My name is Shawn Harris and I have been playing guitar for about 20 years - I started when I was 1 ;) Not really - yes I feel old saying that.
I was in many heavy bands in the 80's; nothing I am too proud of but out of that came a great love of music and especially of songwriting. I found that although I loved the intensity of the 80's heavy music I really loved the songwriting of the 70's. So I played in bands for a few more years writing all original material and playing out wherever I could. As bands almost always do we all got "Real Jobs" and families and kind of let music go away. The guitar went under the guest bedroom bed and I gave up my dream for a few years.
About a year and a half ago I found an old recording of my drummer Mike Payne and I playing some acoustic stuff and I remembered how much I loved doing acoustic songs and thought hey I should try to write an album of mostly acoustic stuff. So I called up Jay Stanley the old guitar player from Matchbox 20 and hired him as my engineer and went in to his studio and cut 9 songs from 2 old songs that I had and the rest new material that I wrote for the cd or from pieces of music I had been working with. Out of this came the cd titled "Temptation."
I did all the guitar without a drummer and just used a click track - man was that hard:) So then I hired Chris Smith a session drummer to come in and play over what I had recorded - not an easy task. He was great and I think he really shined. I sang all the parts and then Jay played bass on Memories and Fortune Lies Freedom. I did not have anyone to play bass on the other songs so I played bass and then decided to give keyboards a try. So I played keyboards on every song except Sundown. Bryan Clark played on that song and MAN he rocked it.
A few of the songs have done really well. Keeping Hope Alive was named the top 16th song of 2007 by kick radio and Promised Land was all the way up to 11 on the American Idol Underground website and number 11 on Artist Underground.
Please enjoy the music and I really appreciate any feedback you have :)
The cd was Titled "Temptation" so I decided to kind of go with the semi religious tone but I am not really a Christian artist - just a guy who wants his songs to have some meaning and thought behind the lyrics.
Take Care and enjoy life - no one gets out alive - but the memories of us live on if we do it right ....
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