Mem Shannon

Guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter Mem Shannon is among little lions of blues who have believes in expanding the variables from the music. His two albums for Rykodisc, A Cab Driver’s Blues (his 1995 debut) and Mem Shannon’s 2nd Blues Record (1997), are both worthy of searching for in record shops. Shannon brilliantly combines components of funk, jazz, and rock and roll & move into his electric guitar playing, and his soulful vocals aren’t your run-of-the-mill stylings. Actually, the majority of things about Shannon are outstanding: just how he write tunes, just how he sings them, and just how he presents them. He’s a rock and roll & roll child who played in a number of cover rings in senior high school in his indigenous New Orleans, but he usually had a wholesome gratitude for blues and gospel music. Shannon was created in New Orleans and started playing clarinet at age group nine. By enough time he was 15, he was playing acoustic guitar, influenced by his father’s blues record collection, nonetheless it wasn’t until he noticed B.B. Ruler that he got seriously interested in it and started training in earnest. He started playing in Best 40 and wedding ceremony rings across the Crescent Town. His first music group after senior high school, the Ebony Brothers Popular Band, performed dances, celebrations, and neighborhood pubs. His second group, Totally free Enterprize, found function doing covers. Nevertheless, his father passed on unexpectedly in 1981, so when the oldest boy within a close-knit family members, he began generating a cab to greatly help the family members settle payments. He also performed electric guitar within the Dedicators, a gospel group, but there is no cash whatsoever for the reason that. He place his music apart for some time, but started playing once again in 1990 after getting encouraged to take action by Peter Carter, his outdated bassist from Totally free Enterprize. Shannon started training lyrics and tune ideas and dealing with Carter once again. His tracks were inspired partially by his lifestyle and experiences generating a cab. Regular membership gigs implemented at several clubs within the French One fourth. In 1991, he discovered an advertisement in the neighborhood newspaper marketing a talent competition. Shannon as well as the Account won the competition, ensuring them an area at the brand new Orleans Jazz and Traditions Celebration, plus $1,000 along with a tv commercial. Afterwards in 1991, Shannon as well as the Regular membership visited the Long Seaside Blues Festival’s skill contest, but dropped out in the finals and didn’t reach play the event. After creating a demonstration tape of his materials, he got some curiosity from JSP, a London-based blues label, but a location producer provided his solutions to re-record a number of the tunes on Shannon’s demonstration. The producer, Tag Bingham, brought Shannon’s music to the eye of Joe Boyd of Hannibal Information in 1994. Boyd was impressed, and on Oct 15, 1995, Shannon’s debut, A Cab Driver’s Blues, premiered. The recording drew critical compliment from all over, but it addittionally got him a fantastic amount of promotion. Due to the interesting character of the documenting, which include snippets of discussion with travellers from his cab interspersed using the music, Shannon’s tale attracted the eye of suppliers at PBS-TV, CBS-TV’s Weekend Morning hours, and editors at the brand new York Occasions. By Apr of 1996, in the annual New Orleans Jazz and History Event, Shannon announced from your stage that he was quitting his job like a cab drivers to try out blues full-time. He didn’t appeared back, and because of good booking brokers and his personal function ethic, he toured thoroughly round the U.S., European countries, and Canada. Shannon was the initial major new skill to emerge from New Orleans in a few period, and since a large number of foreigners go to New Orleans every springtime for JazzFest, Shannon forged his popularity as a global touring musician quickly. His music isn’t trapped within a jump-shuffle setting. He requires a broader watch, incorporating components of funk, jazz, swamp rock and roll, and classic rock and roll in to the Membership’s blues-based audio. The music group funks it up with differing shuffle drum backbeats, throbbing basslines, a wailing saxophone, and feathery key pad treatments. And there’s area in Shannon’s watch of himself being a bluesman for politics and cultural commentary in tracks like “Incorrect People in control,” “Charity,” and “Down Broke.” Furthermore to his two Ryko CDs, Shannon released SPEND TIME beside me in 1999 and Memphis each day in 2001, both on the Shanachie label. Four years later on I’m from Phunkville was released on North Blues Music.