John Lee Shannon

John Lee Shannon met Neal Casal at the recording sessions for Zephaniah OHora’s Listening to the Music. As fellow guitarists and music lovers, they became fast friends and Neal became a big fan of John’s playing, hand-picking him to make up the band that would go on to record what would become Kenny Roby’s album The Reservoir.

Like Neal, Shannon is a skilled, reliable player who therefore spends a lot of his time recording and playing with friends. After a few years of making demos which subsequently were put on hold as other projects took precedence, Shannon revealed a few selections from this collection of songs to Neal who was, of course, extremely encouraging. Neal agreed to stay on to produce Shannon’s record after they finished the Kenny Roby sessions, originally scheduled to be recorded at Panoramic House in Stinson Beach.

That wasn’t to be, but Shannon pressed on and recorded the album on his own. In & Of is a warm, rich collection of songs that “intended to conjure the experience of being in one’s home, listening to someone play the guitar in the same room,” and that’s exactly what it sounds like. This record is so close and intimate, as if Shannon was right next to you. Our conversation had the same warmth, as always seems to happen whenever the conversation turns to Neal.

I started playing guitar really seriously when I was a teenager. After high school, I knew that going to school for music would be tolerable while I figured out what to do. I ended up getting into Berklee. I lived in Boston for about a year and a half but I realized that the typical art school thing was not for me. I moved back to Michigan and joined some bands, and eventually I ended up going to hair school. Right away, I was pretty determined to go somewhere cooler and more exciting, so in 2010 I moved to New York.

The day after I moved here, I started working at a salon. I distinctly remember walking in on my first day and seeing this dude with super long, black hair, a mustache, and a Gram Parsons t-shirt on. I was like, “Who the fuck is this guy?”. That was Zephaniah OHora.

Zephaniah was always trying to get bands together, but I just wasn’t interested. I was completely gung ho about being a stylist for a while. Eventually, I started to get a little more back into guitar. I went to see Stephane Wrembel, who’s a great gypsy jazz guitarist, at Joe’s Pub. Roy Williams, who plays piano and guitar, was playing with him. I actually ended up finding him on Facebook, and messaged him, “Hey, I’d love to get a guitar lesson from you”.

Roy had several other projects he was involved with. This was right at the same time that Skinny Dennis was opening. Zeph was going to be booking the music there. I introduced the two of them knowing Roy’s band would be a great fit to play there. Zeph started to sing with Roy’s band, the Honey Fingers. That’s when everything started to change. I saw how much fun Zeph was having and thought, “Oh man, I miss playing music.” I started to re-dedicate myself to playing.

This was probably 2015, or ’16. I started playing with Roy a lot, and playing more gigs around the city. In 2017 or so, Zeph and I started playing together. That was the point when I felt good enough about music to make the switch. When I stopped working at the salon entirely, and just focused 100 percent on music, that was the start of the idea of my album.

You’ve obviously recorded a lot with other people, was it challenging recording alone?

I’ve played a lot of guitar in my life. But playing solo is a whole different thing. That was what really caused me to take so long getting this album together. I’d get busy with other things and I’d just set it aside.

That was one of the things that Neal, not even actively, but just his vibe, really contributed – the motivation to make it a real thing. It was really challenging. When I realized that I wanted to actually get in the studio and record this stuff, with Neal’s encouragement, it all came together. In May, he said, “I have this friend. We’re going to do an album. I want you to play on it. We’re going to record in California”. That was Kenny.

The session was scheduled for September. Right away I was like, “Okay, great.” If you have a deadline, then it’s real. To prepare, I booked a summer residency at Pete’s Candy Store to test drive the songs. That was not only the incentive to actually get my shit together, but to experience playing to people, all alone.

Instrumental music is tough. If you’re singing, you can connect that way, and get out of your head. But when you’re just playing, it’s intense. I have a ton of respect for anybody that plays in front of people all by themselves. It was a real feat for me.

When it came time to record, it was actually great to go to that studio in California and make such an event out of it. The studio is unique- the live room is in basically the living room of this big, old house, with vaulted ceilings. Then the control room is down a little flight of stairs, in the basement of the house. There’s no window between the control room and the live room, which is pretty unusual, and most of the time would probably be kind of a pain in the ass without any line of sight.

But it worked out really well, because I was just sitting in the living room of this beautiful house, looking out this big window at the ocean, and just playing guitar in a room by myself. Or so it seemed.

The engineer that I worked with, Robert Cheek, was so cool. He’s also the guy that engineered the CRB stuff recorded there (If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home By Now; Anyway You Love, We Know How You Feel). The guy who actually owns the studio knew Neal and really loved him. It was as close as you could possibly get to having somebody like him there, without him actually being there. It ended up being one of the more memorable experiences musically of my life, for sure.

How did you get into fingerstyle guitar and who influenced you?

Initially, I was a huge Stevie Ray Vaughan fan. The typical bullshit. I listened to a lot of blues guitar. I was a huge Brian Setzer fan when I was 17. One of the best things about going to Berklee was being exposed me to so much music that I never would have come across otherwise. More than anything, it just opened me up to jazz, and music that was a little more complicated. I thought that I wanted to be a jazz guitarist, for a while. Sometimes I still think that.

Right around the time that things were starting to roll with Zeph, I was falling back in love with guitar. I had this moment, where I realized that I wanted to develop myself as a fingerstyle guitarist. I always played a little bit of guitar with my fingers, like any guitar player does. But there’s this really high threshold that’s hard to get over.

I was listening to a lot of Mississippi John Hurt. I was also really, really into Big Bill Broonzy for a few months. That was the gateway. I thought, “Well, now I’ve got to completely go down the rabbit hole, and find every other incarnation of whatever this is that I possibly can”.

