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Shannon Murray is a folk/punk singer-songwriter and activist originally from northern Minnesota. With a style and sound that merges the folk sensibilities of Dar Williams, the energy and spunk of Cyndi Lauper, and the story-telling of Utah Phillips, there is no telling where this young troubadour will take you. She is shocking and delighting audiences everywhere with her quirky stories, passionate songs, clumsy wit, and contagious energy.
After six years studying clarinet performance in college, Shannon quit graduate school, sold her clarinet and headed out on a tour of the west coast with $20 dollars to her name and a car with 230,000 miles on it. Two years later, she is still reinventing the way she approaches making music and touring, and working to make her professional life more in-line with her political beliefs. She has toured by bus and bicycle to question the obvious contradictions between touring as a political musician and car culture. She makes all of her music available online for free downloading, and sells cds for sliding-scale, offering them to people for whatever they can afford to pay. She is also a member of Riot Folk!, a anti-profit, mutual-aid collective of radical artists and musicians, making music to provoke, educate, heal and inspire.
With six self-released albums of under her belt, Shannon is determination to stay independent. Her self-titled debut album “Shannon Murray” was released in 2002. She followed that up with “you and a six string” in 2003, “Scream” in 2004, “Hallelujah! I'm a Bum" in 2005, “Love and Fear" in 2006, and “Elated” in 2007. All of these albums (except the Bum cd which she recorded herself) were recorded in a small studio on the Turtle River in a wooded area of Northern Minnesota. The albums are labors of love, and Shannon is proud to proclaim that they were made by local businesses and artists, "My music is an extension of my personal beliefs, to separate the two is to live two lives, and I am not willing to do that." She is currently working on a six-week, 1,200 mile bicycle tour of Minnesota with fellow folk-singer Dave Cuomo.