Shannon Shaw – Cryin’ My Eyes Out

20th March 2024 · 2010s, 2018, Music

If you’re after a killer chorus, look no further than this song – Cryin’ My Eyes Out (Lyin’ Beside You). Shannon Shaw is a soulful and swaggering garage rock diva with one foot in the ’50s and ’60s and the other in a sweaty underground bar.

Probably because she grew up in a Mormon family in Northern California’s wine-making region, the Napa Valley, where the only music deemed acceptable for family listening was an oldies station.

No surprise then that when she formed a group, at art school in the Bay Area in her mid-20s, she fused the sounds of ’60 girl groups and ’50s doo wop in her first band Shannon & The Clams.

She then turned a little bit country and, in the words of Donny and Marie, a little bit rock’n’roll after recruiting Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys to produce her 2018 solo debut, nodding to Dusty with its title Shannon In Nashville.

If it sounds seamlessly perfect after the stripped-back rawness of the Clams, that’s because her band includes legendary session players Gene Chrisman and Bobby Wood along with a crew of Auerbach’s skilful cronies.

Shannon gets to wrap her smokey voice in retro-styled melodies and arrangements inspired by lush ’60s pop and vintage countrypolitan sounds complete with strings, horns, and massed backing vocalists.

You could almost imagine songs like this one pouring out of a car radio somewhere in the Deep South in the early ’60s – and she’s having a lot of laughs with the video.