Playing make believe with Tei Shi.
An interview with Valerie Teicher, Colombian-Canadian singer-songwriter better known as Tei Shi.
Born Valerie Teicher, Colombian-Canadian singer-songwriter Tei Shi is known for blending pop, R&B, and electronic sounds into an otherworldly experience. She just dropped her second independent album Make believe I make believe in August of this year, featuring singles “Best Be Leaving” and “Drop Dead” and is now on tour in the Americas and is headed to Europe next year.
Having just caught her live in Chicago on October 30th, I can say that Tei Shi isn’t only a musician, but she’s a true artist and performer. I got a chance to chat with this brilliant mind amidst her tour and learn more about her tour experience, artistry, fashion, and more.
Hi, how are you? How are you feeling?
I'm good. I'm good. I'm a little bit both drained and energized from this tour. I'm having a couple of days at home right now to recharge
How have you been feeling about the tour so far? How was your last show in Mexico?
So the Mexico City show was great. It was a little chaotic as, you know, you're always dealing with new challenges every day in a different space, and it was my first time playing there. So just learning the way that, you know, that things work in different places can be a little hectic, but it always is—by the time the show comes, somehow everything is sorted out. It was one of those where there were a lot of challenges throughout the day, but then everything came together really beautifully for the show. And it was great.
It was so much fun just going to a brand new place for me, and seeing and meeting all these people who I feel like—the fans there have been waiting for a really long time for me to go do a show there. So I could really feel that. Their patience and their familiarity with all of the music that I was performing and just—it was emotional, I think, for me and for them, and it was just really, really special getting to connect with them and also just getting to know Mexico City, such a beautiful, amazing place. So it was great.
I think overall, that's how I'm feeling about the tour.I feel like this tour is really—the crowds are my real ones. It really feels like the people that are there are really, really there and just really present, and they really wanna be there, and they're really excited. And it just really gives me a lot of energy to feel that from the crowd. And then, you know, I feel like I can summon that in myself and give it back to them. It's been really fun performing this album because the music still feels pretty new and fresh to me. So it's just been really fun. It’s been really rewarding and in the really just intimate ways of, you know, connecting with other humans and yeah.
I'll say, the Chicago show was really so amazing. Well, first of all, the visuals for this tour are absolutely gorgeous.
Thank you so much!
I can really feel the energy. I feel that with your music, you truly curate a really, really specific fan base that I can feel the love. I felt the love in the room. So I'm glad you're feeling that as well.
I definitely feel it, and I can also acknowledge that it's not normal. It’s a rare thing, I think, to have that kind of fan base. And, yeah, the Chicago show was so awesome. I'm still thinking about it. It's so fun.
Well, on that note, just to talk more about the album, this is your second independent release, which is super duper cool. Could you just talk a little bit about the process of creating it and how did the process of Make believe, I make believe differ from your process with creating Valerie?
Yeah, it's so different. Once I released Valerie, I felt I just dumped years of stuff that emotional baggage that I'd been carrying and a lot of things I'd been holding on to that had kept me from really focusing on the future, you know. And so Valerie, I started writing that album while I was still in a label deal and had, you know, a label and management deal and [was] tied to this structure and this team.
And I was really at that time wanting to release something quickly and just keep things moving. And I was writing these songs, basically trying to get my label to let me release them and like, hitting a wall, hitting a wall and eventually realizing that, you know, that partnership was not really going anywhere and turned. And so I was writing all these songs while this was all happening and while I was feeling frustrated and betrayed and neglected and, you know, all these things.
And so, the music was really charged with that experience. And then by the time I was able to release it, it was almost three years later and I had gone through, you know, getting out of my deal and getting independent. Building and all of these things. So by the time that album came out, it was almost a three year process. And so after that, I said, you know, okay, I'm fully independent now, nothing is in my way.
Nothing is stopping me from releasing another album tomorrow if I want to. So I really made that intention that I want my next thing to be something that I can make quickly, at my pace and turn it around and get it out there, you know, as quickly and in the way that I want to do it. And so I really liked the intention with this album from the beginning. I made a really clear goal of booking a studio for a week, bringing my collaborators with me and coming out of that week basically with an album.
And that was really how it went. And then I had all the songs. After that week, I had, you know, the vision. And then it was, I think, seven or eight months after that of just tinkering and tweaking and finishing things and really getting it to come together as an album. And I really just wanted to prove to myself that I could make an album in this way and make an album as quickly as I wanted to because just in the past I'd felt so frustrated by not being able to move at my pace.
So yeah, it was very different in that way. It was very different because I didn't have, you know, a label. I didn't have a manager. I didn't have these other voices contributing to the process and, you know, casting doubts or, you know, trying to influence anything. Really just me making all the decisions and guiding and obviously working with my two collaborators, but in a way that all of us felt so free and not interrupted by outside forces.
