phil ringnalda

Shannon’s put up a metric arseload of new songs, all of which I love unconditionally, but some even more unconditionally than others: Oh Carolina from Ladyfest will be replacing the previous version on my CD that everyone I play it for keeps stealing, Tangled, an old Folk You Harder song, is completely unlike anything else I’ve heard from FYH or Shannon, and sounds like the result of listening to a whole lot of Santana (yum!), and One Day (“a song I wrote about a year ago and didn’t even remember recording” – sheesh) is the first one of Shannon’s songs where I got confused about who I was listening to – for some reason, on the edge of sleep last night, I convinced myself it was a Bonnie Raitt song I didn’t remember owning. I’m pretty sure that’s a good thing. Also, every single one of the covers completely rocks, the raw and more tentative version of Leaves Me Nothing is probably more effective than the absolutely lovely studio version, and yes, I do realize that when I try to talk about her music I end up sounding like a four-year-old who’s too excited about his story to actually tell it. Go, get to downloading.

Ordinarily I’m somewhere between ambivalent and conflicted when I see someone setting out the Paypal begging bowl, but Shannon taking donations to fund producing a CD is just purely and absolutely a Good Thing. And as her premier stalker, I’m sure you can guess which donation level I chose.