Interview with Selena’s friend fellow Tejano singer Shelly Lares

tonight selena quintanilla perez is being honored with the grammy award for lifetime achievement to celebrate that we are releasing a never-before-seen interview from our vault an interview long time news 4 san antonio anchor randy beamer did with selena's friend and fellow tejano artist shelley ladis this interview took place right before the covet 19 pandemic at the time shelley said it was only the third interview she had done since her friend's death here's shelley lattis in her own words born and raised in san antonio i come from a musical family and both sides of my my parents were both musically inclined my my siblings a lot of my family on both sides so i grew up listening to a lot of different kind of music i would sing around the house i'd sing in choir at church i would carry my tape recorder around anywhere and everywhere i would be but it wasn't until 1982 that my sister got married and hired a tejano band orchestra they were called hata males band so my sister wanted me to sing a song at the wedding and i rehearsed a song with them but it was an olivia newton-john song it wasn't a tejano song so i remember walking in as a ten-year-old little girl to this band room and opening my mouth and singing you know for the first time and i remember their faces so they made a call to my parents i don't know if it was that night or the next day by the manager and asking if i could go to another event they were doing before my sister's wedding which was on the south side of san antonio my very first performance was at the royal palace ballroom and um i remember a crowd just coming up to the stage and that's when they asked my parents if i could join the band and that's how i was introduced at the honol music so they got me singing in spanish for the first time and doing you know rancheras cumbias all kinds of stuff in spanish and i got them doing english stuff like madonna michael jackson so stayed with that band for about four years recorded 45s and everything and it wasn't until i decided to branch out on my own i wanted i knew i wanted to get out of san antonio i knew i wanted a tour i knew i wanted to have my own band and so we put a band together and you know that was very you're very young yeah i was 10 years old and then i mean i was with them till i was 14. didn't get my first record contract i was 17 and that was the day that you know we talked with the promote my very first uh producer manny guerra and he said you got to go on the road full time if you want this to happen so that's what we did we were green we were green in the industry we knew nothing about being on the road nothing my parents owned a business actually they were my dad was an engraver he made rubber stamps and they closed the business down and we went on the road just the three of us with the band and many records many yeah at that time what was tahana what was the tohano industry like it was mostly i mean there were very few females when i started at age ten there was actually to be exact it was about five um and we would get very little airplay and it was mostly am radio of course um but the excitement there wasn't really like a new generation of diana artists like younger is what i mean there was more of an older following when we first started wasn't until the early 90s you know when myself and selena because we were close the closest in age the other women were a little older than we were um that's when we kind of started reaching the younger the younger kids and really the 90s is when it really started to evolve but so it was kind of still fairly small at the time when we started but also more airplay it seemed like heavy metal in san antonio had what had been the thing was kind of sailing off yeah and the void was and people think well it was the hispanic audience it was all spanish speakers yeah it wasn't no i mean i know for us we didn't speak any spanish i sang in spanish and i would communicate with the with the fans in english and you know even tejano radio at the time would speak very little spanish but it wasn't until they transferred on to fm that it just really exploded and that's when we really started seeing big corporate companies coming into our industry you know major corporations like budweiser miller light wrangler then you had the big uh corporations radio i mean record labels sony capital then everybody started seeing hey there's something here so they all came in and it really really exploded and people and you mentioned selena there that you knew her long before either of you really were oh yeah we had heard of each other because you know like i said there were not very many girls and here we were we were about 10. she was only 7 months older than me so we were very close in age we were very similar with our upbringing we were very family oriented our dads were were pretty strict and you know very much we had a lot of discipline in our household so um we were more excited about meeting each other because we were the same age we met at age 10 here in san antonio at the market square at an event and the moment we met we just we hit it off we were like you know like just two little girls just you know having the same thing in common yeah you had so much in common yeah and now how do you describe her from back then throughout her career personality-wise she never changed she never changed she was always funny would give you the shirt off her back um i gosh in the from age 10 to when you know she passed it we were 23 i think i've only seen her upset like mad like twice she would never be upset she would never be mad she'd always be laughing she'd always be dancing she'd always be playing jokes on you and the funny thing is is that we never talked about music we never hardly ever talked