it was about my band. Now there may be other tunes that were directly related to that situation but I'm not necessarily going to tell you what they are."

"Screen" is a tender ballad, a love song that deeply touches the heart. "I had mentioned that some songs come really quickly, and this one was even more special because it was the one time I was asked to write a song and I actually pulled it off in relatively short order. Jodi asked me to write a song. It was in the midst of a really difficult emotional loss and she was moving her way forward in life. She was on her way to work and I asked her if there was anything I could do. She said, 'Write me a song.' By the time she'd gotten home from work I had written 'Screen.' I was asked outright. I had to come through. It's definitely a bonafide love song. No unrequited love in that one at all."

The last song on the e.p. is presented in two parts. "For me it's always been a five song e.p. It's not a six song e.p., even though there's six numbers on there. It's a five song e.p. I always seem to introduce the song 'Passion Play' with 'Chant' since I've been playing the Shelley Doty solo, or Shelley Doty X-tet. The two fit together in a way that.... I don't know that it's in a rational way. They are about two different things. But for me it's always been a complimentary set. So I perform them together.

"I wrote them at different times. I was at different spaces, I was going through different things. There might be overlap therein. I guess one could look at the 'who' within the song. You might talk about the narrator of a song and you might talk about the audience of a song. You've got a narrator of a song, who isn't always the person who wrote the song. And just like the narrator isn't always the author of the song, the audience that the narrator is speaking to isn't always the audience listening to the song. The two songs have different audiences to me.

" 'Chant' is an angry song. It's a reactionary song. 'Passion Play' is a special tune for me. They all are. They're like kids. But 'Passion Play' is definitely a special tune in that it doesn't have a lot of words, but it seems to be very emphatic about the one's that it does.

"I wrote 'Passion Play' a long time ago. Can I even remember when? Not right off hand. But I wrote it a long time ago. 'Passion Play' was a cautionary tune for myself. I have found, and still do, that a be-all and an end-all goal to strive for within the things that I do. Feel. Eat. Taste. Everything. I think I'm saying in the first line of the song .... the first line of the song is a trick, actually. Because the first line of the song as written and as performed is slightly different. Which is not necessarily fair, but I just for the record want it to be known that that is true. Anyone who did notice that, it is true.

"It was a cautionary tale for myself. The problem with passion is that either it slips away, or it 'can' slip away. I'm slightly more optimistic in the written version. I think that it is possible to maintain passion, but that it is important to remember that it can slip away, and that it often does, at least for some amount of time. It requires effort. It requires upkeep. Passion requires influx. And all of these things are definitely reminders. That's something I've done since I was first learning how to write songs. I would try to give myself advice from time to time, in the knowledge of the song as something I would perform for many, many years. It might turn out to be good advice later on down the line. 'Passion Play' was a bit of advice to my future self and to anyone else who cares to listen. You can't skate on passion, I can't anyway. I'm sure there's some people out there who can, but I personally can't. I have to bring that back."

But be careful pinning Shelley down to any particular interpretation of her music. "If someone asks me what a song is about, I'm always going to ask them what they think it's about. To me a song is subject to as many interpretations as there are listeners. I sincerely believe, and this has since been proven to me on many occasions, that my interpretation isn't necessarily the 'right' one or the 'only' one. That's why I always ask people that before I even try to say. And then most of what I can say is 'Well, right now it's about this,' or 'it was inspired by such-and-such', but even the inspirations don't necessarily tell the story of the song. The songs always take on their own life.

"Basically I find my inspiration by reminding myself that I have to keep searching for it. Music is one of the sources of life for me. Like food or breathing or water or any of those wonderful things. And just like you need to go out and look for food, you need to go out and look for inspiration. I forget that sometimes. I get complacent. Everything around you can be inspiring, you just need to look at it in that light. That's generally how it works. I need to kick myself in the butt fairly often to keep that process going."

After completing her solo project, Shelley presented herself in a new format, The Shelley Doty X-tet. She continues to push the limits of her musical expression through a complete commitment to improvisation. "My business advisors advised me that if I was going to come up with a band name I should have my name in it somewhere. Playing with other human beings is very, very important to me. In fact, I have real philosophical problem sometimes with this 'solo career', semantically. I don't intend to just have a 'solo' career. I don't want to play by myself all the time. I do enjoy it. I happen to think that's a very special thing. But I'd be very sad if that's all that I was ever allowed to do. So whenever I read on a flyer or an interview, 'Shelley and her Solo Career', it's like, well... it's not really solo.

