Shannon Lawson

Born in 1973 in Taylorsville, Kentucky, singer and songwriter Shannon Lawson fused country and bluegrass with ample doses of blues and rock and roll. His household brimmed with amateur players who held regular picking sessions, prompting him to experiment on his uncle’s guitar at age four; by seven he owned a nylon-string acoustic. During high school he started a rock band whose setlists mixed hard-rock covers with twangier selections from John Anderson and the Eagles. After graduation he moved to Louisville for college and, in his freshman year, joined a local blues group—its only non-African-American member—first on lead guitar and later as lead vocalist. A few years on he exited that ensemble and performed solo acoustic sets in Louisville coffeehouses, soon joining the Galoots, a bluegrass band whose high-energy blend of acoustic country and blues quickly built an ardent local audience. The Galoots issued two well-received self-distributed albums and acquired manager Mandy Snider, whose interest centered on Lawson; the pair fell in love and later married. While with the group he began composing material for them, and those songs earned him a contract with a Nashville publishing house, though relocating to Music City required him to exit the band. An A&R executive at MCA Records’ Nashville division heard Lawson on one of his publishing demos and, after a solo showcase in the city, offered him a major-label deal in 2001. His first solo album, Chase the Sun, appeared the following spring.