about music we would never talk about our careers we would never talk about you know the success that she was starting to see when she was getting played in mexico you know we never talked about that we would we would hang out and we would talk about things girls talk about shopping guys at the time or you know it was like but never music if we ever had the conversation it was about where she was going like if she's going to leave for a while and she'd call me and the only thing that she would always tell me is she always wanted me to go country she loved my country music she loved the way i performed country she was like shel you need to go into country you need you need to be doing country music after this and that was really the only thing but we never never talked about our you know our careers and she started at least one point singing country i mean she's talked about how she liked country she had to be dragged into honor because she didn't really speak she can sing any genre as well she could sing any genre as well um you know she did like you know 50s music to um you know pop just everything she was like like we're very similar like that you know our her dad was you know what the hanoi musician um and my dad had a conjunto before i was born with his brothers so but we didn't speak spanish growing up you know our parents would speak to us in spanish but we would answer in english so but um we were very similar in that respect so yeah no she could sing any genre any genre there was but and that speaking spanish like your parents you couldn't speak it that was part of the appeal of that generation yeah it was just the norm it wasn't anything you know like because i know for me on a personal level when i started going to like miami and parts of mexico you know people were offended they took offense to it you know they felt like you're not being true to who you are and i was like i am being very this is who i am um from texas this is this is how we communicate we can speak in english and then we'll start speaking in spanish we understand it's our culture we have our own culture you know so they or i would speak in spanish and they would they would kind of like poke at me and say oh i can hear your texas accent i'm like of course you're going to hear it because that's where i'm from you know it's like i didn't feel like i was and same thing with her um she knew she had to learn it more because she was starting to go into you know different areas all over the world that you know more latin areas where that's primarily what they spoke so she couldn't get away with you know saying things in english but she said her had her heart set on i'm gonna learn and she's very focused with whatever she set her mind to so i remember the conversation of her having a you know really start learning spanish but but part of it also for the young people was to kind of i don't say bring them back to their roots but you know for the audience here in san antonio it was kind of a pride thing it was learning it was one way to learn spanish yeah and now it's so it's so different you know now you hear a lot of spanish speaking you know among the young kids so which is great you know i mean every i think everything just evolves differently um and a lot of things come back around some things change i mean it's just that's just the way it is and now you think 25 years since selena you said you you haven't really i don't say talk talk publicly yeah about selena a lot of the fans knew that you know we were best friends that i loved her like my sister and um on social media you know i will share every once in a while like a picture or a thought and it's like the fans just they're so curious about her and they want to know you know they want to know personal things like and i will share some memories but i think where people kind of forget is i didn't i lost a friend you know i lost a friend i lost a sister not her as the entertainer i knew hands down sh there will never be another there will never be another selena i don't care what anybody tries to do that that was she was a force to be reckoned with i mean she was amazing and her music will live on forever but i feel like um i've never tried to you know capitalize on her not being here because that's just not in my heart and there's a lot of memories that i just feel like i want to hold to myself i don't want to share everything that we did and we laughed about it i will every once in a while but this is only the third interview i've done since she's passed and um it it honestly it takes me to kind of a weird sad uh place mentally you know um i'm i'm totally respect what her wishes i mean what her beliefs were which is that right now she's asleep and resting and waiting so i i keep i have to keep that and as far as my our friendship that's my respect for her you know so um i will every once in a while if i'm having a day where i'm really thinking about her um you know i'll post something and they want more like they're they just want more they want to see more pictures they want me to talk about it and it's not that i'm you know being i'm not trying to be rude to the fans or anything it's just that's that was my friend and and i have my own and now what do you think of of how fans you know and younger people and people who didn't know her and people of different cultures and the legacy has seemed to have a life of yeah man i think it's amazing because she very well deserves it if anybody was passionate about what she did and about her fans it was her she genuinely cared about people whether she knew you or not and and if you were able to get close enough to her like physically like to hug her take a picture you felt that from her or even if you weren't even if you were you know in the astrodome and you were on the very top she would