Joan SHELLEY IS A SONGWRITER AND SINGER WHO LIVES NEAR LOUISVILLE,
Ky., not far from where she grew up. She draws inspiration from
traditional and traditionally-minded performers from her native
Kentucky, as well as those from Ireland, Scotland, and England, but
she's not a folksinger. Her disposition aligns more closely with that
of, say, Roger Miller, Dolly Parton, or her fellow Kentuckian Tom T.
Hall, who once explained - simply, succinctly, in a song - "I Witness
Life." She's not so much a confessional songwriter, and she sings less
of her life and more of her place: of landscapes and watercourses; of
flora and fauna; of seasons changing and years departing and the
ineluctable attempt of humans to make some small sense of all - or, at
best, some - of it. Her perspective and performances both have been
described, apparently positively, as "pure," but there's no trace of
the Pollyanna and there's little of the pastoral, either: her work
instead wrestles with the possibility of reconciling, if only for a
moment, the perceived "natural" world with its reflection -sometimes,
relatively speaking, clear; other times hopelessly distorted - in the
human heart, mind, and footprint. Since the 2015 release of her album
Over and Even, SHELLEY HAS CROSSED THE COUNTRY AND TOURED EUROPE
SEVERAL TIMES AS A HEADLINING ARTIST, typically with guitarist Nathan
Salsburg, and sharing shows with the likes of Jake Xerxes Fussell,
Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Doug Paisley, Daniel Martin Moore, The Other
Years, and Michael Hurley. She has opened for Wilco, Chris Smither,
Patty Griffin, Andrew Bird and Richard Thompson. Jeff Tweedy produced
her previous record at The Loft in CHICAGO. She'll be familiar to
readers of guitar-centric magazines for having appeared, in the same
month, on the covers of Fretboard Journal and Acoustic Guitar.
http://www.joanshelley.net/ [http://www.joanshelley.net/]
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09/12/2019 Last update