“In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. – John 14:2″

Bursting out of the artsy enclaves of Jamaica Plain, MA, the magnanimous Shane “Many Mansions” Donnelly talks with me about the quiet movement turned poetic uproar WHITEHAUS Family Records, DIY spaces, music makin’, spirituality, and his recent album “Return To Source.”

Many Mansions – The WHITEHAUS was started originally by a group of friends. We started having Hootenannies in our small apartment like 3 years ago. Which were just kind of informal gatherings of musicians, and you know they were open to the public, and they started with just friends performing for each other. We each had some friends come and eventually strangers would come up and just show up every Friday. The momentum of that kind of built and built and you know, it kind of became a thing known around town that you can go to on Friday nights, and they would get pretty big, and they annoyed our neighbors so much that we had to move and we moved into a big house. We got a bunch more friends to move in with us so we have about 10 people all living together in this big house in JP. So we kept having hootenannies for about two years and eventually a decision was made to stop having the hootenannies every Friday. So we could kind of focus on other things that we wanted to do as a collective. Mainly we wanted to start booking shows with touring musicians. We started having more planned events, and started planning events outside of the house. We did a festival this summer called Weirdstock, which had like 50 bands and took place over 3 days.

Ginevra Shay – Oh that’s awesome!

MM – Yeah, it was really awesome. That was a lot of bands, but was one of our first. We had another festival called Blastfest, which was a big show that we had with all the people on the label, but Weirdstock was one of our first big events where most of the people were from out of town – we had people from all over come and play. Yeah, so that’s the kind of idea that’s always been backing us. We can accomplish more together as a group than any of us could by our selves. We’ve been living together and doing stuff together for so long. We’re just like a moving crew or something – we’re a team. We’ve worked together before, we know how we all work – it makes things a lot easier. If it was just me trying to put on the 3 day festival with 50 bands, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. There was just too much to be done. Having everyone work together on a goal is a common theme around here. We still have shows (at the WHITEHAUS) at least 2 or 3 a month. We’re putting out a vinyl sampler after the New Year, which is a big step for us because up until now we’ve only been releasing things on CD-R and for free over the internet. So this will be our first venture into being an actual record label.

GS – Yeah. Could you talk a little bit more about the record label, the collective and maybe mention a few bands that are on there?

MM – Sure. So the recorded label just consisted of us putting out each other’s albums. For the most part we’re called the WHITEHAUS Family Records because we’re pretty much a family of friends. You know, a lot of record labels the bands don’t all know each other necessarily, you get on a label, or you get signed to something. This is kind of a different thing. It’s more a bunch of people who don’t have a commercial outlet kind of getting together, uniting forces, and going in together financially – purchasing supplies and a cd burner. Kind of creating a sustainable way of getting our music out. That’s really the best thing you can do – CD-Rs. They’re quick, way quicker to make then tapes, and it was just a cheap, affordable way of us duplicating our music and getting it out to people. And that’s the most important thing. We’d rather people hear it then not hear it. That’s why they’re always available for free online, if someone really wants a physical copy they can come by the house and get one or they can order one online. That was always the idea you know, it was just us releasing all of our friends albums. We’re all constantly recording, doing our own things. So it’s kind of an umbrella term for the collective, which allowed us to reach people all at once. People would hear about the WHITEHAUS and through that they would be able to find out about a whole lot of bands. At least on the vinyl sampler coming out there are 20 or 22 bands.

I think our label is always going to be more of like limited run, special run, unless we start making a shit ton of money and can start mass releasing stuff. But I think for the most part we’re going to be pretty limited run releases.

GS – I think it’s really cool. We need stuff like this. WHITEHAUS is just this artistic commune that, like you said, pools it’s resources together as a means to get stuff out there and just make enough money to kind of – keep doing it.