still make you feel like you were important that was just something about her her personality her character so i think she very well deserves um you know that they're doing things to continue her legacy i can already hear her in my head laughing about it you know when when little kids dress like her or older people are different people dress like her dance like her sing like her and you know i think i think she would really be happy about it and she she'd love about it she she'd be you know it'd be something she'd enjoy and people also play the what-if game what if she lived because she had talked about so many things fashionable acting and she would have done it all i know there's no doubt she would she would have done it all i mean i know that her clothing and her design were super important to her too she had a lot of things that she was passionate about not just music you know it's like it's almost like she was still real ready and willing to evolve as a woman as a person so as a businesswoman but there's no doubt in my mind that she would have been because no disrespect to any of the pop artists that are out there but they can't touch her to this day vocally performance wise and she probably she would have probably would have been a great actress too i mean there's just there just wouldn't there's just no other that doesn't matter and there's still there was a split then of half of san antonio even half the world who was this person i had no idea with this and hardcore fans and it still seems kind of like that today yeah how do you explain i mean i don't know i mean now people that like you say probably never even heard of her until after her death you know are really starting to appreciate who she was as an entertainer even if they don't even understand spanish you know her music will still make you dance whether you dance cumbia or not you know they're it's going to make you move in some way um i don't know i think it was still you know tejano music was still evolving and and and she was still evolving as an artist so i think there was still so much ground that that she wanted to cover you know she always dreamed about doing english pop music too you know we were here we would listen to janet jackson all the time when we would hang out rhythm nation was like our to-go cd cassette that we listened to when we were hanging out so you know she was a huge janet jackson fan and so she she wanted to go into that as well and you know and she did you know dab shortly before her death into the english market but um i think she was it was just the way that it was supposed to be but also tejano music some people say oh it's because of selena but you know music is cyclical yes and whether or not she would have stayed in it i mean she was already looking to to branch out a lot of people were looking to change music to make it sound a little different yeah and we're all i mean there were other artists before selena you know la mafia artists like that that you know that branched out further than just texas what you know which is the heartbeat of tejano music mostly in our area the south and then you know out of the united states there were other artists that were already ready to do that and that's the beauty of our genre is that we're so diverse we can do any kind of music you know emilio even you know he started doing more country um so that that's the beauty of it it's kind of like our our cursing and a bless and a it's a blessing and a curse because they never knew where to put us but i think artists i think it's to everybody has their own choice whether you want to get away like do another genre altogether or not or stay here or do both i think it depends on the artist for me personally i love being at the hano artist i love performing for tejano fans that allow me in one show to do tejano to do country to do 80s rock whatever i want to do reggaeton mariachi i like that that's just me personally as an artist so we can't hold it against artists that do want to continue to to broaden their career and and get out you know we shouldn't look down on them for that and and and them saying oh well you're forgetting where you came from it's just you know that's some artists want to evolve that way and some don't some are like myself i'm perfectly content being here and gaining new tejano fans is what i try to do personally but some people have and i think it's miscon i don't know maybe you do that after selena passed oh the decline it was a lot of things it was not i personally don't feel it was just because of her death we talked about corporate america when corporate america came in um when she was gone i mean it just so happened time wise a lot of them just bailed on everybody you know they just left they just left the hanoi music when when they felt like we weren't probably giving them the money that we had been giving them before so a lot of things came into play and then a lot of the radio stations started playing more northern and and there's just more money in that you know the mexican fans will pay fifty dollars sixty dollars a ticket to go see their favorite artists whereas sometimes our tejano fans are complaining if it's ten to fifteen dollars so see it's all about money so you know norteno started to come in around the same time so there to me it wasn't just because of her death of course her absence was severely missed but there were other artists that were helping pave the way for te hano music long before she came in too and it wasn't just i remember more banda coming in or hearing yeah you heard more northern more music and and i'm it's still to this day like that they they will be there for their me artists i mean for whatever you know and and i mean it's just how it is and the miami sound i guess that was i don't know it's all kind of morphed yeah