Biography

“Sheer beauty...Shannon's guitar playing has rightly been compared to that of Bert Jansch and this album evokes the Neo-Renaissance exploration of bands like Pentangle. " - SING OUT! (USA) "Pamela’s performing style is enchanting: she has an attractive singing voice, sensitive and responsive, seductively sweet-toned... Pamela’s voice is brilliantly complemented by her well-developed guitar playing, which is at the same time deftly intricate and hauntingly full-toned. She also has an acute ear for colouristic arrangement, conjuring some rich and uncannily persuasive chamber-folk tapestries...The combination of unusual instrumental detail and finely-honed poetic imagery provides some stop-you-in-your-tracks, neck-prickling highlights... All told, this is a very special, seriously beautiful album, which also has the measure of a personal artistic statement: one of considerable power,originality and vision. Serendipity’s a wonderful thing, and all’s well with the world after all…" - fROOTS Magazine (UK) "A MOST BEAUTIFUL ALBUM...GENTLE AND SENSITIVE...UTTERLY LOVELY, SO SWEETLY POIGNANT...MADE ME SHIVER." - SHIRLEY COLLINS (UK)

Massachusetts-based musician, Pamela Wyn Shannon's inventive and intricate guitar work has been described as "a tiny chamber orchestra working in unison at the end of her hands." She has walked with the legends of British and Irish folk music, garnering respect and admiration wherever she goes.

The songs on her new CD, COURTING AUTUMN, have an elliptical quality which creates its own timeframe, rules, and kingdoms, reminiscent of that magic found in UK '60s psyche-folk artifacts. In advance of the album's release, she performed live on BBC Radio One. She will have performed two consecutive years at the Green Man Festival in Wales, where line-ups include Pentangle, Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsome, Vashti Bunyan, Richard Thompson & Robert Plant.

Since 2003, Pamela has lived a largely isolated pastoral life as a caretaker in various estates throughout New England and the United Kingdom. With portable recording equipment, she produced Courting Autumn. Her "studios" included an 18th century house museum, a 19th farmhouse and stable, tool sheds, cow barns, sheep farms, a Colonial piggery, and various privies. The album was mixed in Philadelphia by Engineer Brian McTear (Espers, Marissa Nadler). Courting Autumn is a rustic almanac of autumnal songs burnished with a melancholy mood, wistful vocals, delicate hand-spun guitar playing, weather-worn and windswept by plaintive string and recorder arrangements. It was voted the Top 10 Best Album of 2007 by Heaven Magazine, The Netherlands and the Top 10 Best Albums from the March 2008 issue of fRoots Magazine Playlist, UK. CLICK HERE FOR REVIEWS.

For information and bookings contact Pipkin Productions: girlhenge@gmail.com

BACKGROUND:
Pamela Wyn Shannon got something of a "false start" to her music career in the 90s. Her New Jersey rock band grabbed the attention of the great Patti Smith guitarist, Lenny Kaye, who was slated to produce the band's debut. Though they didn't stay together long enough to see it come to fruition, Kaye's interest was a foreshadowing of the attention she would receive in the years to come from many a rock and folk music luminary. But the seeds for Wyn Shannon's intricate folk guitar playing and wistful, timeless voice would really take root when she discovered artists such as Pentangle, Fairport Convention, Nick Drake, the Incredible String band, and a wellspring of traditional Irish folk music.

Shortly after landing an opening slot for Byrds legend, Roger McGuinn, she bought a one way ticket to Ireland where she serendipitously met the Irish folk hero, Johnny Moynihan (Sweeny's Men, Planxty, Silly Sisters) on the second day after her arrival. They became quick friends. Moynihan, seeing in her his old friend Anne Briggs, took her under his wing and together they played around Ireland for a year. When she returned to the US, she made her living as a session player and performed and recorded with musicians from the likes of Solas, Lunasa, Cherish the Ladies, even the Klezmatics, still traveling to and fro across the Atlantic performing on her own, as well.

In 2004 at the Nick Drake Tribute Gathering, she performed to accolades for Robert Kirby, the great British arranger for Nick Drake, she appeared on German television (ASPEKTE's Nick Drake Retrospective), and when asked to open for another British legend, Davy Graham, at Bush Hall in London, he surprised her by turning the tables and doing a part of his set in the opening slot before her. Her 2001 album, Nature's Bride released on her own Girlhenge Records label was recorded to full studio polish and received airplay on the prestigious WFMU, NPR & BBC Radio and others.

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Rev 01/24/08