JAM October/November 2007 Issue: Feature Story

Shay Estes

“Doing Absolutely What I Want to Do!”

by Roger Atkinson

It was three years ago that pianist Mark Lowrey told me about a singer he had been working with some. She was fairly new into jazz, she sang with some rock bands and things like that, and he said to come out and hear them, he thought she was really good. “What's her name?” I asked. “Shay Estes”.

It took awhile to catch up with Mark and Shay. Earlier in the year, I caught one of their mid-week sets at Jardine's. Mark and the trio, with Jeff Harshbarger on bass and Zack Albetta on drums, opened the set with a togetherness that is the mark of a regularly working trio. You know Jardine's. There was the typical Jardine's chatter: it was there but not quite annoying, like a couple of light scratches on an old LP. At the end of the tune, Mark introduces Shay to the bandstand to nice applause, and as they get into “Secret Love” a small miracle occurs. Every head in the joint turns towards the stage, every conversation ends, all eyes and ears given to Mark and Shay. When she tips her head back and “shouts from the highest hill”, the deal was sealed, and the only conversations after that were about Shay Estes.

It has been about ten years since Shay left Blue Valley High for Marymount College Manhattan to pursue a life in musical theatre. She was already a veteran performer by this time as an actor, dancer, and singer. “I started performing on stage with a country band when I was eleven”, she said in a recent interview over lunch at MelBee's. “That's what I cut my teeth on, singing music by singers like Patsy Cline. In middle school and high school I was into theatre, I was in choir and the show choir, their chamber choir, and was involved in the musical productions. I was also in City In Motion, a modern dance school, in their junior dance company. I was performing all the time, especially if it involved dance. I took some vocal lessons but at the time ignored the advice, but I stored the information in my brain and find that I'll be singing and all of a sudden a lesson from years ago will make sense. Things like breath support and the way I was using my voice, a lot of things about how I was physically approaching my instrument... concepts I ignored when I was younger.”

Marymount provided more disappointments than good times, however, and after a year Shay returned home, singing in rock bands, dancing some, but not really finding her niche. But then a few stars came into alignment. “Years later I was asked to dance for the Grand Marquis, and in a roundabout fashion the reason I became a jazz singer was because of this. That led to becoming a part of the Burli-Cue Girly Crew, a burlesque troupe. We were working at the Grand Emporium, and Roger Nabor, knowing I was part of a burlesque troupe, thought it would be a good idea for me to open for the Red Elvis, and he went ahead and booked it without telling me.” Mark Southerland did the music for the Girly Crew, and helped put this together. More singing followed, and then the opportunity for a larger than normal payday came up, but there was trouble getting a band to commit. “I had to get this gig booked. I knew enough jazz standards and pop standards, so I decided to find a pianist and do the gig myself.”

She wanted someone who was young, fun, and experimental, and everyone she talked to recommended the same person, Mark Lowrey. They added Mark Southerland to the mix, spent time rehearsing, and the gig was fun, and it worked. Lowery and Shay enjoyed hanging out together, and he suggested that they try to get some gigs. On one gig she met Jeff Harshbarger, and he became the bassist.

They also found out how similar they were. Shay recalls one time Lowery had to stop by the bank on the way to rehearsal, and when they got there he had forgotten his check. “He was the boy version of me, no doubt!” Shortly after that, she told Mark that he should come to a rock band gig she had on her birthday. He asked, “When is it?” “July 24 th ” was the reply. “Wait, that's my birthday!” They were born on the same say, on the same year. “That explained a lot”, Shay says. Almost scary, right?

One thing about Shay and the band you'll quickly pick up on is that they are quick to put their own stamp on a tune. “Day In Day Out” (one of many Johnny Mercer lyrics that Shay is attracted to) is a flag waver, and you might wonder if the flag will unravel at the full-throttle speed they take it at (it doesn't unravel a bit). “But Not For Me” is altered into a fun, vengeance laden “But Not For You”. A need for some up tempo material when they had the Friday happy hour set at the Phoenix contributed to them turning “Cry Me a River” into an upbeat samba (Shay says it becomes a “whole new tune with a different emotion” at this tempo. Mark's ballad arrangement of “Milky Way” from the Donnie Darko soundtrack, where Harshbarger steps up and sings with Shay, is a tune far away from the vocalist with trio genre but it fits right in.

Mark explained how the repertoire builds: “Shay listens to a lot of different things that I don't know about, international bands and indie bands. She'll put something on, say how much she likes it, and I tell her that we can do this, too.”

Shay added, “With ‘Milky Way', he just started playing along with it. It's an up tempo tune on the soundtrack, but Mark slowed it down and made it into this beautiful ballad. It gave me chills the first time I heard it like this. Mark suggested turning ‘Cry Me a River' into a samba, too.

“Most of the songs that I brought forward were songs my mother used to sing to me. She was a huge Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole fan. She sang ‘I've Got a Crush on You” when I was really little, like a bedtime song, so I always knew the words to that song. I had never heard a recorded version of it until after I'd been performing it for months. So most of these tunes are really due to my mother's fascination with old movie musicals and old Frank Sinatra movies.”

You'll notice that Shay is seldom still when performing. “I like to move. I feel most relaxed and natural when I am moving naturally. I used to worry about it a lot, where I was putting my hands, where I was standing and what I was doing. Then I realized that I wasn't thinking about the way the music was making me feel, and therefore I wasn't doing my job properly. It's not just about singing music, it's about conveying emotion. As a vocalist, I'm not just a musician, I'm also a storyteller. It's important to emote properly when you are singing. You can't force it; it has to come from the way the music makes you feel.”

Shay and the band continue to have their regular monthly late set gig at Jardine's, and are often on the mid-week evening calendar as well. They have also added a regular monthly Saturday night gig at 12 Baltimore in the Hotel Phillips downtown.

And what's next? There are hopes to get a CD together this fall, and Shay is thinking that another run at college would be a wise move, but this time as a Jazz Vocal major. She is preparing for that possibility by working with Mark on some music theory, which will help with the audition process for UMKC. “I want to become a better musician” Later? “I'd like to travel. Go to Istanbul for a month, or work in a club in Dubai on a regular gig. Go to places that I wouldn't otherwise get to see. And take my musicians with me, of course!”

“I don't think I'd be singing if it weren't with the musicians I am playing with now. I wouldn't trade these guys for anyone; they are some of my best friends. I don't want to play with anybody else. I couldn't love anybody on the planet as much as I love Mark and Jeff. We are very relaxed together, we don't have to worry about whether we are communicating properly, or that we are going to step on each others' toes or anything.

“It took me a while to get here, but this is absolutely what I what I want to do, and I find that to be totally liberating”.