So in that way, it was just completely different, honestly, than all of my past albums, and it made for an environment and for music that feels a lot more joyful and competent and where I was really having fun creating it and releasing it. So, yeah, it was really a new experience of making an album for me.
With that, you were speaking about collaborators. One song off the album that I truly adore is “222.” I just want to ask a little bit about your experience collaborating with Loyal Lobos on the track and how did you guys end up connecting and all that?
It was one of those things where we were following each other and seeing what each other was doing. And I feel when I found her music, I saw a lot of myself in it because I was listening to these different singles she'd released and they were all quite different sonically. Really different. And she sings in English, she sings in Spanish, and she has—you know, she's Colombian, but she's also lived in the U.S. For a long time, she is straddling these two cultures. I felt really seen in that.
We ended up meeting in 2023, I think. I was doing a tour and I asked her to open for me. And so she came on the road and she supported me for some of those shows. And we met and just got along really well. And for a while after that, we're just saying, you know, we should get in the studio, we should make something together. It was honestly one of the easiest collaborations I've ever done.
We did a day in the studio with the producer we worked with, with Noah Barrison, who also worked on the rest of the album with me, and we just had so much fun. It was just like being with a girlfriend, you know? You're just laughing, you're joking around, and through just talking shit, really. We came out with this song. I felt like we were just high school girls together or middle school girls together you know just giggling and being girls and it was just really fun to have that energy come through in the song ‘cause I haven't really made much music in that kind of environment where it's… yeah! It was a new experience for me and also working with someone who completely understood my way of expressing in English and in Spanish. We were able to really put the song together and these lyrics together that made sense almost only to us in some ways. I know that they resonate with other people, but it felt really personal in that way, where we really understood each other.
Yeah, I love that song so much and she’s so much fun to work with. I just really love all of the music she makes. So I’m sure we’ll do more down the line.
On the note of collaboration—as an artist myself, who leans away from doing collaborative work, how do you use collaboration as a tool to develop your work, but also yourself as an artist?
It's a delicate balance and it's really specific. Everybody requires their own balance with collaboration. I now understand what parts of making music I'm better at doing on my own and what parts I really benefit from being in the room with someone else.
For me it depends, I do a lot of my lyric writing, a lot of my melody and lyric writing, I find that I have to be on my own and remove myself and just be very isolated with myself. But when it comes to the initial inspiration, sometimes it's hard to create that for yourself. Sometimes it's easy, but other times it's really helpful to have collaborators and people that you trust, who you can say,, “Hey, do you have any instrumental ideas lying around? Do you have any beats? Or do you have any things that, you know, that you've been working on?” A lot of the time, I'll have friends send me things like that and one of those things will just immediately give me a song idea. Then from there, a song is born.
Maybe I'll take a month or something on my own to just work off of it and get the lyrics and write the song and then go back in with that person and say, ”Okay, I would love to hear drums like this” or “I would love for you to play guitar or…”. You know, because I'm not an instrumentalist. I just love working with musicians who are really good at their instruments and being able to guide it, but also let them add flavor and stuff that I can’t myself. It's just been a learning process… I definitely went through years of trying to collaborate in ways that weren't actually really effective for me and through that discovery, okay, this is actually how I like to collaborate. And it's okay to collaborate and then say, “I actually need to take this and work on it on my own for a few months. And then actually, I would really like to bring in this other person, you know, who does this really crazy stuff and could bring, you know, something different to the song.”
So for me, collaboration is so much fun! It really does a lot for me. But I do feel that I always need to be setting the intention and be the one bringing the through line of what I’m envisioning. It's really a balance. It is different for everybody. Some people are really good at just sitting in a studio with a bunch of other people and writing a song from scratch like that. Some people just get really shut down in that environment and need to just be by themselves at home. It’s a learning process of what works for you. I feel that I've finally figured that out for myself in the last few projects.
On a different note, I adore your fashion sense. Your look at the Chicago show with the hair clips was so fun, and looked really good on stage. Through the years, I’ve seen your looks and I feel that your fashion sense and self-expression—to me you’re up at the top in terms of visuals. Your visuals truly speak to me. I wanted to ask how you feel your sense of fashion and self-expression ties into your world as a musician and a performer? And the significance of that to you?
I've always loved fashion, since I can remember. I've always loved fashion. I've loved vintage clothes and discovering as a kid. I would always want to wear my grandma's clothes and my mom's clothes. I just love this art form of fashion, wardrobe, aesthetics, design and all of that. It's always been something that's been a part of my identity and so it's an extension of me as a creative person.
