Harnessing the storm
There’s a blinding snow squall roaring outside Mocha Lisa’s, where I’m set to meet singer and songwriter Shannon Tehya. A monster of a weather phenomenon, it spawned over Lake Ontario and blitzed through the Mohawk Valley before blinding motorists and urging them to a modest crawl on the Northway.
People inside the café peer outside, audibly questioning their plans to leave, their fascination drawn to the snowflakes racing across the windows. The scene resembles Stephen King’s “The Mist,” a novella depicting how a small cohort of society breaks down under the fear of a mysterious mist concealing unseen dangers.
But this isn’t a horror story.
“Drive safe, just started snowing,” she texts me.
“I know! That was fun,” I reply, an iced mocha latte sitting on the table before me. “I’m already here and safe. Thank you!”
Music runs in Tehya’s blood. Raised on the harmonies of the Indigo Girls and the guitar mastery of her father, her childhood was a crucible of creative inspiration. Her father, a lifelong musician, would challenge her to find harmonies while driving—a game she initially loathed but now credits for her vocal prowess.
“It’s why I’m a good singer today,” she admits.
After high school, she whisked herself away to South America for humanitarian volunteer work. Struggling after graduation, she sought inspiration and believed that traveling the world would help. In Argentina, she was “hours away from everything” while living in Patagonia.
In the hushed reverberations of an abandoned church there, Tehya’s voice filled the hallowed voids, casting light into the shadows. The church stood on the farm where she was staying, just a stone’s throw from the coast. Visiting it became part of her self-care routine. One day, another volunteer—a videographer—stumbled upon her during one of these visits. She had brought her acoustic guitar, and he had his recording equipment.
The two decided to record a performance. She began with a breathy aria she titled “Ballad of the Barred Owl”—an appropriate match for their surroundings. As it plays now on “Unplugged in Patagonia,” her melodies are hauntingly intimate, soaring with emotional resonance, pushing against the sound of crashing ocean waves.
“I felt very inspired, and I was so lucky,” she said. “The universe was giving [me] little gifts.”
Tehya is not unlike the storm. She is a dynamic performer, possessed of a songbird’s singing voice that fills the deepest caverns of an abandoned church. She is a puppeteer, metaphorically manipulating heartstrings with song lyrics that capture love and all its highs and lows. She is also a dancer—trained in both classical and modern styles—but she practices her art on nightclub stages and a pole. She embodies a raging winter storm: captivating in its beauty, arousing with emotion, but unrelenting when confronted.
The Clifton Park-based artist is not just a singer-songwriter; she is an architect of emotion. Tehya’s debut album, “Tangled String,” released last year, is a soft pop masterpiece for “girlies going through a sad breakup,” as she puts it. Available on all major streaming platforms and Bandcamp, the album invites listeners into a world of heartbreak and healing.
A Pole and a Platform
Tehya attended a boarding school for liberal arts during her high school years. She was trained in modern and classical dance, including ballet, but found it all too restrictive.
In her free moments, she’d escape to the stage to dance. Her body would flow to Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club” and other women-empowering music. A schoolboy spied her dancing and asked what she was doing with a snide remark. “Stripping,” she replied in defense.
“Yeah, like you could be a stripper,” he snorted back.
“What did he mean by that?” she asked me rhetorically. “Was I not pretty enough?”
When she was 18, she went to a club and auditioned and landed a job. She fell in love. With her first money, she bought a pole to install at home. Today, she is a certified pole dance instructor and a fierce advocate for the destigmatization of sex work.
“There is this power in getting up on a stage dancing, singing, and then proudly saying, ‘I’m a stripper,’ because I want to show you what it means,” she said. “This is not a thing that I say behind closed doors because I’m afraid of you knowing it.”
“My mom has a lot of quotes that she said to me when I was growing up, and one of them that is maybe like her most said—a quote that stays with me—is: ‘Question authority.’”
Her advocacy extends beyond the stage. Tehya passionately speaks out against societal double standards, noting the irony of celebrating pole dancing in fitness and burlesque while condemning its roots in strip clubs.
“We love burlesque shows. We love pole dancing competitions and showcases, but we hate strippers. Because we hate women,” she says bluntly, challenging the stigma with her unapologetic honesty. “I know that’s a bold thing to say, but the people who are choosing to maintain the idea that strippers are bad are often the ones who are super, super thrilled about celebrating the offshoots from stripping.”
Following a New Path
Tehya’s newest music reflects her evolution from heartbreak to empowerment. Songs like “Human” grapple with the pressure of perfection, offering anthems of self-forgiveness and community. “I want to sign permission slips for people to be themselves,” she says, echoing the ethos of her musical idol, Taylor Swift.
Tehya’s formative years were marked by a deep connection to Swift.
“‘Speak Now’ was the first album I owned,” she recalls. “It felt like a permission slip to express myself without needing to know complex music theory.”
That ethos of accessibility and relatability has become a cornerstone of her songwriting, allowing her to craft music that is both emotionally raw and universally resonant.
She spent last year performing Taylor Swift cover shows. While concert tickets to “The Eras Tour” cost hundreds of dollars each night, local fans welcomed these area shows. They allowed fans to bask in a shared experience while giving Tehya and her band, The Troupe, time to develop a new sound—transforming acoustic folk tunes into vibrant pop anthems.
“We’ve turned from a rock folk Americana band into a pop band,” she explained. “Taking acoustic folk songs and adding funky trumpet lines, groovy bass, and drum solos—we’re creating something entirely new.”
Shannon Tehya and The Troupe will perform an intimate, “Tiny Desk”-style concert at Lyrical Ballad Bookstore in Saratoga Springs on Monday, Jan. 20, at 7 p.m., offering a unique showcase of their full-band arrangements of original songs. The band will take the stage for a larger matinee performance at The Strand Theater in Hudson Falls on Sunday, Jan. 26.