everything i mean we gel everything so much so some of us are able to like i said to be able to get out and perform in mexico some of us are not it just it just depends on individually but the industry as a whole i really now i'm starting to feel like we're kind of turned making that turn in a more positive way but it's it's taken you know artists like myself that have been around for 37 years to to remind our veteran artists and our new artists that the mentality has to change everything's changed we have social media now we didn't have social media in the early 90s i said we would have ruled the world if we'd have had social media when the hana music what they call the glory days you know um but we're still out there we're still out there and we're still performing and we're still selling records and you know one of the people that you started started with started introducing selena to i think i'm not sure is chris perez right he was he was your he was my i was the first tejano band he performed with um he when i wanted to get a band together in 88 87 88 another band of my own guys and we wanted young guys we wanted young guys that we could mold and we can teach so my cousin was attending thomas jefferson high school here so my dad spoke to him and said can you get some of your friends and he's like well they're all rockers but and we're like it's okay we'll we'll work with them so he got chris and he got a couple of other guys from from from jeff and i mean i have us on vhs tapes sitting down with him teaching him chord progressions and the you know just the way to play the whole music because he'd never played it before um and that's when he was introduced to her because that was my friend and i'm glad you brought it up because it's one thing i've wanted to say for a long time um it was brought to my attention that he talked about me in his book um you know he mentioned that he had started with me and one of the things he put in there was how he was introduced how she was introduced to him through me and i think i was showing him a video a vhs video of her performance i was either showing him a video or her album i can't remember exactly in the book i didn't read it but i was told and it said something to the effect like oh and i you know she's talking to me about selena and i can see envy in her eyes and i was super upset i was super upset because that was that's far from the truth i had i have never even to this day even even in our beginning days our our glory days to to today have i never felt one ounce of envy as god is my witness for my friend you know so i got a chance to you know to mention that to him later on down the line and he's like oh will you know i had another writer i was like yeah well you still should have corrected it but um yeah so he he came in to the tejano industry through me first um he then then went with like uh albert tiger diaz and then he went with patsy torres and then he went with selena's band so this was a little bit later on down the line it wasn't straight from me to her or straight to her because that is i don't want to say the narrative but that's how i've seen some things you know well if you've seen the movie i've never seen the movie i've never seen the movie i've never watched it um and people like why and i'm like because i lived it in real life a lot of the things that happened so i know what it is and i'm sure you know a lot of it is hollywood um you know um they can't get into every single detail of what happened in her life but um if that's maybe that's where you've seen it because i i mean you know you see on tvc clips of the movie and stuff and i do remember that he was you know rocker he's always been a rocker still is but you know yeah and now some of the personal stuff i guess it was in the movie and after and that i saw because i interviewed him and you know abraham is a strong kind of gruff yeah maybe more than edward james almost was in the movie but i'm sure and then since then i mean they have taken control of that and it's well they've always had control of what they do it's it's it's their livelihood and it's been the livelihood forever since they started since little kids i don't know why people think that that's going to change it's not and it shouldn't it's a family business it started out as one and it will continue to be forever it's who knows i mean i i don't blame them because i wouldn't want someone other than my family or someone that that liv that knows my life and and what i the do's and don'ts and what's the betterment of me for me i wouldn't want someone outside to control that if i'm not here you know i just wouldn't and even when she was here i mean he did everything you know yeah he may have rubbed people the wrong way but at the end of the day it was his daughter and he was going to do it for the betterment of what was going to be best for her but like a lot of people she was looking forward to going to l.a and miami yeah they couldn't i don't know you know it's another what if but she might have branched out from him and you know she was i mean once she got married and was living her own life you know it was it was hard because when you're when you're doing when you're mixing family with business it's hard to separate sometimes um you know because there isn't that separation so i think she was starting to come into her own starting to have her own thoughts her own ideas and her own things she wanted to do and i think all along the line she didn't want to hurt her family she didn't want to go against her dad and you know make him feel like you know that she was going to leave him or whatever the case may be because that was always super important to her how her family felt especially her father but um i think you're right i mean i think later on she probably would have taken