Gary James' Interview With
Maggie McClure and Shane Henry Of
The Imaginaries



They are a husband and wife duo that has made quite a name for themselves in the music world. Their latest single, "Whole Lotta Livin'" features Vince Gill on guitar. The pair will have a featured track as well as an on-camera performance in the biopic Reagan (about President Ronald Reagan) starring Dennis Quaid, which will be released to theatres on August 30th, 2024. The duo also wrote and produced the soundtrack for the feature film A Cowgirl's Song, starring Cheryl Ladd, Savannah Lee May and Darci Lynne. They opened for Judy Collins and John Waite in 2021. Their songs have been featured in various Hallmark Channel movies, including My Christmas Love, Redemption In Cherry Springs, and feature films like Infamous. The duo we are speaking of is Maggie McClure and Shane Henry.

Even before they met and married their solo careers were pretty impressive. Maggie opened for Sara Bareilles and had over fifty of her original songs placed on TV shows like Dr. Phil, Cougar Town, The Real World, The Vineyard and The Hills. Her songs were also featured in the TV movies One December Night, Cowgirls N' Angels and A Cowgirl's Story. She also had a recurring role on ABC's The Middle. She sang the National Anthem at the very first NBA playoff game in Oklahoma history with more than 18,000 people in attendance, and did it again at the official halftime show at Madison Square Garden for the New York Knicks along with Shane. To date, Maggie has released five solo projects.

Shane has toured with B.B. King, Etta James, Buddy Guy, Joe Bonamassa, Jonny Lang, George Thorogood, Johnny Winter, The Neville Brothers and Grand Funk Railroad to name just a few of the acts he's shared the stage with. His songs have been featured on NBC, CBS, the Disney Channel, the Hallmark Channel and the E! television network, as well as in multiple feature films such as Approaching The Unknown. To date, Shane has released four solo projects.

The couple has been featured in publications such as American Songwriter, Huffington Post, Parade, Guitar Player magazine and Cowboys And Indians magazine. They've also appeared on Fox News and AXS Network. Why are Maggie McClure and Shane Henry getting all this attention? Because they're just so good. That's why.

Q - From everything I've been hearing, there's no money to be made from being on the road anymore. At least that's what the musicians I've been interviewing have been telling me. I've even been told in the future no one is going to be able to tour. It will be too expensive. That being said, you're out there touring. What, if anything, do you two get out of being on the road?

Maggie - Well, we really missed touring during COVID and we had been planning for awhile to get back on the road once we finished writing and recording all this new music. There's nothing that can replace just playing show after show, night after night. It's been really fun to remember how that feels when we're playing all these shows. We get tighter every time. It really makes a difference. There's no substitute for that.

Shane - We aren't making a lot of money on the road. As a matter of fact, we're losing money to go out on the road. It's a tough time to be a musician and consider it your sole source of income. During the pandemic I started an Airbnb business. I'm lucky enough to be in a different position for Maggie and I to be able to invest in our music career and get out there and play shows and try to make fans 'cause how else are you going to connect with people if you're not out there doing it?

Q - I don't even know, do you you have a record deal, or are you putting your music out on your own label?

Shane - We're completely independent. I'm financing all of this essentially for us to be able to do it.

Q - That must be really expensive.

Maggie - Yeah.

Shane - Yeah. It's to the point where, should they have their heads examined? (laughs) They're probably crazy people. They could buy a house for what they've sunk into this album. It's a lot of money.

Q - How did the two of you get to be a part of this new Reagan film?

Maggie - Well, it's actually a really cool story. It was filmed in October, 2020. So this has been a long time coming. It started with us being cast as the band for the Inaugural Ball scene. The casting director asked me to help put the band together. So, I actually submitted many different people for each instrument. So, it started there. We got cast as the band. We brought all of our vintage gear to use in the scene. It's 1981. There's nothing worse than watching a movie and seeing the musicians are not in synch with what you're hearing. (laughs) And so, we kept asking the producers, "Can you guys tell us what song we're supposed to be playing on camera so we don't look like idiots?" It took awhile, but we finally got an answer. The film wanted us to play, or pretend to play Frankie Valli's "My Eyes Adored You". I guess that was a real special song for the Reagans. We got cast and we asked what song we'd be playing and then we got the idea to go ahead and record our own version of that song and bring it to the set because we thought the film may actually end up needing it. Obviously we're not Frankie Valli. Shane is 6' 5" (laughs) Fast forward, they've ending up using the song. They're licensing our version of the masters for "My Eyes Adored You", which is really exciting. So, you will hear us and you will see us. Now, we haven't seen it yet, so we don't know how featured we are. But yeah, you should at least get a glimpse of us and be able to hear us. So, it's pretty cool.

