After growing skills in Nashville, Seattle’s Alec Shaw returns to home state to join Junaco in show at the Chameleon

As Seattle-area native Alec Shaw returns to the Pacific Northwest after an eventful 2024, he looks to make 2025 another big year.

Over the past few years, Shaw has had Nashville, Tennessee, on his mind. His first venture to the music mecca was during a tour stop, and it didn’t take long for him to connect with the culture of such a highly musical city.

“Anytime I’d been out there, there just seemed to be a strong community of musicians and industry,” Shaw said. “I didn’t feel like I had two heads when I was talking about music with lots of excitement.”

Shaw doesn’t mean to say that Seattle lacks a dynamic scene, but music is a massive part of what makes up Nashville’s identity.

Plus, Shaw enjoys how casual the lifestyle is there.

“I think people don’t realize how accessible a life of music is until they spend time in the Nashville community or somewhere like that,” Shaw said. “When you’re just walking to the coffee shop, greeting people and friends and meeting people who have platinum records and have worked on all these things, it just becomes very normal.”

Last year, after multiple trips back, a romantic relationship finally pushed Shaw to make the move from Seattle to Nashville.

Just before this location change, Shaw released his most recent singles, “Little Love” and “Don’t Waste Your Love On Me.”

The two tracks were the result of a breakup that changed much of Shaw’s lifestyle. Between isolation to living solo in a beat down house in Tacoma, Shaw reflected by means of music during this period of solitude.

“I’ve found that out of all the music I’ve written those were the ones that actually connected with the most people,” Shaw said. “They connect with a lot of people that went through loss or a breakup … it really was cathartic.”

Shaw has over an album’s worth of music and hopes to release a full-length record at some point this year, although his process has changed quite a bit.

As a solo artist, Shaw used to write and arrange instrumentation entirely by himself. Now, he still tends to start a song on his own but finds the time to fly back to the Seattle area and rent a beach house with the already established members of his band. They bring recording equipment and jam, Shaw brings what they have back to Nashville where he works on the songs further, and then they return to do it all again.

“It’ll be a little different, the music that you hear, but it feels a bit more natural,” Shaw said. “It came together a bit more intuitively.”

Shaw will return to Washington for a co-headline show with Junaco at the Chameleon on Friday. He has grown confident that the band puts on a good show time after time.

“We’ve been working for a long time to play at the level we do, and these guys are world class musicians,” Shaw said. “I think people will connect with the songs and learn something about themselves, hopefully.”