MM – Keep doing it, right. Its more of a resource, the lines and definitions are pretty loose. For a while we were thinking about, should we become a licensed business? An official. thing? We kind of decided it is in our best interest to not make it an official thing. The reason its cool is that its not really anything, its just a bunch of people, its just a name. When you start making it official things start to get complicated. You have to pay taxes, you get into who owns the name WHITEHAUS, you know what I mean? All this other bullshit.

I think that as far of us having shows, we’ve been getting a lot of publicity; we were recently featured on NPR. Technically – we’re an illegal venue. You know, you’re not reeeeally supposed to hold shows in your house. There’s weird laws about how many people you’re allowed to have in your house and calling yourself a venue or having shows. So technically we’re breaking the law every time we have a show. So we don’t really want to have a ton of notoriety – at least not for that. It would be nice if the individual artists on the label got some notoriety and through that were able to support themselves. I like to think or the label or the collective as a means of, like a jumping off point for the artists who are on it. It helps us too, through booking shows for people out of town we’ve met a lot of people and made a lot of contacts in other cities. So right now, I’m booking a tour for January and I know all these people in all these different cities that I can call because I helped them out with a show when they were coming through. I think what the WHITEHAUS is doing awesome, but at the same time there are tons of other houses out there, you know DIY spaces, doing this because there is obviously a national sense, a need for these types of spaces. Hooking up with these other venues or collectives has definitely been a goal of mine in doing the WHITEHAUS thing.

We have people come play at our house because we know what its like to be on the road and have a nice place to stay, a nice place to play, and have an audience that’s really receptive. So we treat people really awesomely when they’re here. And you know, they go and tell their friends that about it, they recommend for their friends playing here. We get a lot of cool people coming through, which is also nice, it makes it feel like a traveling musician’s hostel.

GS – Yeah. We have a lot of that in Burlington as well. People who have never been to Burlington don’t realize that it’s this awesome place to play, and that we have such a great music community. So, part of the mix is to get the people who haven’t played Burlington to come play. You play here all the time but a lot of people don’t know about this place…

MM – Yeah, it can be a trek up there, you know. Especially if you’re not from New England, you’re like – “Eh, do I really want to go all the way up there?” You know? That’s the thing that I’ve found, if you don’t know anybody in town its really hard to just break into the music scene. You need to know somebody who knows where the dope place to play is, that’s not like a bar. It’s really hard to do that. I’m looking to go through Cincinnati, I don’t know fucking anybody in Cincinnati. So I might not even play there. I don’t know any bands; there could be something cool going on there. I’m sure there are at least a few different DIY spaces, it can be really tough to find them, because it’s all word of mouth. But yeah, I love playing in Burlington I think the people there are really awesome. I’m lucky because I know enough people in town that I was able to find the cool place to play. I wish I could play The Wedge equivalent in all cities. Sometimes, you show up and its just some coffee shop and nobody is there, you know? You drove 8 hours to get there and you’re playing for like 3 people.

GS – You know…it makes me hopeful – stuff like The Wedge and WHITEHAUS. These grass movements that are kind of like fuck capitalism, fuck everything, lets go back to where things started and play for our friends, our community and who ever wants to listen.

MM – Houses are the original venue, you know?

GS – Yeah.

MM – With that kind of thing you also have less of a dividing wall between audience and performer. Uhm, which I really like and has a lot to do with what I was talking about earlier [pre-recording] with performing and having it be a spiritual experience. Having that wall between audience and performer go down is really nice. You really don’t get that a lot of times when the performer is on stage and the audience is all lit up and the audience cant see them or they seem unapproachable. That kind of thing doesn’t really exist in a house. When you play people are standing right there in front of you at the same level. Then you stop playing and you’re standing there in the same room as them and you have to talk to them. You can’t just play and then go back stage. It’s just a lot more of a human experience. Like I said, I think that this is a nation wide thing going on because people find bar shows or commercial venues unfulfilling. So they’re searching for something else. Another thing – a lot of DIY venues because its illegal that’s why you don’t hear about them that much. A house will come together and they’ll start having shows for a little bit and then they get shut down. Because its not a legal thing to do. So that’s why a lot of these things only exist for a little bit and then disappear. I think the reason the WHITEHAUS has been able to get away with it so far is because we’ve been smart about setting the vibe for the shows. You know, they’re not ragers. We’ve made it so people don’t people don’t disrespect our house. If people are too loud outside we tell them to shut up or leave, because we want to keep doing it.