more control over herself and i think i think her dad would have would have let that happen but you know i don't but being with her dad and her family since a little girl she was kind of cocooned so there were a lot of things as friends that i had experienced that she hadn't experienced and we were the same age i mean you know she got out of school very young she was homeschooling she was in the industry four or five years before me okay so she homeschooled for many many years i went to school i went to basketball games i played sports she never went to never played sports never really hung out with friends her age she was always around her family and around the business so see i understand her dad's mentality of being she's not ready she's been cocooned for so long you know and i think as she started getting older got married and a little couple years after that that she really started to say hey yeah i'm starting to learn even as as a what 21 22 year old up until 23 when she passed you know i think she was still brand new it was like a like a little kid a lot of times you know so you had to introduce her to things i introduced her to a lot of things um you know just everyday life things that we take for granted um but she didn't experience a whole lot of things she wasn't like locked in her room and she couldn't breathe and it was nothing like that i'm just saying they were all about the music and and being around each other um what are some of the misconceptions that you hear from fans that you know you haven't talked a lot about selena but you go no listen or you get questions about is there anything that comes to mind that you would want to straighten people out on in terms of you know there's always talk about no matter whoever passes away there's oh this she did this or scandal or she didn't get along with this and i don't know do you hear any of that do you guys i mean i've i've seen like things that have been said um you know on on the in the media or whatever um about you know i know they talked about this doctor and they've talked about so many things but i mean honestly i'm not saying that those are true or not true but as her friend i wouldn't i'm not going to talk about it i'm not going to talk about it no matter what you know it's like if my friend ever confided into in me about something it bothers me because what difference does it make she's not here she's not here anymore to defend herself and and i don't think she should have even had to explain herself if she was here and how about when you say 23 that's one of those things that people don't realize she was just 23. 23 years old i mean i think i think back to when we were 23 and it was like we were kids still our mentality was still not like now i'm gonna you know i'm two years away from being 50. my mentality is not you know so there were a lot of things yeah that she was still experiencing and and finding on her own and even after being married and stuff um you know i think she was starting to really realize what was happening you know and and in everyday life but um yeah it bothers me and you know when i hear a lot of people saying oh they need to let her rest now and i mean when you're an artist and you have you know a catalog of amazing music that's never going to stop it's never going to go away and i'm telling you i think the curiosity people have is because her persona was so strong her character was so so vibrant so happy so you just watch her and you just you feel a certain way so i understand that the family wants to keep that going and you know like i said introducing it to to the new generation but that's what that's when we lay our music down in the studio that's forever it doesn't stop whether we're here or not look at i mean look at elvis presley patsy cline i mean they're still doing tributes to elvis presley they're still doing tributes to patsy cline why not to selena and so that you touched on it before you don't blame them for it no they're not capitalizing now that people think this is the family business it still is and i can guarantee you that if selena were here that's what she would want i'm telling you she wouldn't want that for them and this concert coming up um i don't know if it's outgrown corpus christi or yeah it's hard to say i've never and that's another thing fans have asked me how come you've never performed at fiesta de la flor or any selena event and i and i will say this i would come around the family because of my friend because she would always invite me over i would spend my spring breaks over there in corpus christi when i was still in school um my friend's not here anymore so i don't hang out with the family anymore there's no there's really no reason for me to because that was that was our common denominator was her you know that was what kept us knowing each other we're we're civil to each other of course when we run into each other events or whatever but um you know they have their reasons and their artists that they would rather get and that's that's fine you know i'm fine with that i i don't even know if emotionally if it would be something i would be able to do i mean because sometimes i will like throw in a uh you know one of my favorites of hers which is besitos i've done it in my show just like on just you know i would just react and start singing it and the fans are seeing it and even then it just makes me very emotional so i don't know if it would be something i would do one of the questions kind of with that some people are going to see it and say well you're not there chris perez isn't there i i get it i get where people are coming from and um but you know getting artists like you know pitbull and and and people like that i mean i say why not because she was just as much in that caliber if not more than these artists no