Thanks to Bill Meredith, for this write-up in the Palm Beach Post!

Well-traveled Sweeney at home down here

Posted on 29 June 2009

Shauna Sweeney, a singer-songwriter who traveled the country. (Courtesy shaunasweeney.com)

Teenagers are often natural wanderers, and Lantana-based singer/songwriter Shauna Sweeney (shaunasweeney.com) was no exception. By age 17, the Vermont native had moved to Connecticut, Fort Lauderdale and Boston (to attend Emerson College after receiving a scholarship). When Beantown’s music scene inspired her more than her studies, the road beckoned again, landing her in Orlando, Chicago and Europe before her latest relocations.

“I’ve been in Boca Raton, Stuart and Lantana, all in the past year,” says Sweeney, now 24. “I started playing live in the Fort Lauderdale area when I was 15, but now that I’m playing so much in Lake Worth and Lantana, I’ve noticed how excited people are to have live music around here. But I’m still always ready to jump on a bus and go on tour.”

With her recent debut EP, Cliff Jumping, she has the ammunition and incentive. Produced by Keith Michaud, the singer/songwriter for area band Summer Blanket, the disc features radio-ready pop tunes like Another Day and the title track. The self-taught Sweeney, who says she learned to play through the “school of life,” doubles on acoustic guitar and the African djembe drum. Her strong voice was also fueled by the forward-thinking grade school she attended in West Hartford, Conn. By age 9, she’d published and recorded three songs there, one the theme song for a public television documentary.

Many lead singers aren’t as good as backing vocalists, but Sweeney is an exception. In her duo with another singer/songwriter, Jason Montero, she sings lead on her own compositions and switches between backing and lead, plus guitar and djembe, on unorthodox covers like Men at Work’s Overkill and KT Tunstall’s Black Horse and the Cherry Tree. On the latter, Sweeney also recently used pedals to loop multiple guitar parts after Montero broke a string, thickening the sound before he and his repaired guitar were able to return.

See Shauna Sweeney solo from 9-11 p.m. Fridays at Bizaare Avenue Cafe, 921 Lake Ave., Lake Worth               (561) 588-4488         , and with Jason Montero from 3-8 p.m. Sundays at the Old Key Lime House, 300 E. Ocean Ave., Lantana,               (561) 582-1889         , and 9 p.m.-1 a.m. Wednesdays at Lake Worth Rum Shack, 606 Lake Ave., Lake Worth

Pick up a copy of City Link this week!!
Thanks to Colleen Dougher for the interview, Beth Black for the pics and to Jake Cline and the other folks at CityLink Magazine! 

This article can be viewed with photo gallery at:
http://southflorida.metromix.com/music/photogallery/making-the-leap/1171978/content

Shauna Sweeney plays her first SunFest 

When acoustic Lake Worth acoustic folk-rocker Shauna Sweeney sings about falling in love while protecting your heart or trying to recapture the passion after the urgency and specialness dissipates, she’s not covering new ground in terms of subject matter. But she proves such songs can remain fresh, long after relationships grow stale.

Sweeney has a constantly evolving EP to which she continues adding songs and re-releasing. Cliffjumping, which features musical and production contributions of Summer Blanket’s Keith Michaud, now contains 7 tracks, mostly about love. “As any chick songwriter tends to,” she says. “I gravitate towards the relationship stuff.”

The 24-year-old singer- guitarist and percussionist wrote her first song in kindergarten. “Well, I found what I am guessing is the first song I wrote and it’s in purple crayon,” she says. “I was only about 5 or 6 years old and the first line is 'A long time ago,' which I think is funny because I don’t know how long it could have been since I was 5.” Sweeney has been writing songs since. “I was very lucky to go to a school in Connecticut that had a very high arts interest and enthusiasm,” she says. “The music teacher and principal there [facilitated] a school program that recorded songs, so I actually had songs at 8, 9 and 10 years old that were being played on Connecticut public television and doing little local fun radio spots and little things that really got my feet wet .”

After her family’s move to South Florida when she was 15, she picked up guitar and after learning three chords, began hitting open mikes. “I was playing like Jewel and Indigo Girls covers along with my first couple of originals that I wrote on the guitar.” She eventually joined a band called Never Enough. “We would pack 100 of our friends into the Chocolate Moose in Davie and we thought it was Nirvana at 16 years old,” she says. After that she spent a few years living and performing in Boston, Orlando and Chicago. Since returning to South Florida at 19, she’s been playing steadily and now manages several weekly gigs that include solo performances, duos or hosting open mikes, a skill she honed at Tavern 213 in Fort Lauderdale.

Her signature sunflowered guitar is a sunny reminder of her two years at Tavern 213. “It was a really cool experience of bringing 10-20 musicians into this room and having an awesome jam every week,” she recalls. “One of the people who used to come regularly said he was cleaning out his collection of guitars and giving a few of them away to friends and that was one that he gifted to me,” she says. “It was really sweet and it was a nice token, a reminder of all the fun times that we had at that event.”

But like she said at 5, that was “a long time ago.” Still, she’ll be taking the sunflowers with her to SunFest, which she suggests is a good time to hear her new sextet, The Shauna Sweeney Band. “It will be the first time hearing the whole band,” she says. “There’s going to be 6 of us up there and it’s gonna be a good time I’m sure.”

