TANGERINE DREAMER
STANDING in Shannon Lay’s backyard in Pasadena – an upmarket community northeast of Los Angeles known for grand homes, lush gardens and the annual Rose Parade famously name-checked by Elliott Smith – there is a sense of spiritual ease. “There’s a certain kind of warmth coming off of it,” Lay says, pointing to a giant oak tree, which she estimates to be over 200 years old, whose branches envelop the space like a hug. Before she lived here, the area was a refuge from city life. “I lived in Echo Park and Frogtown for a long time,” she says. “And in that situation, you either go to the Guitar Center in Hollywood or the Guitar Center in Pasadena, and I always went to Pasadena because Hollywood can be really hectic.”
Her small Spanish-style backhouse is decorated with string lights, vintage furniture and other on-trend bohemia, like many homes in Southern California. But for a young, hard-touring, full-time musician like Lay such anchored domesticity can be novel. Living by herself in a standalone rental she secured on her own is a first. “All the other places were from friends saying, ‘Take this random room,’” she says. “This has everything I need. And I feel this trust developing with life that we’re taken care of, that if things are supposed to be a certain way it’s gonna work out. I’m slowly learning that worry is optional a lot of the time.”
Lay is just 30 years old, but she’s been gigging in the Los Angeles indie music scene for more than a decade. A veteran of boisterous art-punk and garage-rock bands, by 2016 she was exploring a softer side of music, playing tender and introspective folks songs on acoustic and electric guitar. She’s a skilled player, but it was her gorgeous, gossamer voice that drew the attention of Kevin Morby, Ty Segall, Steve Gunn and many