disrespect to them to these major pop you know latino artists but i think she deserves to have artists like that represent her and be part of her her her tribute you know because i knew that she she probably would have run circles around everybody honestly you know but and now one other thing with that she had talked about what she did was she was doing coca-cola commercial i shot her being photographed for a an agree shampoo commercial i remember that that you know she was i mean that was part of all of you yeah you did and because you were so young you were the only women um how did you feel about that how how did she feel about that as a you know i know she was super excited when she did the co when she got the coca-cola deal i mean she was like because that was unheard of in our industry at the time she was really the first artist i mean um she and emilio were the first ones to get the big corporate you know companies and then i got wrangler and miller light and but i she was really excited about it uh because she liked coke she liked to drink coca-cola and then i mean she just was happy that that somebody a company that big was really taken interest in her it was a huge compliment to her and she she still was like wow can you believe it type thing she never really grasped how much talent she had but that was just the humble side that was just the humble side of her if i you have any other embarrassing personal questions that i should ask on camera no wait what about about 11 years no what i want fans to know is that you know if they don't know already um you know that is someone that will always be special to me and i pray that we will meet again one day um but that was i have the utmost respect from an artist to artist but it doesn't even come close to how i felt personally as my friend and my sister that it's that was like someone we had our own friendship we had our own relationship and and i would i i carry it very close to my heart so you know if i don't talk about it a lot or i don't participate in the tributes it's not because you know for any negative reasons it's just that i just choose not to i choose not to and that's my my choice and i i have that that's every right to do that yeah i want i just want to keep that to myself because especially now in this thing i'm very personable with my fans they know everything there is to know about me believe me they know and i share a lot of things with them but there's certain things that i don't and that's one of them i don't go into a whole lot of details because i mean i have a lot of funny memories if just know that i have a lot of funny memories you know that that we have shared but one that i will share with with the fans because i know they like to know is i really knew that she was someone special to me when i spent a spring break in corpus one one year i got sick i got tonsillitis and i didn't want to come back home i wanted to stay we wanted to hang out and she's like i'm going to take you to the doctor because i was running a fever and stuff and i was like okay and i remember she walked me into the doctor's office and it's just us too and the doctor comes in and you know you know introduces himself and he goes are you her mom and she's like no [Laughter] but we were always joking because she was always so much taller than me and you know she's like you look like a little kid and she would always tease me about that and um and i just never let her forget that but we went to her house and i will never forget she said just lay down rest i'll be back she went and she bought my medications and the next thing i know she's walking upstairs with the little tray of soup and crackers and my medicines and i was like that's my friend that's who i miss and you know the music that's just a given the music is a given but as as a person that's that's why i hold them because they get me emotional and i start getting in this weird place and it's like i'd rather just keep them here and here and now also about your music i don't want to say well i have you here but people have kind of maybe the media have focused on the past so much because exactly what tell me about today where music is here and for you yeah you you you touched on it exactly the way that it has been our mentality is still then then then then you know and for some reason our veteran artists you know are just starting to you know step out of the box push the envelope a little bit musically i personally i've become like a huge mentor to a lot of the new artists i do a showcase now in las vegas every um for the hana music national convention it's called shelly's all-american showcase i started that with sarah chavez because i wanted to introduce the new bands to a higher platform and you know the fans that go to vegas or hardcore the haunted music fans um so i've kind of taken on that mentor i get inundated on a daily questions from new artists and and whatever and i tell them i'm like guys it's not like it was in the 90s anymore because when the dust settled and all the corporate companies were gone who was left standing but maybe very few veteran artists that's it all the joe schmoes that came in with one hit wonders because they all wanted to be part of the hound of music in the 90s are gone so it was like it fell on our shoulders we're like okay huh what are we going to do now to help the new generation um and it's kind of like i was i go back to blessing in a curse because now we have social media some of our new artists feel that because they have followers that they're entitled to a lot of the calling the shots and i was like no it's the one thing that hasn't changed is you still got to pay your dues but um our genre is now we have a lot of digital downloading that's that's how things are nowadays but see a lot of our hardcore tunnel fans