shepup Leads with Love on “For Andy”
In Conversation with shepup on Her New Single & Music Video
BY: Calli Ferguson
photos by Ray Gejon
From sharing sesame snacks to adventuring to Maine for lobster, shepup’s latest single captures the tender joys- big and small- of living a life alongside someone you love. Just about a month into a new relationship, Sheila Flaherty (‘shepup’) wrote “For Andy” from a notes app list she’d been thinking of the things she wanted to do for her partner. Then, she passed the project off to Andy to create a music video from paper animations and 16mm film that the artist likened to “a snowglobe of this world” the couple wanted to share. The result is a visual experience as absolutely charming and whimsical as the auditory one. And in the very same breath, releasing “For Andy” was, in a very real way, an act of bravery.
Ahead of a Birthday Release Show and Music Video Screening at Nightclub 101, shepup sat down with warmly to talk about the song, music video, and her life between being an artist and engineer on a sludge ship…
warmly: I was looking at your website– which is awesome, by the way– and your bio says something like, “…inspired by Okay Kaya and Alice Phoebe Lou, and her adventures as a sludge ship engineer…”. So I'm dying to know A of all: What is that experience like? And more importantly: How does that inform you as an artist and inspire your music?
shepup: I went to school to study ships, so I started sailing on big ships for internships and stuff. I traveled the world for a while on oil tankers and training ships… I thought I was chasing this career of adventure, and I picked engineering. So I work in the engine room, start the engines, and do maintenance and electrical work.
I did the deep-sea stuff for a while– it's a weird lifestyle though. It's not really for me, I realized.
I imagine it’s really intense.
It's pretty intense. The schedule is weird. You go out for three to six months at a time, so you're missing from your life. You live in this different world. And then you come back home and don't work for three months. You do whatever you want, but then you go back out, and you miss key moments of what's happening back on land— like funerals and weddings. You miss out. So I found a job in the New York City harbor where I can work on a ship and go home at night… which is like very rare. It's a sludge ship, so it carries human waste.
I always like to flex by saying, “I work on a ship,” and then I back off by being like, “and it carries like human waste.” But yeah, I somehow snuck into that career. It was very exclusive. And kind of a boys' club… I was the first girl to work there in the marine section in a long time. I work there three days a week, and on my time off I'm able to focus on music and live these two lives. Even though it's three days a week, I still get to live this New York City artist life on the side.
What was it about ships that interested you in the first place?
My older sister sailed on ships. I'm one of four kids, so our vacations when we were younger were very much like camping upstate. Which I do appreciate now, but at the same time, I saw my sister at 19 years old going to Guam, the Philippines, Croatia… all these places I'd never even heard of. And I was really jealous of her traveling everywhere. So I did that for a little while, and I realized it's like you're not vacationing. Maybe you’re in Japan for a night or a few hours.
Do you find that experience works its way into your songwriting in some way?
Definitely! My job is a very weird world, and I work with a bunch of interesting characters. It's just not a normal life at all. I do think it informs my writing. Sometimes I reflect on how I didn't go to music school. Because I really do love music. But I feel like because I went to school for ships, [I have] this adventurous life where I meet crazy people! I have more stories to tell through that experience than I would have if I had studied music.
Totally. So how did you get into music in the first place?
I've been singing my whole life, but always in a chorus setting. When I used to audition for solos, I'd have panic attacks. But then in college, my last year of school– it's a military kind of school, so you're wearing uniforms, it lacks all creativity, everyone's doing the same thing all the time– I was craving art. My last year of school, it finally caught up to me. I started learning guitar with someone I went to school with. Then I took guitar lessons when I moved to New Jersey, after the pandemic. I started writing my own songs, and that helped my performance anxiety… because I was telling my own stories.
Did songwriting come pretty naturally? Was it hard at first?
It was hard at first. I started by writing little poems. I was in a band with someone from back home when I took a semester off from school, and I was mostly singing harmonies or covers. When I was singing his songs, I realized, “Oh, his lyrics are pretty trash.” It truly was reading out his lyrics on a piece of paper, and just seeing how things rhymed, and thinking, “This is not that deep. I can write about deeper things than this.”
It really just takes the audacity. How did that become shepup?
I had these songs in me that I wanted to share. I just started playing open mics and kept feeling called to write and tell stories about things I've gone through. In a lot of ways, it's like therapy for me. If it's constantly on my mind, then I have to write about it. It helps me process things a little better.
So you put out a debut double-release, right? Tell me about releasing a debut.
That was such a great experience for me. I've been recording at this place called Paper Moon Records, and I work with this producer, Jake Cheriff, who's awesome. He's a huge part of my production process. I just came with my songs and guitar at first, and he helped come up with ideas and produce the songs. Seeing it through his lens really was a big part of that release. It went pretty well, [which] ultimately motivated me to feel like people care and want to hear my songs. So why not tell all my stories? I have a whole backlog of music.
That released in 2024, right? Have you been writing this whole time in between?