"X-tet refers to the 'x' as a variable. In a lot of Jazz groups you've got the Charlie Hunter Trio, The Charlie Hunter Quartet, and The Charlie Hunter Quintet... That's three groups right there. You've got a lot of bands that say, 'This is how many pieces there are.' The X-tet is a variable. There may be only a trio of pieces or there may be a -tet. You're not going to know. But there's probably going to be more than just Shelley. At this point the members of The X-tet is also a variable. So 'x' is a variable.

When I asked Shelley if she thought that the members of the X-tet would ever solidify, she responded, "I think that it could go either way. There are folks that are 'members' of the X-tet, whether or not they play at every gig. At this point in time I definitely would like to solidify things a little bit, to the extent that I can. On the other hand it pleases me to no end to be able to play with so many fabulous musicians, to get into tunes that I've written and to take them into whatever direction each individual lends to them. I've played with some amazing, amazing players lately, often, usually, without the benefit of rehearsal. So it's exciting. And it also speaks to the way I look my tune. Nobody ever plays it wrong. It's just that that's the way it sounds. It may be a completely different drum beat, but it's just as correct. So, I could see certain members becoming solid. And then I could see that not happening. At this point I don't have a clear desire for it to happen either way."

Besides playing gigs throughout the West Coast, The Shelley Doty X-tet recently recorded a demo tape with legendary musician and producer Booker T. Jones. Although it hasn't been released commercially, this project highlights the power and intensity that Shelley brings to all of her work. "Booker is an amazing man, and I feel so fortunate to have gotten to know him and to have worked with him. And to continue to work with him. The first time that we met I went over to his office at Fantasy Studios. I had my guitar and I played him some songs. We met a few times, and eventually I played him a bunch of tunes. He got a hit off of who I was, and I got a hit off of who he is. In a really organic way, he offered to help in whatever way he could. I think that he was the one who suggested that we just go ahead and do a demo recording.

"One day I went in a laid down 25 songs in about three hours with the acoustic guitar. Just laid them down for him to check out, because I wanted him more and more familiar with my material. We went through and he asked if I felt comfortable with choosing the songs for the demo and I said yeah. Of the four tunes that ended up on there, the first three are pretty new, two of them really new. (Former Jambay band mates) Matt Butler and Mike Sugar played on that album also, and were just a phenomenal rhythm section. And my dream-come-true was to have Jessica Lurie of the 'Billie Tipton Memorial Saxophone Quartet' and 'The Living Daylights' come in and record on one of the tunes. That was just like a geekfest for me.

"It was a great experience for me in so many ways. The studio experience was relaxed. I felt very much in control of the way that things were going. When Booker and I were doing it, I would ask him, 'So Booker, do you think blah-blah-blah about such-and-such?' And he'd give me his experience, of which he has legion. Then he'd say, 'But ultimately it comes down to what you want. Because it's your song. And it's your Project.' It would always come back to that. I had never had an experience at a studio that was just so relaxed and invigorating for me personally. I'm really happy with the way that stuff came out, and probably will be going back into the studio with Booker in the next few months. In the late fall maybe. But we haven't quite figured it all out yet."

At the end, I asked Shelley if she had any advice for other young women artists who are trying to make it happen. "Sure. I hear people say, 'I play guitar, but I'm not very good.' To me, that's a nonsensical statement. If you enjoy playing the instrument, then you are good. If you are enjoying what you are doing, that's really all that counts. One can point out plenty of musicians, and I think that I'm narrowing it down because that's my field, that aren't very good at their instruments, but that have lots of popularity or talent or whatever those words are. Explore art as a means of expressing yourself. This is an elementary statement but it's one that makes you realize. Use it as a channel for yourself and a way to communicate with others. Either directly by playing music with other people or playing it for other people. Or whatever. Just let it be something that's natural, because it is. If you can talk, you can sing. If you can walk, you can dance. Which is true. We all have our different artistic outlets. It may be making bread, which is just as artistic as making music."