don't down digital download music they still want the hard copy cd so they're still in that old school mentality so we're kind of in a balance where we can't go straight to where everything's new technology is different everything's different we have to kind of maintain this balance and i think that's where a lot of the artists are still trying to find it i found mine i know where mine is at but that's up to every individual artist so right now we're just really having to to teach the new artist that it's not just getting up there and singing and taking pictures and you know if first and foremost if you want to be around for a long time and you want this to you want to have the longevity and the stamina in the industry you have to handle it like a business and that's the first thing i've done i've talked my parents taught me that from day one you have to lay down the ground rules with band members with your business with promoters you know there's so many angles that you have to look at it in and i've and everybody's telling me shelley you got to start a podcast because there's so many areas to talk about um but i try to educate anyone that asks me whether they're veteran art i still have my veteran artist even call me it's funny what do you do or what do you think i should do and but i think we're kind of in a in a limbo but we are having we have so many talented new tejano artists that are come up um i just ask the fans we gotta we gotta support it and you do more producing than people would think now as well writing and performing but uh do you see more people like you said you're you're mentoring some after you know after what happened to amelia after what happened to selena that i don't say handicapped but but didn't advance a lot of them were like you know it's it's almost like follow the leader you know and um majority of our artists and musicians i think are that way they're like they kind of want to go with the you know with the person that's leading the way and we have to start to realize that we're all different every tejono artists that you come across are not the same i mean we all have something to bring to the table in some different way in some way shape or form you know one of the most successful things i did was las tres divas eli de reina stephanie montiel and myself we toured all of we toured on the other side of the world but what made us so unique is that we were all three of us female granted in the industry for a while all of us you know over 20 years all together you know like individually rather but we brought different things to the table so if our if our musicians and our artists would have that mentality that hey i can set my own path and and it's going to help the betterment of the industry our tejano artists right now are they're so like this you know and and we need to really broaden our our mentality open up to to bigger and better things for our industry and and that's kind of where everybody is a little stuck but it's kind of coming around do you think it was like that in the 90s i mean you had mazla mafia you had different sounds all you know where now it's i don't know is it the sound all the different sounds are still there even more now there's different that you'd never heard in the 90s but you know like you said they they really do they live in the past and they they is part of it the airplay the focus a lot of it has to do with everything media promoting airplay you know internet station has come out which has been great to us um on the business side it's hard because now some of these internet stations they don't report so we as songwriters and and song publishers we're not getting royalties for airplay so see it's we make a jump forward and we take 10 back it's like you know but it's just they just see oh i'm going to start a station it's the same thing oh i'm going to start singing there's a way that you got to set everything up as a business side you got to do everything you should do everything a certain way but not everybody works that way but there's so many new sounds right now that that are out there man so many talented artists and i think they're just starting to find their way i had a meeting with three of the new girls that are upcoming in our industry because i wanted to pick their brains i wanted to see what they see right now and what they expect and a lot of them are afraid to kind of stand there stand their ground as a woman in the industry and they're like yeah but you're you you can you can call the shots if you want i'm like it was like this from day one i'm talking about like when you get in your band together like guys look i need you guys you're a necessity but you're also an employee it's still gonna be my business i'm like you have it's all communication it's how you carry yourself as a woman and you know our man and how you you get your business going but um i think it's starting to slowly transition our stations are still finding their way but we still have some very hardcore strong dyno stations out there 5 10 15 years from now where do you see tahana where do you see yourself what do you want to do well i i mean i won't be on the road anymore i won't be on the road anymore um because the reason i started shell shock records three my my label was because i wanted to to sign artists um i haven't yet i did that because i wanted to gain control of my music because um we were so in those glory years aside from sony more the independent labels i mean they just man they use this as a mop they they used us and ring that's out and it was just bad we we made him a lot of money and and we never saw it and um so i was tired of that i was tired of going to places like walmart's hebs and not seeing my music there and i'm like i need to know where my music is being distributed where it's not being