North America Ghost Music

Product Description North America Ghost Music by Shannon Mcnally Review It's raw and immediate, and captures her at her best. -- All Music Guide; February 2006 About the Artist Shannon McNally is a soulful singer and an entrancing songwriter. Drawing on the defiant spirits of outlaws and visionaries such as Jesse James, Susan B. Anthony, and Little Richard, she takes her listeners on a timeless and haunting journey through her self-coined North American Ghost Music. Armed with a spine tingling voice, easy inner beauty, and songs that linger, McNally?s soul-wrenching vocals and uncanny songwriting sensibilities have cast a spell on audiences around the country. For the first time, McNally offers us the chance to savor her live performances on NORTH AMERICAN GHOST MUSIC LIVE. The album, released on Back Porch Records, features an eclectic mix of fan-favorite originals such as Geronimo alongside wistful takes on My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys (Willie Nelson) and The Last Lonely Eagle (The New Riders of the Purple Sage). The New Orleans denizen?s literate songs inhabit a range of characters, many downtrodden and disaffected. "I write in the folk tradition," she says, "like Woody Guthrie, ballads and things that are universal in style." She also references the work of Bruce Springsteen, Gordon Lightfoot, Neil Young, and John Steinbeck. The fearless songwriter is not afraid to use words like "castigate" and "perpetual" when they fit the songs. Remarkably, Shannon never hides her influences, but she never sounds exactly like them either. Conceived to working class Irish American parents on the 4th of July, 1972, McNally was born on Long Island, New York on St. Patrick's Day March of 1973. Citing early influences such as Jim Henson, Uncle Remus, The Yellow Submarine, and Star Wars, McNally's sensibilities were definitely shaped by the events and imaginations of the day. She graduated from the same high school in Freeport, NY on Long Island that produced such folk heroes as Lenny Bruce, Lou Reed, and Run DMC. After high school she went on to earn a Bachelor's Degree in Social Anthropology at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. In 2005, Shannon released her Back Porch Records debut, GERONIMO. Produced by Charlie Sexton, mixed by Grammy® award-winning engineer Trina Shoemaker, and featuring stellar musicians like bassists Tony Garnier and Tony Hall, multi-instrumentalist Greg Liesz, drummer Raymond Weber, keyboard legend Ian McLagan, and Sexton himself, GERONIMO is a chapbook of stories, a collection of gritty blues, country, roots, and rock. The seasoned musicians in these sessions inspired Shannon. She called the band "magic," going on to say, "The band provided a sense of timelessness to the songs." Her debut album released in January of 2002, JUKEBOX SPARROWS (Capitol Records), garnered rave reviews and revealed itself as a surprisingly confident musical and lyrical debut for such a young songwriter and inspired Rolling Stone to liken her to "a young Mick Jagger" giving it 3 1/2 stars. It also spawned the AAA radio hit "Now That I Know," which also appeared on the Sweet Home Alabama soundtrack. McNally has toured with Willie Nelson, Stevie Nicks, John Mellencamp, Ryan Adams, Robert Randolph and the Family Band, and Rufus Wainwright. She has appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.