Preston Shannon

Memphis-based guitarist, singer, and songwriter Preston Shannon delivers soul-filled vocals atop his burning up, venom-tipped guitar chords. His tone of voice is usually deep and guttural, and he’s a veteran of a huge selection of live golf club shows and documenting sessions like a sideman. Shannon’s niche is a mixture of Southern-fried spirit and blues, and his albums and concert events — always having a horn section — are an eclectic mixture of danceable, grooving music and sluggish, soulful ballads. Given birth to in Olive Branch, MS, Shannon’s family members relocated to Memphis when he was eight. Although his Pentecostal parents didn’t in the beginning accept his desire for blues music, they ultimately did if they noticed how severe he was about going after the music for his livelihood. Shannon offered as an associate of a favorite ’70s bar music group Amnesty and performed inside a succession of additional Memphis-area rings while operating by day for any hardware organization. Finally, he made a decision to play music full-time when he got an area in soul-blues belter Shirley Brown’s music group. It wasn’t until 1991 that he come up with his own music group and started playing the night clubs on Beale Road and other areas. In the first ’90s, he was found out playing inside a Beale Road blues golf club by maker/keyboardist Ron Levy, who brought Shannon’s skills to the eye of professionals at Rounder Information. Shortly later on, in 1994, his 1st widely distributed documenting was issued around the label. Shannon offers documented three albums for the Rounder Bullseye Blues subsidiary, Make new friends (1994) Midnight in Memphis (1996), and everything with time (1999). All three albums a lot more than properly showcase his skills as a vocalist who can alternative between uptempo, gospel-inspired figures and slower, soulful like tunes and ballads. Shannon’s acoustic guitar playing consists of echoes from the Kings, Albert and B.B., T-Bone Walker, plus some from the rhythmic sensibilities of Small Milton Campbell. For quite some time a homebody who couldn’t become heard much beyond your Memphis city limitations, Shannon did some road function lately, planing a trip to blues celebrations round the U.S.