Q - When you tour, what type of venues are you performing in?

Shane - Right now we're playing a lot of singer - songwriter rooms. So, it can be anywhere from a two hundred cap (capacity) room and sometimes it's venues that have maybe a restaurant / bar that has an outdoor stage. It's kind of a conglomerate of different venues

Maggie - We play house concerts. We play outdoor festivals. We just did a really cool festival in Hendersonville, Tennessee. Most of the shows are just the two of us as a duo, but when there are bigger budgets and they want a band, that's always fun for us to get to play with the band, and so we've had and handful of those. And quite a few more coming up.

Q - Both of you had solo careers before you met. How did you meet? Did someone introduce you?

Shane - Well, it's pretty funny you mention that. We met through music. Music is really what brought us together. My keyboard player that I connected with when I was a sophomore in high school; I grew up in a small town, there was not music in my school. I started going to the Oklahoma City Blues Society Blues Jam to connect with musicians and I can't remember if it was at one of the Blues Jams or if it was at a movie store where I met a keyboard player named Jim Robinson, and Jim played on my first album I recorded when I was 16. Fast forward, I had a season where I moved to Minneapolis. I was there for about three years. When I moved back to Oklahoma I was 21, 22, somewhere in there, and put a lot of the same musicians that are together for a lot of gigs coming up. I remember Jim saying he was teaching piano lessons to this girl and she'd only had the opportunity to play like Borders Book stores. Maggie opened a show for me at this place, The Red Door Cafe, probably in 2004, and we met. Oddly enough, Jim is now married to her mom and so it's just a whole musical connection. That's really what brought us together. Fast forward to now, how we came together to doing The Imaginaries, basically from 2009 forward we started playing together a lot in that scene and so I would go out and play guitar with her and sing background. Then, they put me on the roster and I would get a gig and she would kind of come and do the same thing. So, we started backing each other up a lot, on our own as musicians, supporting each other. Then when we moved to L.A in 2011, 2012, we started writing and producing songs with other artists and for other types of things. We started learning to collaborate more as far as writing is concerned. I think it was just the natural path that led us to be The Imaginaries. But we had this opportunity that came up in 2018. We had this house that had black mold in Burbank and we had to move out. So, we moved to a friend's recording studio house and while we were staying with him for about four months he introduced us to a guy, John Cuniberti, who was doing this YouTube series called "The One Mix Series", and the premise of the series was they were putting one microphone in a room in legendary studios and recording a band around that one microphone as if it was picking up everything. The mix. The whole thing. It was a super cool opportunity. And so, he had submitted both of our independent music. We get a call about two weeks later from John and John says, "Hey guys, I love what you're doing, but I've only got one slot. Can you all just do something together?" And so, of course we said yes because the opportunity was to go to Muscle Shoals Sound Studios to do this One Mic series and we wanted to go there. So, we showed up down there. We met with a bunch of local Muscle Shoals studio musicians and rehearsed and did the One Mic series. That was kind of how our band started. It was just an opportunity that someone else had given us. Once we actually did it, we felt pretty inspired. We felt pretty fired up and kind of had this new found love for music, I think.

Q - When you toured with George Thorogood, Joe Bonamassa and Grand Funk Railroad, you had your band, didn't you?

Shane - That was my solo band. I was signed and did a record with Double Trouble in 2004. At the time, I was doing Blues / Rock music. I had a trio and sometimes we'd bring out a keyboard player if we had the budget. So, that was all Rock and Blues / Rock kind of stuff.

Q - Did you get to talk to any of the people you opened for?

Shane - I did. Pretty cool. I got to meet Etta (James) and sit backstage and talk to her a little bit. I remember meeting Johnny Winter on his tour bus. On the B.B. King tour we got to go on the tour bus and basically listen to B.B. King tell stories, which was one of the best experiences in our life because he had so many insane stories to tell. He had been doing music his whole life. I remember sitting in back of the tour bus with Kenny Wayne Shepherd, just thinking, how am I here right now? Pretty cool.

Q - It sounds like you were treated well by these people.

