Ash Joie-Lee

I live in a town with great music venues and great musicians. But, for some reason (mainly because we did other things) hubby and I really haven’t been to see many here. So, a few weeks ago, we decided we would start. Last week, hubby casually mentions to me, “Hey, Shawn Mullins is going to be in Asheville.”
I perked up, all excited. Wow! When? Where? He didn’t reply, but a few hours later handed me two tickets to go see Shawn perform.
(You gotta love such a responsive hubby!)
I first heard of Shawn Mullins with his Rock A Bye song, which came out in 1998. I loved that song and I loved Shawn’s unique voice. Hubby bought me the CD Soul’s Core and I loved every song on it. It is one of my Cd’s that I play a lot. Now that I am using Pandora, I have a Shawn Mullins station and was hearing more of his newer songs.
So, last night we went to hear Shawn. The guy who is touring with him and who opened was Chuck Cannon. I had not heard of Chuck before, but am glad I have now! He was fantastic! He is a song-writer, but does have several albums out, and I will definitely be getting one.
Both Shawn and Chuck told stories of how the song they were about to sing came about and Chuck shared a lot of funny stories of his childhood as the son of a preacher. Of course, he is not following the same belief path of his dad and yeah, life is interesting when you have family who are on that path and you are not….like me. I’m also a preachers kid.
I could relate to the stories!
One of the things I love about Shawn, besides the fact that he just seems to be a genuine guy, is that he tells stories with his songs. And I enjoy how he can describe unique characters and settings in his songs.
One of the things Shawn said when he first came out was to thank us each for being there, even in the midst of this crazy, scary economy.
I got to thinking about that. There are things that I have cut back on since this has happened, I don’t rush out to buy new clothes. I haven’t bought anything decorative for my home in a bit and we have been very careful with our food and travel budget. But the one thing I have always and will always spend money on, is good stories, whether that’s buying books or music. Books and music feed my soul.

My son is a musician and just moved to Austin, Texas where he has joined a serious band. He is always sharing new bands with me and we both chat each morning about music in some way.
I love hearing about a new author who has put out a great book and to learn of new bands.
Here is a band my son met and hung out with this past weekend…I am enjoying listening to their music.

And of course, some day soon, I’ll be posting the link to the band my son is in.

The video below is the only one I could find of Shawn’s that had the embedding code.
It is his song ‘Beautiful Wreck’ (Turn the playlist off before you listen to this video!)

This entry was posted on Monday, October 13th, 2008 at 11:14 pm and is filed under Life in Asheville. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.