GS – Ok so if you want to just talk about Oneness and Return to Source?

MM - The album is kind of elliptical; it’s kind of a journey in a way.  It starts kind of up beat with Oneness and Bright Bliss. Then it descends from that original state into disorder and confusion, some of the darker emotions. Then there is The Shattering of Vessels, which is kind of an eerie song. Originally I had done this thinking it would be on vinyl. So the first side technically ends with Spiritual Warfare, which is one of the darkest songs on the album I think. The one with the tribal drum beat, and the droning trumpet and horn stuff. I think that’s where the album has its low, low point in terms of emotions. Then the next song is Metaonia and is the change and kind of the return back to some of the more positive feelings, then the album kind of closes with a nice pretty number. So the sentiment of the songs was really important and so was the order. There are some spiritual themes through out it, but I want to leave it up to the listener to find their own meaning. I want to express these things in a way that are abstract and non-imposing on anybody’s individual beliefs. And I’m not really sure what I believe about anything, its kind of a continually evolving thing. The making of the album was also a record of my own spiritual seeking.

I’ve always been interested in creating worldly, sound scapey kind of stuff. I think music can take you to another place and some of the best music is like a journey almost. While you’re listening to it, it conjures images in the mind, and stimulates the imagination. Feeling is also an important word in music making for me. There aren’t many lyrics in the album, but there are definite ideas and feelings that I was trying to express. I guess, its about trying to express some of the emotional states or spiritual states that I feel like I’ve experienced that I cant talk about in words and the only way to do that is to try to get the listener to feel that same thing. That feeling is transmitted through music. I think that everything is energy and that might be kind of a theme on the album.

GS – Mhm.

MM - I think that everyone kind of creates their own reality. Everyone is in their own universe kind of. Your reality is what you’re creating. The song Oneness has to do with the concept of no separation; an all-inclusiveness. The idea is that, you have this one being. Once you break down all walls of separation you have this one consciousness, all pervasive including everything, where it’s the consciousness of plants, animals, gods, angels, demons, whatever you want, humans. If you break it down there is one consciousness. For me that’s kind of the closest I can get to the idea of divinity, this idea of all-inclusiveness. Consciousness for me is also really important; consciousness is the ultimate reality – in a way.

So, Return to Source in a way has to do with that. Source would be the original state of oneness. I think it’s a state we have left, you leave that in order to be born into the world. You leave the source; you take on a body and have this kind of temporal existence and you’re this separated consciousness.  Like I said I think everything is energy. Energy is neither created nor destroyed. So I think of birth and death as really just transferences of energy, from one state to another; from oneness to manyness then back to oneness.

GS – Yeah.

MM – So, yeah. These are the kinds of things I think about, and I also make music. Its kind of one of those things where the music is a product of these particular ideas I have about reality. Sorry for ranting again, I go in and out of topic (which I’m sure you’ve noticed). Is there anything else I haven’t really touched upon?

GS - No, I think you’ve pretty much covered…everything. Thank you so much for doing this!

MM – Yeah, sorry for talking your ear off.

GS – No, no! I really appreciate it. I really, really appreciate it. It’s all been really great. Thank you.

To listen to the song “Oneness” which is mentioned in this article, refer back to the previous post “Winter Mix.” Currently, we’re having trouble with the player we’re using, and only a portion of the songs are up, but we’ll have everything ready to go and available for listening as soon as we get these issues sorted.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned we have more to come – possibly this week.