That led me to a bunch of other old blues cats. But pretty quickly, I got into Chet Atkins. He became my dude, for several years. I really went deep on his entire catalog. That led me into all the other people associated with that world of fingerstyle guitar. Merle Travis, and Jerry Reid, and those guys. I got really, really into that Julian Lage record World’s Fair. I was really struck by how artistic it was.

When you listen to my record, there are two categories the songs fall into. There are the true fingerstyle songs, where it’s self accompanied, with a sense of rhythm, and groove, and time. Then there are three or four songs that are just more rubato and out of time. They’re more like etudes. The songs that I’m thinking of are “Analogue,” “Palm Reader,” “Judee,” “Prairie Dream.”

Those are some of the first songs that I wrote, and I wrote them with the intention of having them be played with a flat pick. But I ended up playing them with my fingers, and with a thumb pick. They are played fingerstyle on the record, but they were not conceived as fingerstyle tunes.

Neal hipped you to a lot of players in the American Primitive and British Folk traditions. How did those guys affect your playing?

Once I met Neal, and he started exposing me to all these dudes I would send him stuff he wasn’t aware of from the Chet Atkins world and he’d be like, “Wow. This is awesome. I’ve never heard this.” The two of us met in the middle. I was able to hip him to a few things that he’d never heard. But then he, in return, was able to hip me to all these things that I’m still learning about and listening to, and trying to siphon off a little bit of the vibe.

You realize the reason why Neal was so into those players is because there’s a very underdog, misfit quality about them. John Fahey, and John Renbourn, Bert Jansch, and all those dudes. There’s a very, at least to me, distinct weirdo quality about those guys. Which I love. It makes perfect sense, because obviously that was Neal. But also, all the music that Neal really loved was that same way. That’s something that I feel like I really get now. Both as just an existential thing, but also a musical thing.

With people like Jansch, they were very virtuosic guitar players. But there’s this certain funkiness to the music, and an unpolished-ness to it. A quality of pathos that I think is really cool, and kind of unexplored. Especially now. I feel like there’s a lot of unexplored territory in the world of funky and fucked up solo acoustic guitar.

One of the things that’s so cool about that American Primitive and the British school of solo acoustic guitar, is that it has a lot of that Indian, eastern element. It’s not as reliant on a very consistent pulse. There’s more of that raga aspect to it. It’s less about appealing to the masses, and more about creating a vibe and an experience musically.

How was recording with Neal and Jon for Zephaniah’s record Listening to the Music?

Funnily, the bassist from a band I used to play in was a really huge Ryan Adams fan. He hipped me to that, and the albums that I really fell in love with, and listened to exhaustively, were Easy Tiger and Cardinology, which are the two records that Neal was the most involved with. I didn’t know who was playing in the band at the time, but Easy Tiger was one of those records that didn’t leave my car CD player for months. I told Neal that last year. It’s been a long time since I really listened to any of those records. But occasionally, one will pop up on my phone. Now when you listen to it, you can hear Neal so clearly- not only his voice, but his musical influence.

Jon Graboff is one of my best friends, so it’s hilarious to think about. I’ve spent a lot of time with him in the last few years. He’s the master of telling stories. I’d only experienced Graboff in that role solo, touring with him in Europe. He didn’t have anybody else to be a part of the story. With Neal around, the floodgates just opened. I think that’s probably part of the reason why, when I met Neal, it just literally was like, “Oh. I’ve known this dude for 1000 years”.

The whole experience of recording with those two was so fun. Neal was so fun to be around. It was like being around your favorite brother or uncle. There was definitely an interesting aspect to the Zeph session, because it was Neal, Jon, and Jeff Hill, who have all known each other for a million years. Then me, Zeph, Roy, and Arthur, who have a similar relationship collectively, as those guys. The two generations.

Do you have one particular favorite memory from that session?

I think my favorite story from that session was doing the tune, “Listening To the Music,” on Zeph’s record. Jon’s playing a resonator guitar, and I’m playing a nylon string guitar around one microphone. Then Arthur was in the drum room, and Jeff dragged his upright bass into the bass booth. Roy was playing piano, and Zeph was in the vocal booth. We convinced Neal to play rhythm guitar.

It’s probably the best song on the whole album. It was just such a special experience, to go in and cut the whole thing, top to bottom, live. I love listening back to that because you can hear Neal playing guitar, and you can really hear Neal’s voice, singing behind Zeph.

Graboff and I went back in to do one last pass with the guitars, little fills and harmonies we worked out. It was just him and I in the live room, and everybody else was sitting in the control room. There’s one harmony right at the end of the tune, and we really stuck the landing.

On the original take, once the song ends, you hear the final downbeat, then it tapers off. Then from the control room, you can hear Neal let out this super high pitched yelp of excitement. Which is just the funniest thing. I wish it was on the record, actually. If you ask Graboff, that was one of Neal’s go-tos. Just this high pitched howl, that would mean that he was super pumped about something.

I played with a few different people at the Neal tribute concert that happened last year. One of the nicest things for me personally was when I had a break and I was standing at the back of the theater, watching somebody else play, and looking around at all these people. To be a person that, when you pass away, enough people cared about you to literally fill a theater… I just remember thinking to myself, the only way to explain that is, you literally just have a big soul. It can spread out so far, to really connect with all these people.

On the record, there’s one little interstitial tune, called “Big Soul.” That’s a little secret tribute to Neal on the record too.

In & Of is out now on Tompkins Square. A portion of the proceeds from this album will benefit the Neal Casal Music Foundation. Get it here.