Shon Cobbs is getting acclimated to his home in New Mexico.
He and his wife, Cherie, moved from Denver to Placitas in mid-March.
The couple have spent months in isolation and left home very little.
“If I had to be quarantined, it would be with her,” he says. “It’s been a rather stressful and weird year. We’ve found ourselves in moments of despair. Waking up and feeling dread. Hearing death counts. No matter where you’re at, it kept feeling like it wasn’t getting better.”
With the pandemic weighing on the couple, they decided to turn to music.
“We hadn’t written in so long,” he says.
The result is the single “Hold On To Me.” It is being released under the duo’s stage name, Plume Varia, on Friday, Dec. 11.
The song was inspired by the couple’s move away from familiar neighborhoods, family and friends and their time spent in isolation.
The song was recorded in the couple’s home and mixed by Los Angeles-based producer Fred Archambault.
Cobbs says the song is an exploration of this year as the world has tried to remain positive and stay engaged.
“People that are creative put pressure on themselves to produce,” he says. “A couple months ago, I told Cherie, “We haven’t made new music in a while.’ That was the beginning of this spark. I wanted to write to get it off my shoulders. Through all the despair, we are all reaching for something to hold on to.”
Cobbs says the song has a different feel from previous releases by Plume Varia.
“I reached out to Fred to mix the song, and he jumped on board,” Cobbs says. “I think he did a phenomenal job. There’s a slightly more pop presence in the song. Cherie is our main lyricist, and if you give her an idea, she’ll just run with it. I do the beats. We slowly worked together for a couple of weeks to create it.”
Cobbs hopes to record an EP, which will be released in 2021.
It would be the first body of work since Plume Varia’s debut album, “Fact | Fiction” in 2017.
“We’ve made the best of this year,” Cobbs says. “We moved here as the pandemic swept across the country. I’ve not only been missing performing live but also getting into the local music scene.”