Shane - Yeah. I was pretty blessed to have these cool opportunities. I had a lot of those cool opportunities happen to me early on in my career. All of those people were kind of legacy artists at that point in their career and they were all very kind. I think they were excited to see young up-and-coming people that were going to continue this music that they had been making live and take it on and have their own interpretation of it. All of the artists that I've ever opened for at that level have been really cool. I've only had maybe one or two experiences where people weren't kind. Usually it wasn't really artists. Maybe the manager or somebody on their team wasn't a very happy person. For the most part it's always been very positive.

Q - How is it that you're getting your music placed on all of these TV shows and films? Do you have an agent that's going around promoting your music?

Maggie - Well, it's been really cool Gary because I started getting placements with my original music in 2007. I put out my first solo record that year and almost all the songs on that album started getting licensed on TV shows like The Reel World and he Hills. At that time they would actually give me an on screen credit when my song was playing. This was when people purchased songs on i-Tunes. So, it was a real cool thing and it just kept leading to more and more. Throughout the years my solo music I guess is very appealing for film, TV and ads and so it's been licensed a lot. And then I helped get Shane's music in a lot of the same shows, working with the same people. We've just developed a lot of relationships over the years. To be completely honest, there's been a handful of placements we've gotten from other people pitching the songs. But for the most part it's been from us directly reaching these music supervisors or music editors or directors or producers, then getting our songs licensed directly to those projects. And it's just built over the years to the point where now I actually have a music licensing company myself to represent our friend's music as well as our own. I also music supervised my first film. Actually, I music supervised a few, but I just got through doing one that I'm really excited about. So, it's just been something that has evolved over the years and we're grateful. It's interesting 'cause a lot of people assume there's like one agent doing all of it, but each placement is really a miracle that it actually happens. There's always so much to go through. Lots of hoops to jump through with each one. Each one happens in its own way with a different set of people involved.

Q - So now, besides being singers and songwriters, you're also a co-producer for this film, A Cowgirl's Song. You're also the Music Directors and the Music Producers. As a co-producer of a film, what does that job entail?

Maggie - Yeah, so in addition to that, Shane and I also co-star in the movie. So, we have a lot of roles in this film. To be a co-producer, it just meant that we were in the group of the five or so people...

Shane - Who made decisions on casting. On everything.

Maggie - On location.

Q - How did you know how to do all that?

Maggie - We didn't really know until we were doing it and I just think that being people who figure things out and think outside the box, that definitely helped because that's a big part of the job, coming up with solutions and figuring things out. We had to bring the director from L.A. to Oklahoma to film the movie and we knew we really had to help and step up and do whatever we could to help make it the best film that it could be. And so, Shane and I are always solution oriented and going to figure out a way to make it work. So we really didn't know what we were getting into, but we knew when we were in it, it was really exciting. It was very stressful at times, but also we really enjoyed the experience.

Q - Where'd you come up with this name, The Imaginaries?

Shane - That's a good question. So, to take you back to the previous conversation we just had about how our band started through the One Mic series, we went to Muscle Shoals. We filmed two songs. This was part of a big series that John Cuniberti and his son were doing in all the legendary studios. Like they went to Stax, They went to Electric Ladyland. They went to The Record Plant, and some of the great studios all over the country and they found two or three bands each night to film at this One Mic series. We got a phone call maybe a month after we did it, that our performance was one of his favorites and he wanted to lead our the series with that video, the first being released. He called to ask me, "Well, I know you guys are solo artists. Do you have a band name or do I just list this as Shane Henry and Maggie McClure?" We're working on a band name. I said, "Give us a week. I think we're close." But also, try naming a band in this day and age. With the internet you might think you're being creative or coming up with something, but there's a good chance somebody else has already thought of it. And so a lot of these names that we had in our studio, we found that there was already a band out there that had claimed that name or looked like they were possibly already using it. So, back to the drawing board, right? I vividly remember we were three or four days away from meaning to give John an answer as to how this video was going to be released. We were laying in bed one night, talking about it, and I was pretty stressed, just really wanting to figure this out badly. It was bothering her. I just told her, "Well, we'll just keep thinking about it. Keep trying to be creative, keep writing stuff down, keep the wheels turning. We'll figure it out." And that specific night I had a dream we were playing in a musical festival and an announcer came onstage and said, "Welcome to the stage, The Imaginaries!" And I remember turning around and seeing our name written on a banner behind us. It was kind of somewhat what our logo looks like from what I can remember of the dream. But I vividly remember it. I woke her up and said, "I think I have a band name." And literally that's how it happened. It came to me in a dream.

Official Website: www.ImaginariesBand.com

© Gary James. All rights reserved.

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