Mounds View Teacher Lucas Shogren directs orchestra classes during the day, but at night, he plays the cello in his own band. Clocks and Clouds, his band, has played at venues from cafes to First Avenue. Clocks and Clouds has 6,035 monthly listeners, and their most listened-to song, “Lux Aeterna,” has over 836,000 streams on Spotify. 

The band plays mostly a mix of classical music and rock. As described on their website, their sound is “suitable for film scores yet potent enough for rock albums.” They have two albums and five singles. They have also done some covers of popular songs such as Demons by Imagine Dragons and Little Drummer Boy. 

The band started after Lucas Shogren decided to add some drums to a song he planned on performing with his wife, Stephanie Shogren, who now plays the violin for the group. He asked family friend Derek Powers, who plays the drums, to join them. “The response of that song was pretty big, and it was like, oh, maybe there’s something here,” Lucas Shogren said.

Initially, he didn’t intend on being in a band, but after touring with a string quartet for many years, he was connected with gigs outside of the classical realm. Eventually, he began helping out with studio work for various groups. “Honestly, for Clocks and Clouds, I was kind of getting really bored playing with some of these bands because it’s just the cello and how it fits in a band. You don’t get to play the most exciting parts generally, and so this was a way for me to be expressive,” said Lucas Shogren.  

The name Clocks and Clouds was inspired by the song “Clock and Clouds” by Gyorgy Ligeti, who composed famous contemporary classical music pieces; however, the members would prefer that people interpret the band name as if the clocks are the strong driving, rhythmic force while the violin’s melody soaring above is the clouds. 

When writing songs, Lucas Shogren takes inspiration from rock bands like Muse and Explosions in the Sky. He admires the emotional quality of their songs. “If it moves me emotionally then that’s normally where my inspiration comes from,” said Lucas Shogren. “Honestly, that’s one of our big values as a group, […] we want to be very emotive, almost hyper-emotive.”

He isn’t the only one who writes songs for Clocks and Clouds. Both Stephanie Shogren and Powers also help in writing. Stephanie Shogren normally writes the violin melody, while Powers usually writes the drum parts, occasionally collaborating with Lucas Shogren who likes to work together to create their parts.

Clocks and Clouds released a single called “Until The End” in November. They plan on releasing more music by the end of this year and have a couple of performances coming up, one in Iowa and one on New Year’s Eve at a brewery. Clocks and Clouds plans to continue making music and performing across the U.S.