THE SPINE STEALERS

A Conversation with the Witches of Folk, Emma O'Shea and Kate Ruland of The Spine Stealers

Interview and Photos by Tommy Moore

Emma O'Shea and Kate Ruland of The Spine Stealers Photographed by Tommy Moore

Truck stop dive bars and dim lit Northwoods docks, these are the places that come to mind after listening through The Spine Stealers short, but powerful, discography.

The duo of Emma O’Shea and Kate Ruland have only been making music for a little over three years, but in that short time, the two have laid the groundwork for what I believe to be one of the more exciting projects in the folk world. The pair has spent the majority of their lives in and around Wisconsin, and they tell tales of both their sentiment for the beauty of the Midwestern landscape, but also their longing for an escape to unfamiliar landscapes.

They call it spooky folk, I call it the perfect soundtrack to a lonely morning on the road. I caught up with Emma and Kate to dive into their bittersweet start, their Midwest roots, and what they’ve got coming down the pipeline.

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Emma O'Shea and Kate Ruland of The Spine Stealers Photographed by Tommy Moore

Tommy Moore: How did this all start?

Kate Ruland: It was immaculate conception, really.

Emma O'Shea: Mother Mary, gosh, ya.

Kate Ruland: So it started back in, I will say September of 2020, was when we really started this mild effort to learn guitar. From there, once we started to get a general grasp on just playing the instrument, some songwriting came after that. It was still COVID times there wasn't much going on. We were both living at home, in our hometowns, because of COVID.

Emma O'Shea: It felt almost like we were little kids, because we just had literally nothing else to do. So we'd be like, “Should we work on songs tonight for no purpose?” We weren't putting anything out. We were just like kids trying to build a sandcastle in a sandpit, and it was like the CEO of sandpits trying to get you to finish your project for no purpose.

Emma O'Shea and Kate Ruland of The Spine Stealers Photographed by Tommy Moore

Kate Ruland: It was definitely new-hobby-mode. Life just kind of gets away from you and it had been a long time since I was putting new energy into learning something. Having all the time and being in a really comfortable and familiar place to foster new growth was something I think played a big role in our ability to kick start things, because things have gone pretty fast for us. That played a huge role in it. We started just getting drunk and writing songs. Then we started doing the Mickey's open mic Sunday nights at 10pm. That was in July of 2021, and we were both still living at home. So we would come down late on Sunday nights and perform the few songs that we had written. We were meeting a lot of new people, and at the first open mic we met Tim from Able Baker, and he was like, “Hey, you guys should open for my band at the Bur Oak.” And we were like, “Shit, okay,” and that was a month away or something like that.

So then we were like, “Well, we need to start preparing real songs, I guess.” We were both deathly afraid. I was actually physically shaking at the first open mic. Open mics are not a high stakes environment necessarily, but it was definitely nerve wracking. So that's really the start of it. Truly the very beginning, in a nutshell.

Tommy Moore: It's like looking back to the sandbox days when you're building things without any real goal. Now that it's a little more structured and there's things that matter more now, how has it changed how the writing process works or how it all feels? 

"...there was an innocence to the writing. It was that childlike energy when you don't have this notion in your head that it's going to be perceived by people."

Emma O'Shea and Kate Ruland of The Spine Stealers Photographed by Tommy Moore

Emma O'Shea: When we were first writing stuff, it was just like coming up with random chords, and then basically putting it to a lot of poetry that had already been written in like college. It feels like we're both taking on roles in songwriting. Kate will write chords, and I'll write lyrics, or vice versa. But there hasn't been as much of a collaborative, figuring it out on the spot, type of thing.

Kate Ruland: Honestly, the writing has really slowed down as the project took momentum. That's just because the focus was diverted into the plethora of other things that come up when you realize that we're in a band now, and we have other logistical things to figure out. You get really swept up in the newness and the firmness of it. There's a lot of inspiration that can definitely be drawn from that, but there was an innocence to the writing. It was that childlike energy when you don't have this notion in your head that it's going to be perceived by people. You can be a lot more authentic with what you create. Regardless of how much you can drown out the noise of the perception from your audience, you are just more conscious of who you are writing to, even though it is very much just you creating something for yourself, first and foremost. 

"We started just getting drunk and writing songs." - Kate Ruland

Emma O'Shea and Kate Ruland of The Spine Stealers Photographed by Tommy Moore

Tommy Moore: You hit it on the head with how it started off in a very innocent way. The innocence starts to fade away a little bit when there's more of an importance to everything, or there's an actual direction for things. With all that, how important has the Midwest and all the landscapes you grew up around been to your process?

