In the latest season of Vanderpump Rules, viewers have watched as the cast has done their best to pick up the pieces in the months following Sandoval. And while it’s easy to assume that the drama has all but consumed their entire lives (the first four episodes would certainly leave you to believe that), each cast is also navigating their own individual lives and figuring out what their future looks like outside of another couple’s cheating scandal. For Scheana Shay, this has meant getting back into the studio and making new music.
Scheana, whose stage name as a musical artist is Scheana Marie, has long shared her musical journey on the show. Fans have seen Scheana record, release, and film music videos for a handful of singles, namely for her popular song “Good as Gold.” Even though the famed Vanderpump Rules track — dare we say, the unofficial theme song of the series — is over a decade old, “Good as Gold” got a second life last May when Uber Eats used it in a commercial featuring Scheana and her fellow cast members Ariana Madix and Lala Kent. And after hosting an Emo Nite party in Los Angeles with Madix and Katie Maloney last spring, Scheana was inspired to release an emo screamo version of “Good as Gold.” But as determined as Scheana may be to have a career in music, she couldn’t pull this all off on her own. Enter Landis Daniels and Kevin Franklin, a musical duo who go by The 27s.
When Scheana wanted to find collaborators for her “Good as Gold” emo remix, mutual friends introduced her to The 27s, who have been making music together for more than a decade. The group got together to record the new track and released it over the summer. And what started as a one-off project became a longer-term partnership after they enjoyed working together so much. Now, Daniels and Franklin are working on an EP with Scheana, having already released two other songs: “Apples” and “Boy Crazy.”
“All of this was not on our bingo card at all,” Franklin tells Rolling Stone. “This is not a route that we were thinking about taking.”
Cameras were rolling all summer as the trio’s musical relationship began, capturing Scheana recording in the studio with The 27s, rehearsing together, and even filming their San Francisco performance (which fans can expect to see on the Season 11 finale). Daniels and Franklin made their Vanderpump Rules debut in the second episode of this season and even appeared on Watch What Happens Live as the talk show’s bartenders a couple of weeks ago.
“It’s insane, and it’s been so hard to process things since June. Honestly, it all happened really fast, and as soon as one thing happens, it’s like, ‘Okay, did that really just happen?’ Then the next crazy thing happens right after,” Franklin says.
Daniels, 30, and Franklin, 32, moved to Los Angeles from Dallas in 2019, just a few months before the pandemic, to pursue music careers. The duo says they’ve been friends for more than 12 years and have been making music together for nearly just as long, starting in a heavy metal band after high school. Feeling like they’d hit a ceiling with the band, they started to create songs that blended alternative and pop punk vibes from the early 2000s mixed with some hip hop.
Moving forward, they say they’re leaning into “a Venn diagram of hip hop, alternative, and pop.” Daniels acts as the group’s singer-songwriter, and Franklin is the lead guitarist and producer. Their latest single, “Danger,” dropped back in January, and the two regularly perform around Los Angeles. They have made their way to stages at iconic West Hollywood venues like The Roxy, The Viper Room, and The Bourbon Room. They’re even performing at the upcoming EDC music festival in Mexico City.
But while The 27s are still releasing music on their own without Scheana, they’re also continuing to collaborate with the reality star. Daniels and Franklin tell Rolling Stone they’re working on putting together an EP with Scheana that will consist of five to seven songs, letting their musical dynamic naturally grow and evolve.
“We have our own music and we haven’t necessarily established what the scenario is with Scheana. It’s evolving,” Daniels says. “It’s kind of like, ‘Scheana and The 27s.’ It’s almost like another entity in itself.”
Daniels and Franklin are the first to admit that it took some time to get used to filming a reality show. Though Daniels says he was already familiar with the Vanderpump universe prior to getting involved with Scheana, Franklin says he’d never seen an episode. And participating in perhaps the most anticipated season of the hit Bravo show only added to the insanity of it all.
“We did a music video for ‘Good as Gold’, and we’re doing a little walking scene outside of Tom Toms, and TMZ came up, and it was just the most bizarre thing. We’re not used to this stuff, but Scheana’s used to it, and she handled it really well,” Daniels says. “And then ending the music video, we’re at Kyle Chan’s jewelry shop, and literally the whole entire time we were there, and we were there for four or five hours, there was paparazzi there. They waited until we came out, and we were bombarded.”
For Franklin, filming the finale was a fun and impromptu experience. “We had a show booked here in L.A. on that same night, and I think that’s like the day that ‘Apples’ came out, and we were like, ‘Scheana, you should come play this show with us,’ and she was like, ‘That’s the one day I can’t do it because we’re going to be in San Francisco.’ She jokingly was like, ‘Y’all should just bail on your show and come play here,’ and we were kind of like, ‘Okay, we’ll do it,’” Franklin says. “Producers were down, and they got us out there.”
Not only did Franklin film his musical journey with Scheana on Vanderpump Rules, but he also went on a date with Maloney in front of cameras — an experience he doesn’t necessarily recommend.
“That sucked because it felt so different. Regardless of the actual date itself, filming that date felt just so unnatural. That’s when I felt out of my element,” Franklin says. “Whenever [Daniels and I] are doing stuff together, it’s easy to forget about the cameras. But it was, like, our third date and it ended really quickly after that, too, and I’m just getting to know somebody. I don’t watch the show, so I’m not bringing up anything about what they want us to talk about, and they literally had to pull her and tell her to bring up certain things. I think at one point I ran out of [times I could say], ‘Damn, that’s crazy.’ We’re sitting and talking, and the restaurant was open to the public, so everybody just had their phone out, and here I am.”
Franklin says he’d never film another date on a reality show, but he and Daniels are both happy to continue showcasing their music on Vanderpump Rules in future seasons. As far as making music with Scheana, The 27s don’t plan on stopping anytime soon. Daniels even says he and another collaborator, William Kellz Egan, have a songwriting system down with Scheana. They will sit down together when she has the beginnings of an idea and dig into the deeper meaning of how and why certain moments in her life have affected her and how she wants to convey that as an artist.
“Whether it be talking some shit about something or just expressing her feelings about something she couldn’t talk about prior, it has to be nice for Scheana to finally use this as an outlet to just describe those feelings about what she was going through,” Franklin adds. “That’s pretty cool to see.”
Michaela Coel in ‘The Christophers.’Claudette Barius/NEON
