Artist description Edgy guitar work with dynamic vocals. Acoustic music that grabs you by the balls, but knows when to squeeze gently.

Music Style Acoustic Rock/singer-songwriter

Musical Influences Matthias Jabs, George Lynch, Sting, Dave Matthews Band, Alice in Chains, Live, Sarah McLachlan, Tori Amos, Peter Mulvey, artists and bands that don't suck. I'm influenced by newer bands all the time.

Similar Artists Perhaps a mix of Alice in Chains, Live, and Dave Matthews Band. Hell, I don't know . . .YOU be the judge.

Artist History Shawn Lentz began playing guitar at age thirteen, starting on acoustic then later moving on to electric and becoming a proficient soloist. Self-taught and progressing very rapidly, Shawn began playing in bands and writing songs at age fifteen. Along with his adolescent cohorts, including Jon Lundberg, he took first place in various talent contests. "This is about the time when I really thought I had made it, playing on stage for two hundred people in Marysville, Washington. For first place I think we won some Taco Bell coupons or something. I was a fifteen-year-old kid playing along with Scorpion's World Wide Live album, jumping up and down on my bed like I was on stage. I thought I was Matthias Jabs, I really did!" After hitting the big-time in Marysville Shawn joined Reignstorm, a local metal band, as one of two lead guitarists in 1991. Just a year out of high school he was naïve to the pressures that accompanied playing in a semi-pro band. After five years together playing all over locally, having K.I.S.W. supported shows, practicing seven days a week, and doing their own management, Reignstorm imploded. Sacrifices and frustrations from recording a debut C.D. and being another component of an ever-shrinking, fickle metal scene tore the band apart at the seams. "I was devastated. I had put so much time and energy into this thing just to watch it all unravel. Over the five years, music had become this enslavement and I wasn't having fun doing the very thing I loved most." Not wanting anything to do with bandmates or the music industry, Shawn reclused into the bowels of Arlington and began writing. His writing had taken a far left turn from his previous efforts of the last ten years. "I had just lost my job, my relationship was going down the crapper; sounds like a country song doesn't it? I was living on five acres, soaking up the unemployment, smoking a lot of pot, drinking Pyramid beer, and had confined myself to my home-studio with my acoustic, my sanctuary. I don't know where it came from, but I just started writing all these acoustic tidbits that ended up morphing into songs. The songs still had a rock edge but were considerably different than what I had been writing before. It was also the first time I had considered singing rather than just playing lead/rhythm guitar and singing the occasional back up. Grace of Light (Darkness Descends) was one of the first tunes born out of those sessions in '96." Since 1996, Shawn has given the music business a bit of a break. He sobered up, went back to school in 1997 and is currently at University of Washington studying wildlife biology and works as a training field biologist at Mt. Rainier National Park during the summer. What about the music? The music would never be suppressed for long. It has become an entity evolving with subtlety over the last five years, lurking and quietly waiting for an opportunity to emerge. "I've spent the last five years living life. Getting out climbing, hiking, living and working in the forest, seeing the things that are important instead of staring at the insides of a practice room seven days a week has been a tremendous importance on my constitution as well as on song-craft." With his first solo effort released last year, Convergence, the evolution is apparent. The album is a self described "aggregate" of newly written acoustic songs blended with material that he has written since 1996. A steady growth is easy to see blending elements of folk, acoustic rock, and some funkiness at times. The songs shift temporally between his earlier acoustic-electric material with driving electric rhythm and lead-work to the stripped down percussive, acoustic/vocal compositions of new. In either case, the music is raw and honest without glossy, bubblegum, overproduction. As Shawn puts it, "It's what music should be: truthful, honest expression." Back on the scene as a fledgling solo-artist, this is just a taste of what is to come from a promising, uprising talent. Shawn is currently writing for his follow up CD, Misguided Legacies.

Group Members Shawn Lentz: Vocals and acoustic guitar

Instruments Vocals, Guitar, percussion

Albums Christian and Dower, Convergence

Additional Info Shawn is currently finishing his Bachelor of Science degree in wildlife science/quantitative science and is not available to tour until July '03.

Location Seattle, Washington - USA

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