Gothic Theatre
Shawn Mullins
Shawn Mullins developed and really honed his craft the old-fashioned way: writing songs that can be played on an acoustic guitar and working them out in front of a live audience more than 200 nights per year. Here is an artist who’s spent his career nurturing his muse and creating a solid, and steadily growing, catalog of great songs. “It’s my work and my own expressions of the world I see,” says Mullins.
For years, Shawn Mullins created music this way, touring the country in his van with his dog, Roadie, going from gig to gig and putting out albums on his own independent label. “I would sell somewhere between four and six thousand records a year,” Shawn says. That number jumped significantly, when, in the Summer of ‘98, one of the country’s most influential alternative radio stations decided to add Shawn’s song, “Lullaby”, into heavy rotation; the track, a hook-filled drum loop-driven electro-acoustic saga of Hollywood heartbreak and redemption, was an immediate hit. Soon, other stations throughout the south were picking up “Lullaby” and then it spread north throughout the country. The song became a number one hit at Top 40 and Adult Contemporary Radio in the United States and topped many charts internationally. To date, “Soul’s Core” the album, which includes “Lullaby”, “Shimmer”, “The Gulf of Mexico” and many other classic Mullins recordings, has sold over two million copies worldwide and was nominated for a Grammy for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance.
" My writing is always changing," says the Atlanta-based singer/songwriter. “I’ve gone from writing love songs in the first person to writing a lot of character-based story songs. I can take my own stuff and put it into these characters and hide behind them a little bit. It’s cheap therapy,” Shawn confesses. “I get most of my ideas from journal entries. I write a lot on the road.”
" There’s one thing I’ve learned," Mullins admits. "It’s to open your heart up to people that others wouldn’t normally want to talk to. Eighty percent of what I sing about probably happened. They’re folk stories passed down from people to people. I talk to a lot of different homeless people, tramps, and hobos; I don’t mind giving them a cigarette and hearing their story.
Since the success of “Lullaby”, Shawn has toured much of the world and taken on many side projects along the way. Most recently he collaborated with Matthew Sweet and Pete Droge as one-third of the three-part harmony trio, The Thorns. The self-titled album was produced by Brendan O’Brien and includes guest performances by Jim Keltner on drums, E Street Band’s Roy Brittan on piano and string wizard Greg Leisz on a variety of stringed instruments. The Los Angeles Times has written that, “The Thorns are a harmony fest on their own, with the three voices blending smoothly in prime CSN-meets-Beach Boys fashion.” The Thorns have spent much of the last year promoting their self-titled Columbia release touring the U.S., Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. They have headlined many dates and supported the Dixie Chicks, John Mayer and The Jayhawks.
And now, inspired by life on the road and several new pages in his journal, Shawn finds himself writing for his next Columbia Records solo project and making time to do what he loves: hitting the road as a solo-acoustic artist playing intimate venues across the country. “It’s been non-stop for last year and a half,” explains Mullins, “I’m just excited about having some time to write music and the chance to play a few solo gigs a town or two away.” Shawn Mullins was born on March 8, 1968. He grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, the son of a railroad man and a schoolteacher. At age four, Shawn began playing a miniature set of drums his grandfather, Tom Brown, gave him. Brown had been a big band bass player throughout the thirties, forties, and fifties, and played an enormous role in Shawn’s musical development.
Shawn formed his own rock band at age twelve. He had learned to play drums, piano, bass, cello, and guitar and had been singing since he was a baby. Sometime around the seventh grade, searching for some way to express himself, he began writing songs and recording them onto a small tape recorder. Inspired by this newly found art form, Shawn borrowed another portable tape player, and started bouncing tracks and recording two and three track versions of his songs. Later, at age sixteen, his parents gave him a four-track recorder, which allowed him to make multi-track recordings. This early experience in recording and arranging built a foundation for Shaw’s later production work. Mullins counts Hank Williams, Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson, Steve Earle, Joni Mitchell, and Gil Scott-Heron as influences.
Shawn attended North Georgia College, an Army-based military college where he studied music, graduated, and was commissioned in the U.S. Army Airborne Infantry. While stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia, Second Lieutenant Mullins released two albums and played weekend shows at Trackside Tavern and other clubs around Atlanta and Athens. After leaving the Army, Shawn recorded and released two more indie albums and continued to tour around the country in support of his growing catalog.