Similarly, to the collaboration thing, it’s something that I had to figure out for myself how to tie it in with my music in a way that felt natural and not forced. When I first started releasing music, playing, and touring. I had this thing, a lot of young women feel, maybe more at that time than now, but of if I want to be taken seriously as a musician I can't be this super-fashionable pop girly or whatever, because, people will just think, “oh, she's, you know, she's a singer and she's just, the face of it, but she's…” So for some time, I didn't want to lean into that side of myself as much, but then I really realized how much fun I have doing photo shoots and doing all these things that I started being able to do.
It really was once I met my really close friend who's also the stylist that I normally work with—not on this album—but I've been working with her for eight years at this point. I've known her for a really long time. She's a really close friend and she was kind of the first person that I met that was like, “Let me help you connect these dots, see what you like and your aesthetic and the way you dress day-to-day. Here are the designers that you should be looking at. Here's some really exciting you know people that we could create with.” She really helped me figure out how to collaborate in that way and have so much fun doing it but also take it seriously and respect it. Over time, I've just really let myself lean into that side of things and enjoy it, because even if I wasn't an artist, even just in my daily life, I've always loved curating, and putting looks together, and doing myself up, and the whole thing. Now I feel the two things can really live with one another. I have so much fun doing it!
Has dance ever been a significant part of your life? Your dance in your live performance is a really beautiful part. And I just wanted to know if that dance had a similar significance or if it's something that just comes to you in that moment?
Yeah, it’s really similar to the fashion thing. I grew up dancing, I did ballet from when I was about three years old until I was 15, and other types of dance too. Dance was a really big part of my life growing up. I had left it behind when I was around 15, and so by time I started making and releasing music, and my career as a musician, I hadn't done dance at all. I’d really put it aside. It was later on where I started rediscovering it and realizing this is actually something that brings me so much joy and is also another form of creative expression that is free of these other pressures in music. Feeling like, “okay, I have to make a living and I have to do these things.” So dance was his untouched, fun thing that I was able to reconnect with.
I think it was during the pandemic, I started just doing ballet classes at home again, and just getting into it. It started influencing the music that I wanted to make. Being more conscious of wanting to make music that I could move certain ways to and that I knew that I could perform live and use my body with. It’s become a much bigger part of my whole thing in the last probably four years.
And for this tour, especially, I just wanted to have certain moments of the show where I got to do that. So there's a few moments sprinkled throughout the show that are more choreographed. But for the most part, aside from those, I'm really just moving around in the moment. I like to feel that freedom and that spontaneity during my performances and know that I can throw myself on the ground if I want to, or I can be very pose-y, or I can just switch it up. Or if I want to reach over to somebody and have a moment. It is very much in the moment, but it has these little milestones throughout it that are more intentional. It’s a mix.
Just to touch back on that album, do you have any favorite songs from the album? Are there any standouts or do you feel that the album, as a whole, is it a collective story rather than it being individual standouts?
It is a collective, but I do have my standouts. They change, all the time. Lately, I'm really feeling with the live show, “Don't Cry.” I'm really, really liking performing that one live because it starts in this one sonic place and the second and half of it really changes and it turns into this intense, ragey moment. I hadn't really felt that song come to life completely until I performed it live. And I can tell that people really respond to it live. Right now, that's the one I keep going back to just because it's been so much fun to perform.
Are there any other songs outside of the album that you find particularly really fun to perform?
Oh, yes! So, one that I find never fails is from my first album, actually. It's called “Justify.”
I was hoping you would say that. I love that one so much!
That one, whenever I bring it back, and put it in the set, I'm like, “I need to always perform this song.” It's a side of me that comes out in that song that I don't know if I tap into in other songs. I understand why people react to it so strongly in the shows because it starts off in this meek, whispery thing and by the end of the song I'm wailing into the mic. It always hits and it always makes me feel so powerful! I brought that one back for this show and I'm having so much fun doing it. AndI love also that at this point, it's eight years old, it's from my first album, but people are still want to hear it and they love hearing it. It still feels fresh to me.
I know you’re still on tour, and have an Europe tour coming up this next year, but I have to ask: is there anything coming up that your fans can look forward to?
Yeah, so definitely more music, more collaborations. Now that I’m moving around a lot because of tour, I want to try and make music with people in these places that I'm going to. I'm hoping that some fun collaborations will come out of the Europe tour in particular.
Also, potentially some collaborations in the fashion space, because I'm trying to do more in that world. And, I don't say too much, but something cool for next year will be coming that is more in that space.
Just more performances, not tied to this album necessarily, but I started doing some jazz shows last year where I was performing my music, but also other classical songs that I love with jazz trio. I loved those shows so much. I definitely want to continue this side of doing shows, but outside of the box of what I'd normally do. Those are some things that I think next year will bring.
Well, thank you so, so much for your time and your very super thoughtful responses. I loved hearing every one of your responses. Thank you!
Thank you for all the great questions. Thank you.
Listen to Make believe I make believe now.
edited by Taylor Pate.
photos by Talor Pate.
