Maia Sharp

Maia Sharp crafts songs marked by deep feeling and candid reflection on existence and relationships, building a devoted audience through her performances while earning admiration from fellow musicians whose recordings of her material include those by Bonnie Raitt, the Dixie Chicks, Cher, Trisha Yearwood, Lisa Loeb, and Keb' Mo'. Born in 1971 in California's Central Valley, she is the daughter of Randy Sharp, a songwriter and recording artist, and Sharon Bays, a college professor of anthropology who had sung earlier in her life. When Maia turned four the family settled in Los Angeles, and the following year she wrote her first song, "Ghosts." She gained command of keyboards, guitar, oboe, and saxophone, later enrolling in music theory courses at California State University at Northridge that strengthened her commitment to songwriting. In 1992 Randy Sharp asked her to play horns and keyboards on That's Another Story, the album he made with Karen Brooks, and by 1993 she was appearing with her own songs in Los Angeles clubs.

Miles Copeland, who managed the Police and directed I.R.S. Records in the 1970s and 1980s, found Sharp and signed her to his Ark 21 label. Her debut, Hardly Glamour, appeared in 1997, yet the label's brief existence delayed her next release until 2002, when Concord Records issued the self-titled Maia Sharp. That same year she contributed backing vocals and session work to Art Garfunkel's Everything Waits to be Noticed while helping set two of his poems to music. Three of her compositions were included on Bonnie Raitt's 2005 Souls Alike, and Sharp joined those sessions on saxophone. Also in 2005 she released her third solo album, Fine Upstanding Citizen, through Koch; she co-produced it with Brad Jones and performed on many of the instruments. In 2006 she delivered her fourth album, Eve and the Red Delicious, recorded with Darren Embry, and in 2009 she put out Echo, produced by Don Was and featuring a guest turn from Bonnie Raitt.

By then Sharp had taken on greater studio responsibilities, producing Edwin McCain's 2011 Mercy Bound and adding two new tracks to the 2012 collection The Singer: The Very Best of Art Garfunkel. She also produced recordings for Donny Anderson, Jenifer Freebairn, and Crystal Bowersox. In 2012 she joined her parents, Randy Sharp and Sharon Bays, together with songwriter Jack Wesley Routh, on the Western-themed collaboration Dreams of the San Joaquin, while completing and issuing her own Change the Ending on Blix Street. She entered a new recording agreement with Entertainment One Music in 2015 and released The Dash Between the Dates, which included performances by Eurythmics founder Dave Stewart.