distributed so that's what made me open my own label and have control a hundred percent control of what i do how i do when i do what i don't do so my goal is to sign artists not only in tejano music but i want to sign other genres so but i don't feel i can give my artists my 150 if i'm still on the road because it takes a lot of time and effort and i don't want to make them feel like i felt that they're just on the back burner but you just played california you got some other dates what where where can fans see you coming hopefully i'm going to d.c working on that right now um we're trying to go back into um idaho well we hopefully going to idaho and washington state for the first time we just did oregon this past year 2019 was amazing for me i was very busy um of course fanfare is coming around so we're we're always excited for the fans we're going to be here in san antonio during fanfare um of course i hit the the strong state i mean the strong cities like you know houston and and the valley and and stuff but this year the goal is to to branch out a little more out of out of state to really you know get the fans going and and continuing to support the hanoi you'll be traveling for a while but not long term not very long uh-uh i still want to be par and everybody's like what are you talking about you're in your prime i'm like i i want to stop doing it while i still love it you know what i mean i don't want to have any like oh man i don't want to get in the van and be like i got to go here i don't want to do that i'm going to i want to bow out gracefully as an as a touring artist i'll still be very involved like i said because i would rather be in the studio producing and writing and arranging than on stage any day that's where i'm most comfortable that's where i love to be on the creative side of of of the music not that i don't enjoy seeing the fans because i've been so blessed with three generations of shelley lottie's fans and um you know it's very rewarding but there's another chapter of my life and there's another part of the music that i want to do as well and i'm that's why i'm trying to educate these younger because i want to pass i want to be able to know that the hana music is in good hands do you have an idea okay three years from now two years i mean do you have it's going to be probably five or less then yeah that's the goal i mean if god has me here before then it's whatever god has for me i mean however long he wants me to be here i just want to be here still inspiring people and and i've told my fans before i would be a tejano artist until i no longer do it or i'm no longer here whatever comes first because this is who i am this is the genre that i am passionate about this is the genre that i want to go on for for decades and years and years and years to come and it's it's a part of my life a huge part of my life and so are your favorite songs that you've done years from years ago or the one you're working on right now i think now i do like the hits because i always tell my fans you can't get to where you're going if you forget where you came from so but what i'm doing now is stuff that i've only dreamed about doing um right now my new my new single that i'm working on is something that i've wanted to incorporate in my music for many years i grew up loving i love glenn miller i love big band orchestra and i always wanted to implement it in my music in some way and i've always known that there's been you know groups in puerto rico colombianos that have done orchestra in the 30s that can definitely you know kind of blend with the hano music so the song that i'm doing is actually from 1937 and i'm actually using a nine piece orchestra um in my in my cumbia on the new on the new record so and it's exciting to see these musicians that have been around for years al gomez ernie cancino these are artists musicians that have played for the best of the best and to see them being challenged and excited about new tejano music see that's what i want i want to continue to do that i'm not creating anything new i'm bringing it back to life and just adding a different spin on it but that's what the hana music is we grab from all different genres are you producing and now is that where do you produce that i produce i work with uh with sevi contreras at slack monster studios that's where i record um so he's like my co-producer he's the he's the hands of what i do because i'm not an easy person to work with because i'm i'm all over the place when i'm being creative like i mean i i can't get the words out fast enough or what i want the ideas fast enough so he'll go take a cigarette break and and i'm working on the music and then i just say okay come back in this is what i want and he records it so but um i love being creative uh i have before i retire i'm i'm i'm already four cds in randy i'm a it and i wish that i can plug a usb right here and i could record it because my life would be so much easier but that's the the fun part is the process i'm going to do a duet cd um i do want to do uh in my duet cd it's going to be with the hana artists but it's going to be different genres i want to know what their influences are whether it's jazz or or rock or tejano or mariachi so it's going to be duets but the genres it's going to be a lot of different things but with the hana artists because i know how versatile they are and i do want to do a country album um only because my friend always asked me to do one and i have christian music that i want to record too so but i'm they're already done in my mind you've got a fast mind in my head they're done that's cool they're done

Channel: News 4 (WOAI) San Antonio

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Id: JHTxFlBObSU

Length: 49min 17sec (2957 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 14 2021