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At just 17, Portland bluegrass-pop songwriter Shannon Wiancko is making a big push under local indie label Sucker Lake Records to get her work in the public consciousness. Wiancko’s sophomore EP, Entertainer: Autumn Equinox, drops on Sept. 22. A sequel in both tone and topic to her June release, Daisypicker: Summer Solstice, the songwriter uses seasons as a metaphor for the change in her own life.
“We go through different phases of our lives,” Wiancko says. “Summer is sweet and hopeful and naive. Fall gets more into what it’s like to experience something that changes your life and how that affects you long term.”
Wiancko’s music recalls that of female pop stars with huge followings inspiring so much of the new generation of musicians. Elements of Taylor Swift, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lana Del Ray—with a cadence not too dissimilar to Olivia Rodrigo—perpetuate Wiancko’s original music, carrying with it a distinct bluegrass influence.
First taking to bluegrass in the eighth grade, around the same time she began writing songs for her debut EP, the genre undoubtedly impacted the young musician. “I was very moved by it,” Wiancko says. “The sounds of fiddles and mandolins and that stuff, it makes me very happy.”
Wiancko signed to Sucker Lake Records in April after meeting CEO Kyle Delfatti at Youth Music Project, a nonprofit music school in West Linn, and taking Delfatti’s recording engineering class, where the pair recorded some of Wiancko’s original music.
“Being 17, she’s a superstar in the making,” Delfatti says. “It feels like it would’ve been stupid not to work with her.”
Though clearly looking toward greater things, Wiancko is notably modest about any future success, focusing more on influencing the individual over attracting large crowds.
“I want to impact people the way the people I look up to have impacted me,” Wiancko says. “No matter how big or small that is, it doesn’t matter. It’d be cool to sell out stadiums, obviously, because everybody wants to do that.”
Wiancko manages to separate herself from “everybody” by consistently making strides toward notability. In 2024 alone, she put out an EP and three singles, played solo gigs, released music videos, and will release another EP. Wiancko’s well-honed ability to produce and record music has resulted in a quickly developing musical style and sensibility that’s only bound to develop further as time goes on.
“She just has that artistic skill that’s super hard to have,” Delfatti says. “She knows exactly how to use her voice, how to have control over it, where she wants harmonies to go, and punches in perfectly every time. It’s wild to witness. She’s more talented than people, like, decades her senior.”