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Hometown: Worth, Illinois, United States

Influences: Depeche Mode, Godhead, My Chemical Romance

Website: http://www.geocities.com/justinshanemusic/index.html

Our Story:

Justin Shane - Auto-Biography
During the One Last Wish era
2006

I've always been into music. For as long as I can remember I've been mesmorized by the way musicians can capture an audience and make them feel emotions through their songs. I think that is like one of the most amazing things ever. I grew up in a house of mostly teenage girls, so I naturally liked who they liked. My second or third birthday was complete with New Kids on the Block plate, napkins, and whatever other garbage you could think of. That year I also got their cassette tape and a cassette player. I got a little microphone and a stand and I sang to everyone at the birthday party my own little rendition of "The Right Stuff". It was pretty funny.

After that I grew to watch MTV and documentaries about musicians. I was always fascinated with everything about them. I wanted to live like them, I wanted to have as much power as they did. With one simple lyric in a song they could change someone's life. They could make life liveable and happy again for some people. They could touch people's emotions, and I envied it. I watched lots of Micheal Jackson videos and documentaries... His fans would actually cry when they saw him, I thought that was extreme, but it just showed how much he moved them emotionally.

But I've seen videos of before I could speak and I was always a very vocal child. I would just run around making noises. Just seeing what kind of sounds I could produce. Haha, I probably owe my talented voice to me being a baby making all sorts of noises. I didn't really cry much, but I was a very stubborn baby, I wanted to learn everything myself and do things my way. I think I've carried a lot of that trait. Haha.

As I got older I got into more and more styles of music. I lived with my grandparents who were big on country music. I watched such artists as Garth Brooks, Reba, and Brooks & Dunn sing and dance on stage at their shows. We had many tapes of Garth performing live, he had a great stage presence. My mom was big into bands like Motley Crue, Guns'n'Roses, and all of that... I would watch some of those guys and be like "Whoa, those guys totally do their own thing and don't care what people think about them!" Which is cool because nowadays thats totally my attitude.

Soon I got old enough to start deciding which kinds of music I wanted to listen to. I quickly got into Marilyn Manson, which branched to several other bands. I loved how there were so many bands and so many different styles to listen to. I loved attributes of so many artists. I began to feed off of music, I learned as much as I could about it and constantly looked up new artists and read about them. The Cure, Depeche Mode, and many more came into the picture.

Now, I've always been a singer... But once I found out my mom had a guitar, I just HAD to play it. I used to go hang out by her and play the guitar all day. I remember making like the same noise a hundred times and then putting some little patterns together and thinking they sounded cool. Haha, that totally was not the case, but we can pretend. Anyways, my mom quickly picked up on the fact that I was passionate about it and one year for Christmas she got me my own guitar.

It was a purple Fender Squire electric guitar. I plugged it into my little distorted amp and played as much as I could. Learning new things by trial and error. What sounded good and what didn't. I learned how to use harmonics and the frets to make all different kind of noises. I sounded terrible for a long time, but soon I started to figure things out. It was a lot of patience at first, but then I started to get pretty good.

I wrote all kinds of songs that I would be highly embarassed if anyone found them now. Haha. It took me a long time to get the whole lyric thing down. Trying to make them good, yet emotional and not cheesy is like the hardest part. Haha. I went through several bands, but we usually just called ourselve a band and didn't do anything. I was in probably only one band where we actually had a practice and we were terrible, but at the time we thought we were awesome. Haha. Good times.

After a while I put the guitar down and decided to just be a listener for a while. I kept writing poetry and stuff, and melodies... But I never really picked up the guitar to be serious about it. I began to look at keyboards online and look at prices... I wanted to save up for one. I really wanted to learn how to play the keyboard. My grandma picked up on my new fascination and the under the tree that Christmas was a brand new Yamaha keyboard.

I plugged it in and played it a lot. It came a little more natural than the guitar, but I think it's only because the guitar gave me a slight understanding of what to do and what not to do. It was so much fun to have a new instrument to play around with. Now, I'm in no way a good piano player, but I'm good with keyboard. The different is... I use synthed sounds to make cool noises and melodies. Piano requires much more talent, haha, but I'm learning that.

A while after my whole keyboard phase I went through a very harsh break up with a girl. It really took it's toll on me and caused me to go a little crazy for a while. I slowly learned to get back on my feet by expressing myself through music. All of the hurt I had felt over time was finally being released, and it felt great to say what I wanted to say and express myself.

The relationship that had ended had in fact numbed me from a lot of things that had been happening. People passing away, people moving away, and other issues that usually would have torn me apart. For instance... The passing of my younger sister, McKayla. Once the relationship had ended, that became real. Everyone else had time to grieve and get that over with, but I had been previously wrapped up in something. That hit me like a train.

It took me a while to get something I was happy with, but I eventually ended up writing this really great riff through synths. I sat and sang to it, just messing around... I knew it was going to be a great emotional release. And soon the lyrics to "A Home in the Clouds" poored out. I really felt so much better after I had written that song. It was like my fairwell, which in my mind, was proper.

The whole album really began to piece together and things were sounding great. I had never been more proud of my work. I took all kinds of photos and editted them all up. I was happy with my image, the eyeliner was now a part of my whole onstage persona, and so was the custom made "gothic" outfits. I was becoming whatever I wanted, but not something that had already been done. I was working very hard on this material and putting all of my creative force into it.

After much writing and figuring things out I went into Say It Again studios. There I worked with Scott Oldaker, who really helped me to bring the songs alive. His creativity and constructive criticism helped me to make the songs even better. It was a great learning experience that I'm so glad I went through. Say It Again became my favorite place to be, and I was always most happy when I was working on some material there. It became home away from home.

So here I am with an image, and an album of great songs. I'm pretty unsure where this music career will take me, but I do know that I'm having a whole lot of fun with it. I'm excited about the album release and I can't wait to hear what everyone thinks about it. I think it's very diverse and it brings a sort of refreshment into music. But that's strictly opinion. Haha. So I'm releasing this one independently and looking for a label to sponsor a tour.

Please check out the album and purchase it if you like it!

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