The Shauna Sweeney Band will perform 3:30 p.m. Sunday on the Coors Light stage at SunFest, along Flagler Drive from Banyan Boulevard to Lakeview Drive in West Palm Beach. Tickets cost $31 for a one-day pass. Call 800-786-3378 or visit Sunfest.com. For details on Sweeney’s other weekly gigs, visit MySpace.com/shaunasweeney.

— Colleen Dougher

Hey all,

If you feel like waking up early, I'll be playing music on CBS 12's show "Daybreak", tomorrow from 6am -9pm. Check out www.cbs12.com for program information.

The show airs live around Palm Beach & Martin county, so tune in if you're up. Or check back on my site in a week or two and I'll try and post a video for ya.   :)

Happy 3rd day of the year! Cheers,

 Shauna

Woo hoo!

Sorry, I'm just excited... nothing like a few days in the snow to renew one's spirit.  :) Or one's appreciation for our tropical surroundings!

Also excited to have one more jam at the Kingshead Pub before the year is out. I can't wait to hear and see what goes on tonight-- never a dull moment at the Kingshead Pub.    :)

Coming up on Thurs the 1st 9 to 12, I'll be at the Lake Worth Rum Shack, solo-style. Come by and celebrate the New Year with me!  We always a good time at the Shack; located at 606 Lake Ave.

Since the weekend will be starting then, you should come over for Happy Hour at Brogue's Irish Bar; I'm there Friday the 2nd, 5:30 to 8:30 pm. Have a whisky or two and some bangers n mash. 621 Lake Ave-- Good stuff  :)

For some pumpkin cheesecake and a nightcap, swing past the Bizaare cafe later that night... I'm playing a set of originals and some covers in the bar/bistro, starting by 10pm. Great place for later-night dinners as well. 909 Lake Ave, one block west from Dixie Highway.

 I hope you all had a great holiday week and I look forward to celebrating with you soon.   Cheers,

   Shauna

Hi All! I haven't posted anything on this page in regards to the election. But today I signed onto barackobama.com, and they were asking for election-day stories and experiences. So I decided to post here what I sent to them:

I am one of the millions of Americans who campaigned hard in my community for President-Elect Barack Obama. Now, being able to write his name with that title ignites in me a great hope and excitement. After watching Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, I was immediately inspired by his passion, and  as I learned more about him, became profoundly impressed by his practical, even-tempered views, his ability to hear and reconcile various perspectives on so many positions, and his dedication to achieving actual change, rather than just the appearance of it.

Around the same time, my younger sister was asked to write a report on an "iconic figure" for her college class, and I suggested she write about Barack Obama. I told her about how he'd aspired to be the president since he was a small boy "so that he could help people", and about how the students he worked with as President of the Harvard Law Review were highly impressed with his ability to quiet petty disputes in his quest to quickly and fairly resolve issues. Despite the fact that his media profile had only just began to rise, many people including my sister and I saw in him the qualities that are so difficult to find in ANYone, let alone major politics; such intelligence and drive is not often matched with such openness and graciousness.

Several friends and I  went out and signed up new voters in Broward County and Palm Beach County, FL. We sent emails to our families and co-workers and acquaintances. We put up signs all over town. We talked to undecided voters, and hopefully cleared up some misconceptions about this gentleman who would become their president. And we got to see first-hand this cautious optimism, growing among people who saw that maybe, for the first time, the election could make a REAL difference.

Seeing the returns coming in that night was an incredibly prideful moment. That ecstatic feeling has lasted the whole week. The most encouraging part was to see that Barack Obama's message resounded so strongly not just with the young voters and minority voters, but with suburban america, with the educated voters, and the military, and the unions, and the people with money, as well as the people without.

I've been sorting through different newspapers this week, and many of the journalists seem to be realizing the enormity of the fact that we have elected the first African-American President (who is also  white and Cherokee indian)... and that is not even the most amazing part! For probably the first time that most Americans have seen, the man holding our highest office will be one who shares our desire for a government that rewards hard work, values fairness as well as achievement, and is held accountable by ALL of its citizens in its efforts to maintain peace and prosperity for people at every economic level.

We all hope and pray that President Elect Obama can face this enormous task before him with continued strength, clarity, tenacity, and graciousness. We hope that he will USE the awesome grassroots support system he has created to help get his work done in congress, and internationally.
We will be there every step of the way.

THANK YOU!

Shauna Sweeney
Professional Musician / Singer-Songwriter
http://www.myspace.com/shaunasweeney

Hi all!

 Some of you noticed that I took my older tracks down from the page last week. They are still available for purchase online through the Snocap store on the page, but I wanted to make room for...

 CLiFFJUMPiNG, the EP!

1. Another Day           Words & Music by Shauna Sweeney.

2. Cliffjumping             Words & Music by Shauna Sweeney.

3. Little Less Perfect   Words & Music by Shauna Sweeney.

4. Worth It                     Words & Music by Shauna Sweeney.

5. Gotta Be                  Words & Music by Ashley Ingram & Des'ree Weekes

These 5 tracks were recorded at Elegbaland Studios in Lake Worth, with the invaluable assistance of producer Keith Michaud, from the band Summer Blanket. 

The first song, Another Day, is now available on my page for downloads or as an add for your page!

Download the whole EP for $7! And watch for CD release party dates in September.  =)

Thanks y'all! Hope you enjoy the songs,

~ Shauna

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