J Shogren
J Shogren
Music for your inner grifter
I like how JDB put it: J's Jahamericana cd makes me feel like a grifter in a movie who has been getting kicked around a while, but has stumbled on something that will change his life. The perfect con, the perfect-imperfect woman, news of a rigged horse race. It leads you to feel that feeling good about life is a guilty pleasure. That salvation isn't always far from a barstool. I wish people heard Js songs when they saw me walking down the street. It would be a hell of a soundtrack, the right soundtrack.
an americana bio as envisioned by committee, my friends and me:
Singer-songwriter J Shogren is celebrating the release of Jahamericana (JAHA! Records). This raucous collection ranges from roots to country to blues. His gruff voice and lyrics join his old Gibson L-48 guitar to charm and shake you off your bar stool. The songs come from a life lived in loud proportions. His adventures have taken him from days as a trapper to an endowed professor. More recently, J splits his time between Wyoming and Sweden. And as wild as it sounds, there he sits as the King of Sweden's Professor. Even more outrageous, he was a party to the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize as a member of the IPCC for their work on climate change. Now that is a lot of living packed into the 14 songs on Jahamericana. But have a listen yourself.
"Blending more styles than we can list here Shogren somehow ties it all together for his own unique sound. Thoughtful and larger than life songs set to a hard acoustic background make for some exciting listening. He's traveled the world and the stories are plentiful in these grooves. At the end of the day though it's Americana at its best." VILLAGE RECORDS
"Great album !!! Where have you been all those years ?? 4 & 1/ 2 stars"
Top 25 cds of 2007
-- F Braeken, e-magazine ROOTSTIME.
Your cd is just amazing! -- DJ R Pieters, Somewhere Between on Internet Radiostation Golden Flash (www.goldenflash.be)
"The songs come from the store of simple but are so tangential and persistent that you cannot get enough of them." MazzMusikas Mag, Belgium
"Bah, it's not fair that someone with such a shiny social career than others also can make such a strong album." Hugo Vogel, Plato.nl, Den Haag
"...Excellent acoustic, sit-down Berryesque rock and roll." -- J Carducci, former SST records dude, infamous rock-and-roll writer and critic
"Fourteen songs which seem to reflect what must have been, for all intents and purposes, a life ... Exaggerated." Blackblog Francosenia, Italy
"a song writer with many edges, all of them loveable" -- Country Home, Germany (www.iwde.de)
"...a lively old school new Americana singer-songwriter, who is unafraid of the polka, both to sing and to dance." -- J Shogren, about his future accordion teacher
For more information on J Shogren, his music, performances, reviews, and whole lot more,
please visit his website at:
www.myspace.com/jshogren
http://www.airplaydirect.com/jshogren
For information about booking, and other such related matters, email jahajunti@hotmail.com
I also play with Mumbletypeg (jamobilly)
myspace.com/centennialrockandroll
&
Birgit Burke (songwriter-singer)
myspace.com/birgitburke
Influences - acoustic jimmy page, electric bob dylan
WHAT sets us apart - According to Lars Erikson....what sets us apart is a "very honest and driving, in rhythm and attitude, essentially positive. It cheers you up without being silly. I find it cool, at times brilliant, fun and funny, a combination of serious and amusing. The guitarplaying is great, with lots of variation and personal touch, and so is the working on the songs. It is a good mixture between driving rhythm and more calm songs.
As with many other artists, you find the same kind of rhythm in the different songs returning, but there is nothing wrong with that, it's only familiar and nice. Makes you wanna dance. The songs are mature, because the man who composed them is mature; he's not a kid who, no matter how brilliant he may be, can't get away from his immaturity. The album is cozy, perfect for a car trip or for being played over and over again, weekend after weekend, on a local pub somewhere in Wyoming.
Many lines get stuck in your head (and so do the riffs). He comes some: "Dancing drinking and crying, lonesome lovesick and blue, smoking laughing and lying, to myself, the world and to you" found the keys to life my friend but I dropped them underneath my bar stool, "oh Lord, why did you give so many so few?", "if it's good enough for you, it's good enough for me".
At times I think the songs deserve a better recording, but they still come along great. Sometimes the whole thing reminds me - I don't know why - of a great street band, unknown, unrecorded, but oh so great. There is something classical about this album."
My story - playing music for 3 decades and yes I am the King of Sweden's professor this year
J Shogren lives in Wyoming. All of Jay's songs were recorded at Thunderground Sound Studios by Dan Tinker. Songs were Mastered by Jim Wilson at Air Show (not the one's marked DEMO--no mastering on those yet)
http://thundergroundsound.com/
http://airshowmastering.com/