Remy Shand: meet the new soul singer with motown in his heart and Winnipeg in his accent

The voice is a cigarette-toasted falsetto. The music is elegant, jazzy, earthy, old-school. Judging by the sophisticated, funky soul on Remy Shand's recently released debut, The Way I Feel (Motown), you might think you'd stumbled on some forgotten Al Green outtakes from the '70s. What you wouldn't guess is that Shand is a 23-year-old white kid from Winnipeg, Canada, who grew up working in his parents' skateboard shop. It was in his bedroom that he obsessively taught himself to play every instrument on the album (except a horn part, played by his high school band teacher), and where he recorded it, too. When Kedar Massenburg, president and CEO of Motown (and the man who helped discover Erykah Badu and D'Angelo) heard the songs, he was hooked. And certain he had discovered his next star.

DIMITRI EHRLICH: Dr. Shand, how are you?

REMY SHAND: Hello, how ya doing?

DE: Excellent. The first time I saw you perform, you turned a room of about 200 people into a mass of dancing bodies. And you did it without any attitude, without saying a word, without adopting any of the clothing or style of R&B. You just sat down at the piano and won them over.

RS: [laughs] Right. You know, at first a lot of people were telling me, You should dress up a little this way or that way,' but I just didn't do it.

DE: Have you had any insights about race during the last few months, while you've been winning over audiences?

RS: When I was writing the record, it was just like I was writing a pop record. I really wanted to have an audience of both whites and blacks. It's amazing being thrust into the fire of black America-I'm out there playing soul music and I'm doing it on Motown so [laughs] at first it felt like a lot of pressure. But, after a while, I realized people are people and the touch of music is the touch of music.

DE: What have you learned from touring?

RS: The world gets smaller, that's for sure. I was in Chicago doing a signing at the Virgin Megastore-it was the first big signing I had ever done. And this girl who works there walks up and says, "I really like your music. You really remind me of my dad." I'm just kind of like, Thanks, who do I sign this to?" And she kept saying, "No one's come along since my dad that reminds me so much of him." Finally I'm like, "Who's your dad?" And she said, "Donny Hathaway."

DE: Wow.

RS: And I thought, Oh, you're crazy. I was totally freaked out when she pulled out her card and it said Donnita Hathaway.

DE: That's crazy. That's a pretty big compliment. I know you recorded your album entirely at home. Your parents allowed you to drop out of school and work in their skateboard shop and be home-schooled so that you could focus on music. And then your father went into debt so he could buy you all the musical gear you needed.

RS: Yeah.

DE: When you get your first big royalty check from radio play, are you just going to hand it all over to your mom and dad?

RS: I'm waiting to just pass it over. And I can't wait. It'll be such a great thing.

DE: How did you resist the record company when they inevitably said, "The demo's great, kid, but now let's send you to a 'real studio' with a 'real producer"'?

RS: Before they even had a chance to go there I'd just cut them off. [laughs] I would just write a new song, record it, send it. I said, 'Look, this is what I'm doing, if you guys are interested, that's great, if you're not, whatever.. ." [laughs]

DE: The record is like a classic Stevie Wonder or Al Green album from the '70s-very soulful and funky and romantic. In that sense, it isn't really a contemporary-sounding record. Do you feel like a warrior for the sounds of the past that were a little more subtle and intelligent and complicated?

ES: Yeah, man! [laughs] Absolutely. I was talking to someone from Motown about the whole strategy for crossing over, and I said it would be really great to start getting some plays on pop radio. I'm not too up on U.S. radio, because they were like, "Pop radio is hip-hop."

DE: Eminem is pop radio.

ES: It's kind of an uphill thing. I don't have any hip-hop in my music, and I don't necessarily consider my beats "dope" or "wack." [both laugh] If any hip-hop fan were to listen to my music, I don't think they'd consider the beats that hip.

DE: A hip-hop producer might hear your record and want to sample it because of its 1970s vibe. Maybe next year's hip-hop will be sampling Remy Shand.

RS: Now that would be cool.

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