Yeah. It's funny because at that time, I was like, “I have an album ready. This is gonna be the album.” I started recording, and then I kept writing new songs. And something I learned in that process is that I really love new songs, and I should record songs when they're fresh. Because I get very tired of my own stuff. That's been big. So now I have [something] totally different. Different songs, but I tried to record everything. There's an EP and an album that are almost ready. And some standalone singles.
“For Andy” is so sweet. Why this single now? Why is it coming out first?
That's a good question. My thinking behind it was that I wanted to lead with this song because it's a love song. People really like the song, and I just want to celebrate my relationship. It was nice for my partner Andy to make a music video. We worked on it together, and I wanted them to feel included in the process. I wrote a song for them and wanted to make it like our project.
I want to lead with this love song because I have an EP that's gonna come out that has pretty dark topics and themes of abuse and stuff. But the songs– if you don't listen to the lyrics too deeply– are kind of upbeat, which is why I compare my music to Okay Kaya in some ways. She writes about pretty serious things sometimes, but in a funny, humorous way. Like “IUD”, in that song, she talks about getting an IUD, and it's funny, but it's also serious. I like her sense of humor on darker topics. But with [“For Andy”], I wanted to lead with love before releasing more music.
It is really refreshing to have a love song like this. There's tenderness and almost an innocence to it, where love songs can be so complicated. There's something so safe about the way it feels. Did you have any new musical inspirations for “For Andy”, or the rest of your new EP?
Well, the difference between this and the double-single debut is that I wanted to invite a lot of musicians to play on it. I have a harpist on “For Andy”, their name's Kitba. I wanted to invite different musicians, give them freedom, and see what they thought would work with the song. I just feel like people with their instruments are the experts, so they should have some freedom.
I don't know if they influence my music too much, but I'm really into Allegra Krieger and Katy Pinke. Katy Pinke's a legend in my opinion. I've been into a lot of different music lately. Sibylle Baier influenced the guitar part. And I’ve been obsessed with Alena Spanger as of late.
I love that Andy, your partner, made the music video. It turned out so cool. Can you speak a bit more about what it's like to work creatively with a romantic partner and how it felt to pass the project off to them?
It's definitely a special experience. It was a little challenging at times— there was imposter syndrome from my partner's perspective. I wanted to properly pay them, but they are my partner, so that was like a weird challenge. But I really value their work, especially because it's on 16 millimeters, so a lot of costs go into that. I think we spent 18 hours animating. And the animated sections of the film a total of less than two minutes. So it's hard work, and it really opened my perspective on that kind of film. I didn't know what went into it. But it was definitely rewarding.
I just want people to really show up for the show, see the music video live and support them… more than I'm excited about the song. I want people to really hype up the music video.
The world that the song and video create together works so well. I imagine these things happen when you spend a lot of time with someone. But I didn't realize at first that they made the video— It felt like you made the song and then had a vision for the video. How did you guys choose which little vignettes to use? It felt like little life moments and adventures. I’m curious about the moment in the window… What was your process?
I wanted Andy to come up with the vision; I wanted it to be their project more than mine. It’s like musicians being the experts on their instruments. But we definitely did collaborate. I wanted it to tell the story of the lyrics. A lot of it is pretty direct references. But it was kind of creating this dream world of all the things I want to do in our relationship. Looking back at the demo, it's pretty silly– not silly, but it's very gay– I wrote the song a month after we officially started dating. I was writing lists in my notes of all these things I want to do with Andy, and all these growing moments we've had. So it was like a snowglobe of this world I want for us.
We filmed from my neighbor's apartment into the window. Luckily, I know the neighbors right across the way.
That’s amazing. Now that the song is being released, how do you hope it lives in the world?
I just hope people listen and connect with it.
The challenging thing about releasing it is that I very publicly came out to the world by posting this. Because of my job, I'm pretty secretive about my life. Even though I appear to be this outgoing person, I kept that as a secret at work because I work with a lot of conservative people who are only men. Sometimes it feels like not the safest place for me to be myself. But what a beautiful way to just be like, “This is like this is my love story”. I very publicly outed myself when I announced this release. So I hope for myself that it's gonna be okay at work. And then aside from work, I want people to see this little project Andy and I did together- this big project that we did together- and feel comfortable or inspired to express their own love stories and be honest about who they are.
That's so special. That adds such a beautiful layer to my initial feeling that the song is so safe and sweet– actually, it's very brave too.
You have a show coming up. Tell us about that!
That's on July 14th, and I'm calling it my birthday show because my birthday is the 15th.
Happy birthday!
It's a birthday show! It's a music video screening most of all. And a release show.
It's my first time playing [Nightlub 101], and I'm really excited. We have Fawn Ridge on the bill. They're really good. And then another band called Cal Fish that Andy recommended.
Anything else coming up? Any other releases or shows?
“For Andy” for now, and then in September I'm going on tour. I'll be in Canada with a band called Tractor Beam that I played a house show with a long time ago. It's kind of full circle. So I'm really excited for that. And then I continue northeast for a leg with another band called Keta Ester that I'm obsessed with.
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💿 listen to shepup's "FOR andy" where you listen
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