Blushh was never Shab’s plan. Shab Ferdowsi started writing songs in 2015 as a joke before moving to Ireland for a month. She thought it would be funny if she could make some money busking on the streets of Galway while she was abroad. Well, she didn’t make a lot of money, but she did get into the habit of songwriting every single day. When she came back to LA with those new songs, her friends offered to join her band so she decided to give this a shot.
In the fall of 2016 she bought an electric guitar, recorded “Are We Too Far?” in her friend’s garage, and played her first full band show.
In 2017, Blushh released its first EP It’s Fine, followed by a split EP with Maddie Ross that fall. In 2018, Shab learned what power chords are and that’s what you hear when you listen to her 2nd EP, Thx 4 Asking. That fall, the full band headed out on their first West Coast tour.
Within the next nine months, the band (now consisting of Skyler Garn on lead guitar, Kenzo Cardenas on bass, and Arturs Reirs on drums) went on two more West Coast tours, played SXSW in Austin as an official artist, performed at Treefort Festival in Boise to a crowd singing along to Shab’s lyrics, and recorded a full length album.
Blushh’s debut LP R.I.P. Apathy will be out in April 2020 and is the band’s most collaborative project yet.
“Get out of your head, Shab, and stop being so apathetic!” I would tell my younger self.
I wrote “Too Dark” in a time when I was stuck in my head. It’s where most of the songs off our first album, R.I.P. Apathy, came from. I had just moved back home to my parent’s house for the second time, 25 miles away from my social life. Because I don’t drive, I felt stuck physically and emotionally in all kinds of ways. I was 26, never really had a direction I was working towards, didn’t know what I wanted from life, and felt like I had just spent the past few years since college goofing around instead of working towards something real.
After Blushh went on its first tour in the fall of 2018 though, everything flipped on its head. I had never felt more energized or sure about anything before. Adrenaline and excitement made a light bulb explode somewhere inside me and for the first time in my life, I had something to work towards! Something to care about! Playing music that I wrote in my bedroom for people in different places, making connections and building community along the way? It still fills me up with an adrenaline I had never felt before that first tour, and it’s a feeling I can’t ignore.
I’ve always known I’m a late bloomer. I spent all my life until I was 22 just going through the motions of school and so on, blending into whatever space I was in, not really making an effort to be my own person.
This album is a reminder to myself that I have somethings to give a shit about. That I am happier when I get out of my head and focus on the work in front of me, the community around me, and the waves we can make when we come together.
— Shab Ferdowski