Emma O'Shea: I think that it's just where we grew up, so of course you find some sentimentality, attachment, and nostalgia to the environment that you're in. I went to school up north, so a lot of that inspiration came from experiencing heartbreak, or just melancholic emotions, which I feel like a lot of our songs have to do with up there in the woods. Like with West Texas, I was going out into the Southwest and the South, trying to be in escapist mode. I feel like there is a sense of melancholy that comes from areas that are more rural.

Kate Ruland: It's writing about what we know. It's also such a beautiful place. It's hard not to draw comparisons and personify certain things about this place that we really have no choice but to love. Not in a bad way. I lived in the city for quite a few years, which is not parallel to a lot of the energy, in terms of the landscape described in the sound, but some of the stories that I try to tell are from that time of me living there. But there's been a lot of coming home in these last few years, and a lot of the songwriting and just being in the band has helped. There was a long time where I was running away from the Midwest, and in the past few years, it's been nice to reconnect with that part of myself that has always been there.

"We were just like kids trying to build a sandcastle in a sandpit, and the CEO of sandpits is trying to get you to finish your project for no purpose."

Emma O'Shea and Kate Ruland of The Spine Stealers Photographed by Tommy Moore

Tommy Moore: Would you say the stuff you guys are working on has that coming home feel?

Kate Ruland: Yeah, definitely.

Emma O'Shea: We're still figuring out different ways that we can play differently and things that are interesting to us, because we're still learning. But I feel like originally coming back was sort of, at least for me, forced upon in a way because of the pandemic, because we had to move home and back in with our parents. I wouldn't have moved back home, if not for the pandemic, at least not at first. We had different experiences to reflect on, because there was nothing else to do. You can't go anywhere, you can't do anything. So all you could think about, in sort of a nostalgic light, were these things, good and bad, that happened.

Tommy Moore: What was that feeling, especially in such an in-between time? I think COVID was that for a lot of people. Was that where the spooky folk feeling comes from, or is that just the natural path that things took?

Emma O'Shea: That's the natural path. I feel like maybe we're pretty similar in this way, but I tend to look at things pretty melancholically, and I don't think that that's a bad thing. I think that that is something that I gain inspiration from. 

I feel like the melancholic side of life, or the sad or darker sides of life, are admirable to avoid, but I think now, everybody knows that it's a good thing to pay attention to. It's the yin and yang, I suppose. The darker side of things, or the loneliness or whatever, can seep into just generally existing. Obviously, deep into that.

Emma O'Shea and Kate Ruland of The Spine Stealers Photographed by Tommy Moore

Tommy Moore: We've talked a lot about loons in the past, and I think there's something very special about thinking of sitting on a dock in the middle of the night and hearing a lone loon call over the lake. There's something so melancholic, sad, and beautiful about that. When I think about the Northwoods, those nights are some of my favorite reflection moments. I feel like that feeling is very similar to what you guys have built and created.

What are you guys working on now?

Emma O'Shea: We're nearly finished with our album. It's been a frickin year and a half, but we've nearly finalized it. I think we just need two more recording sessions, and then we're done. That's supposedly going to be 10 or 11 songs. 

Kate Ruland: It is a little bit daunting thinking about everything that's left, but also a little bit sad. Because it's nearing a certain benchmark or finish line of something that has been in the works for a long time. I'm sure it's gonna be really celebratory, and everything, but thinking about what's next, it’s important to not get too far ahead of ourselves. 

"I feel like there is a sense of melancholy that comes from areas that are more rural."

Emma O'Shea and Kate Ruland of The Spine Stealers Photographed by Tommy Moore

Tommy Moore: It's always a weird feeling. It's a similar thing with books, where every six months, a year, whatever it is, one rolls out the door. And then it's the whole process over again. It's such a beautiful thing, but also mentally exhausting.

Emma O'Shea: Yeah, and maybe that's why we've been kind of enjoying the process or haven't rushed it too much. It's our first album, there's definitely a huge desire for it to be finished and done with, but also somewhat of a desire…it's intimidating the idea of being done with the album and then required to write more.

Kate Ruland: We want it to be really reflective of us as well. It’ll happen in due time. We want something that we're happy with overall, and we definitely are.

Tommy Moore: It's one of those things where you want to craft something where you listen back in 20 years, and it still resonates in the way that you feel. 

Emma O'Shea and Kate Ruland of The Spine Stealers Photographed by Tommy Moore

The Spine Stealers

Photos and Interview by Tommy Moore

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