SHANNON BOURNE

Shannon Bourne is a critically-acclaimed blues-and-roots-founded guitarist, singer and songwriter with a strong following of discerning fans and the power to sway audiences with the naked emotion and sheer virtuosic power of his soul-searing performances.

Shannon’s song-writing influences — Richard Thompson, Beck, Matt Walker and Scott Walker — take the Shannon Bourne Band sound from bluesy, hard-edged, riff-laden rock to guitar-based sonically exploratory progressive and post rock, while remaining strongly accessible to audiences. And always there is extreme emotional honesty, the baring of a soul that knows darkness, and a musical sweetness and delicacy also.

As a master guitarist and slide-guitarist with a distinctive and unique guitar voice, Shannon ranks among Australia’s very finest players, a peer to the likes of Geoff Achison and Jeff Lang — with both of whom he often shares a stage — and few others. His influences — Gary Moore, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Roy Buchanan among others — are evident in his playing, and his extraordinary performances genuinely permit his inclusion in the same sentence as such legends; but Shannon has a sound all his own, making him a musician’s musician as well as one loved by audiences, and fuelling the strong demand for his services as guest sideman and session musician.

Something of a prodigy, Shannon first picked up a guitar aged 10, inspired initially by Alice Cooper and then by Gary Moore, whose fire and passion is strongly infused in his personal style. Shannon first started fronting bands from the age of 14, performing twice a month at Melbourne Blues Appreciation Society blues jams for many years, serving a valuable apprenticeship and helping him win the 1997 Victorian Guitar Solo Competition and the 2001 VicTas Blues Music Emerging Talent Award.