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| Shannon played both
clarinet and guitar by the age of fifteen, due to being inspired by his
father's collection of blues records. However, he started seriously
practicing only after seeing B.B. King.
After playing in local bands for several
years and enjoying local success, his father died in 1981 and he
took a job driving a cab in order to help his family pay bills. His
music career was put on hold until 1990, when he began playing in
local clubs at the urging of his former bassist.
In the early 1990s, he formed a group called Shannon and the Membership, who won a spot playing at the 1991 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. |
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Based out of New Orleans, Louisiana, in
1995, after being impressed with a demo tape that Shannon had
recorded,
Joe
Boyd of
Hannibal Records contacted Shannon, and his first album, A
Cab Driver's Blues, was released on October 15, 1995.[4]
Songs on the album featured snippets of actual conversations from
his customers while in the cab.[3]
In April 1996, Shannon announced that he was giving up driving his cab in order to make playing music his full-time job.[5] His song "S.U.V." (2002), won Living Blues magazine's Critics Poll Song of the Year,[6] as well as receiving a Blues Music Awards nomination for song of the year.[7] Shannon appeared as himself in the 2008 novel, Bad Moon Rising by Jonathan Maberry. He is one of several real-world celebrities who are in the fictional town of Pine Deep when monsters attack. Other celebrities included Tom Savini, Brinke Stevens, Ken Foree, Stephen Susco, Debbie Rochon, James Gunn and Joe Bob Briggs. Shannon's name and persona appear coincidentally in two horror novels: Fat White Vampire Blues by Andrew Fox and the aforementioned Bad Moon Rising.
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