Shelby Earl
artist pic

Shelby Earl is not a country singer, as her name suggests. She is a city girl with a "world-class voice" and a universe of stories to tell. Entrenched in the Seattle music scene for years, Earl worked in music-industry day jobs and headed up a multitude of grassroots endeavors. She booked, mentored, and promoted loads of bands, all the while keeping her own musical dreams safely on the shelf. Speaking with Songfacts about her song "Under The Evergreen" in a 2011 interview, Earl explained that she wrote that song, "when I was trudging through my days at a 9-5 corporate job and I was MISERABLE." Earl also spent many years fronting various bands of her own, one of which gained industry and major label interest, but none of which prompted her to take big risks or to commit to life as a full-time musician.

It was in early 2008 that this all began to change; after the break-up of her last band, The Hope, Earl spent a year writing songs and playing small solo shows in Seattle and New York. Her audiences’ enthusiastic responses were sign enough that the new songs and the new format—girl with guitar—were worth investing in. In late 2009 Earl took the plunge many artists only talk about. She quit her high-stakes corporate music industry job, took a job as a waitress, and began to make a record. As her step-dad so aptly put it, Earl had “pulled all the boats ashore and burned them” in order to live big.

Released in 2011, "Burn the Boats," produced by John Roderick of The Long Winters, is an album made up of 10 indie-folk-pop songs with recurrent themes of reclaiming lost loves, reaching for the unattainable, and waking up one’s own life after a long slumber. Collaborators on the album include members of The Long Winters, SHIM, Telekinesis, (former) Fleet Foxes, and many other great local artists. Shelby Earl “burned the boats” to make this record. The resulting musical effort is, in Earl’s words, “a true reflection of where I’ve been and of where I’m headed." Read more on Last.fm.

last.fm: 2,531 listeners, 15,386 plays
tags: singer-songwriter, pop, seattle, seen live, female vocalists

^{Please downvote if incorrect! Self-deletes if score is 0.}