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‘Whispering Sin’ is the latest masterpiece by The Beauvilles. The album is intense and beautiful. It will capture your soul.

They have just celebrated the album’s release with a packed out hometown show in Tampa, Florida and are ready to bring their energetic, raw live show to the rest of the world.

Believe me, they are ready.

I think one of my favorite things about the band is the fact that it seems like it is from another time. The whole musical process is organic. It’s not just vintage gear and vocals… the words are real and you can feel the emotions through the music.

The band is composed of lead singer and guitarist Shawn Kyle Beauville, Christopher Tolan on Guitar/Harmonies, Craig S. Holmes on the drums, and Johnny Barker on bass.

Shawn reflects on the journey of creating the album and the latest happenings of The Beauvilles.

The Beauvilles have recently played shows with several internationally known acts. What have been the highlights?

The Drive By Truckers show we just played was definitely a highlight, as the Revolution is a beautiful and big venue, with velvet curtains that open up to reveal the concert stage and the performers. Having the curtains open and the lights go up and the audience break into applause before we even played a note is something that can make any group of artists give the audience everything that they have. The Truckers are a furious live act, and their fans were very numerous and very kind to us.

Performing with the Porcupine Tree from London was another highlight; they are all extremely nice gentlemen and world class players, and have influenced countless other bands. I have gotten to have a good conversation with Steven Wilson about music and he is a very uncompromising and visionary artist. John Wesley from that group was very influential in our first EP, Singapore, and we recorded most of the drums off our new record at his personal studio. We were very fortunate to perform with them at the Masquerade before that theater venue was changed. It was great to get to play with them, because at the time we were still touring behind our first EP and it was a show that made us feel that we really did have the potential to break out and do bigger things.

It’s an honor to share the same stage as some of the musicians you’ve listened to for years, but how does it feel when those artists are equally as impressed with your set?

Playing with more fringe acts like the Warlocks, Dead Confederate, or the Black Angels, and these being bands that I have been a huge fan of or have their vinyl records, and after our show together, they approach me wanting to compliment what we are doing, or ask us what the hell we are thinking with our music, or offer help on the road, or even go back to the hotel to raise hell… I think that those moments are some of the most rewarding moments as an artist: to create music and perform and have who you hope to be your peers and fellow artists accept it and enjoy it and understand it and want to help you with it. That means a lot. It makes you feel like you are not alone and not completely mad.

But then again, after the show with Jason Isbell he referred to us as “F-ing crazy”, and I will take that as a compliment as well… although I am not sure that it was meant as one. But I can’t really remember that show at all, I was possessed. I smashed my favorite guitar that night.

The ‘Whispering Sin’ Album Release Show was epic.

Thank you. It was a hell of a show, the people there were amazing, and we felt very appreciative that so many people gave so much of a damn.

What were some of the biggest inspirations behind the new album?

I picture the new album as a silent film being projected on a wall that is a hundred feet long, every song on it being its own little projected rectangle of light and visions and all of them playing at once with no sound. In each of these little motion pictures is every second of everything that has happened to me that I drag together and give legs to and hope that it walks on its own. Not that I was intending on trying to make music for a film that did not exist, but more of the idea that even in what could be called ‘indie rock’ that there can be a movement to the music, it can be epic, it can be diverse, it can be something that you can’t get out of your head because of the hooks and it can also be experimental and dissonant with a purpose and smash some windows out for you. I wanted this to all be on one album and I wanted it to all be non-fiction and I wanted to live it all before I wrote about it. I mean it when I had said in another interview that you can buy the contents of an artist’s soul for ten dollars American currency. This is that sort of album, the kind that you have heard before where sometimes it is hard to believe that the words and notes are true, even if sometimes it just seems like a catchy song. But I promise that they are, we have bled and fought and I have personally dragged my body all over this country and others to be able to play these notes and say these words and convince others to believe and make this music with me. So, even though that didn’t answer your question, I think that the inspirations are all apparent when listening to it. Inspirations are of the moment. So is a recording. Sometimes so is love and cities and airplanes at night and bar fights and epiphanies and the tops of mountains and near death experiences and romance that has been dragged kicking and screaming around alleys basements, and hotel balconies and somehow still is able to clean up nice. They are trapped there together like dragonflies in amber, waiting for anyone to come and pick them up, and hold it all up to the light.

Do you find that you write a lot while you’re actually traveling or do you come home and then your experiences/thoughts create the songs?

When I was in Minneapolis I walked out onto some thin ice on a lake and was horribly scared for one of the first times in my life, and I realized that it was luck separating me from potential death. I have not written about it, but I wrote about what happened afterwards, much of it becoming the song Snow. Sometimes I am just struck with everything, the words the music, the rhythm the melody, the whole thing, like a shock of electric running right into me. Sometimes it is more subliminal, and people places and things that are long gone and dead to me come back and fill me up and for a few moments make me the person I was with them and I can write about it purely. Both of those things are very unnerving, and sometimes I am scared of it either way. Often when I am at the recording studio, I can still be somewhere else at the same time. The best I can explain is it is like when you have a vision, and it is intense even though you are awake and you forget where you are for a moment, but instead of coming back, you stay there and become involved.

Your new videos for Snow and Lips are brilliant. Did you come up with the concepts? Where were they shot?

First let me say that they are only brilliant because of the film makers that made those videos possible, and I am indebted to their vision and faith in my music and this band of musicians. We have been very lucky so far to have attracted other great artists to work with us and help us with our visions.

Snow was produced and directed by Jonathan Wolding and Ground Up Films. The original concept was something that I came up with some time previously about a firing squad video and how it would be devilishly romantic to be executed on screen. It was filmed in Vermont, Florida and a jailhouse in Peru.

The video for Lips was long in the making with Chris Giuffre and Wes Pratt from Galileo Studios. The original concept was collaboration between us and them, and they really tried to compliment the perceptions that they had about the song, and a good friend of ours, Nevada Caldwell was back from LA for a short while and signed on to be the fight club girl. It has a very David Fischer look to it and still they were able to sneak in the Blue Note Album Cover design as well. That was shot at the Czar Vodka Club and the historic Springs Theater.

What’s next for the band?

Next we get off this computer all get back into the van, throw caution to the wind and come and see you.

All of you.

Buy the contents of this artist’s soul for $10 on www.thebeauvilles.net

BEAUVILLES | MYSPACE

(Photography by Nicole Kilbert)