San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
WHITNEY SHAY
Four-time San Diego Music Award winner brings a modern, female-empowerment sensibility to R&B
Vibrant San Diego singer Whitney Shay shares the same birthday as B.B. King, one of her biggest musical inspirations. ■ She also shares the late blues pioneer’s tireless work ethic, averaging 200 or so gigs annually and having played 300 dates in one recent year alone. A 2008 San Diego State University theater major, Shay has done six tours of Brazil. Her 2020 January and February European concert trek saw her perform in Russia, Germany, France and Belgium.
“Not only is Whitney a great singer, she can really put her eyes and expressions into the delivery of a song,” said ace guitarist Robin Henkel. He began collaborating with Shay in 2013 and will be one of the guest performers at her May 28 album-release concert at the Belly Up. The show was postponed from March 26 because of the coronavirus.
“It’s very compelling to see and listen to Whitney’s performances,” Henkel continued. “People fall in love with her.”
Love and matters of the heart are a recurring theme in Shay’s songs, which she co-writes with her musical partner, Adam J. Eros. But there’s a welcome twist
in her music, which is steeped in the timeless blues, soul and rhythm-and-blues styles she champions.
Where many of the classic songs in those genres address love from a largely male perspective, Shay writes lyrics that reflect a distinctly more contemporary era and sensibility.
Witness her 2016 album “A Woman Rules the World.” And witness her new album — the all-uppercase “STAND UP!” — which includes such no-nonsense numbers as “Equal Ground,” “Getting in My Way,” “Boy, Sit Down” and “Change With the Times.”
“Being raised by strong women has informed my consciousness,” said Shay, a San Diego native whose birth father was from Uruguay. She was brought up by her mother, Elisa, and grandmother, Yvonne.
“And being a young woman today — with the #Metoo movement and women’s and minority issues more at the forefront — it’s important to me to reflect that,” Shay stressed. “With ‘A Woman Rules the World,’ I didn’t go out with the intent to write an album of female empowerment; that’s just who I am.
“Since “STAND UP!” is primarily an album of all-original songs, it was an opportunity to expand on that and on some more personal issues. For instance, ‘Someone You Never Got to Know’ is a song I wrote about figuring out how to mourn the loss of someone I never got to have a relationship with, my birth father.”
She made her stage debut, at the age of 3, at the Spreckels Theatre in a San Diego children’s theater production of “Annie.”
Shay’s conversion to blues, soul, rhythm-and-blues, swing and other vintage American music came after she graduated from San Diego State University and co-founded the duo Shay La Vie with pianist Irv Goldstein. She hasn’t looked back since.
“I’ve never claimed I’m making the same music as B.B. King or Muddy Waters,” said Shay, a North Park resident.
“When you look back at artists like B.B., Big Mama Thornton and Etta James, they were all great musicians and great entertainers who brought people out of the troubles of their everyday lives. I always like to say that I’m an appreciator of this music, not an appropriator.
“I’m half-latina and I’m not trying to make the music of black artists from the 1950s, because that’s not me and I don’t know what they went through. But I appreciate this music so greatly in my soul and heart. And one of the reasons blues has such mass universal appeal is because, even without speaking the same language, people understand that feeling and catharsis. I’m making what I call ‘high-energy rhythmand-blues’ that makes people dance, and — I hope — brings them joy.”