Shalini is a guitarist and bass player who is crazy about 60s, 70s and 80s pop music. Her early influences include the Supremes and other Motown acts, Elvis, and the Beatles. As a teenager in the eighties, she gravitated toward punk and art-influenced bands like the Go-Go's, R.E.M., and Let's Active. More big-time perennial favorites include Cheap Trick, Blondie, and Pat Benatar.
Her live musical experience started in the mid-80s playing bass in a college band while attending UW-Madison. After moving to San Francisco in 1990, she searched for other musicians with the same taste, established her own band, Vinyl Devotion, and gained experience playing to city crowds, while writing songs and making records for independent, like-minded labels. After a move to the South, she expanded her musical horizons by trying to fill in gaps in her rock education and meeting more seasoned and professional-level musicians, which boosted her own self-taught level of playing. The move opened new doors: to enjoy more stability, travel regionally, and play more outdoor shows to larger, varied audiences.
Normally, Shalini wouldn't have used her name as the band name, but her Southern friends Mitch Easter and Don Dixon talked her into it. She figured it was the same thing as a regular band name, with a more obvious statement defining the main songwriter. And songs are the most important aspect of a band to Shalini, not a guest list, a certain kind of website, or some other statement. Her goals have remained the same: to write good songs and put on a good live show.
Completed in the summer of 2007, the eleven-track The Surface and the Shine is due Oct. 8th on Electric Devil/125 Records. The theme is more cosmic and mature, but the songs retain the thread of fun that runs through Shalini's previous material. The four-piece live band is preparing for fall shows in the Midwest and Southeast.