![]() |
![]() |
|||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Powerful blues rock guitar. Soulful testifying vocals. Heartfelt original songwriting. Passionate percussion with a hard grooving band. These elements make up the music of David Shelley. Fusing traditional forms with unique cultural experiences, David Shelley is a roots rocker with a worldbeat edge, a bluesman for the planet Earth.
Returning to Florida to found Ocean Sound Studios with childhood friend Mike Couzzi (who would go on to engineer hit albums like Santana's "Supernatural"), David soaked up even wider influences and experiences. He played percussion with jazz fusion artist Randy Bernsen and the legendary bassist Jaco Pastorius, and was guitarist, singer and songwriter with reggae band T'shan. While Shelley's long blonde hair provided a striking contrast to the group's dreadlocks, his funky blues licks melded effortlessy with the native Jamaicans' riddim. T'shan was wildly popular in local clubs and David took the sound even further with his own band, opening for everyone from The Clash to reggae star Dennis Brown, rocking the house with an ecclectic mix of worldbeat and blues roots that earned him a deal with MCA and a return to the west coast.
David Shelley finished an album's worth of material for the label, only to be dropped when A&R head Irving Azzoff was fired during the "indie" scandal of the 1980's (as depicted in the book "Hitmen" by Fredric Dannen). Despite some disillusionment, David continued to seek a deal, working the rock clubs of Los Angeles with his band Ku De Ta. When some of his unreleased recordings were chosen for a movie soundtrack, By the time he found himself as series regular and guitarist for "The Ron Reagan Show" on Fox (a short-lived talkathon hosted by the son of president Ronald Reagan), David Shelley had gone more Hollywood that he had ever intended and soon fled to the desert in an effort to reconnect with his musical roots. Roaming the West, he hooked up with some Native American musicians in Santa Fe. Featuring members of the Apache and Zuni tribes, The Mud Ponies (sometimes called Seventh Son) played hard rocking Indian-flavored blues throughout the Southwest. David also contributed his playing to bands like Blues Farm and various album projects in California, performed on stage with Government Mule and guitarist Coco Montoya and generally honed his craft on stage and in the studio.
David Shelley has been to a crossroads called Earth, where glitz and grime meet on the boulevard between swamp and desert, creating jamming blues rock music that is ancient and modern and truly original. 2004 finds the man writing and recording songs for his first independent release. Check out the news to see what's happening lately and where he is performing live.
|
||||||||