John Sheldon

Twenty-eight years ago singer-songwriter John Sheldon was asleep in his cottage in Berkeley, Calif. when he heard strange noises in the kitchen. 'It woke me up early in the morning. I went into the kitchen and there was a possum shuffling around really slowly. He was going, 'Is there something to eat over here? Or is there something to eat over here?' He just completely ignored me. It was really weird,' laughed Sheldon.

Sheldon, now living in Amherst, turned this encounter with a nonchalantly hungry marsupial into a kid's song called 'Possum in the Kitchen' and that became the title cut to a brand new CD. The CD is brand new, but actually the recordings were made in 1986 and put on a cassette that Sheldon mostly gave out to friends. Recently, a friend's children kept requesting to hear 'Frog Song' or 'Ping Pong Man' from the cassette every time they got in the car, and so Sheldon thought maybe he should finally release these songs on CD.

Saturday afternoon at 3:30 John Sheldon is having a multi-media CD release party for 'Possum in the Kitchen' at the Shea Theater in Turners Falls. Sheldon will be singing and playing guitar with Peter Kim on bass and John Kokosczyna on drums. Behind the band will be a slide show of drawings by Micha Archer that are based on the songs.

Sheldon has done a lot of things in his music career but this is his first children's CD. He was Van Morrison's guitarist in the '60s, in the 'Brown Eyed Girl' era. He has made a half dozen excellent rock'-n'-roll records under his own name and has written songs that James Taylor recently recorded. These have included 'Bittersweet,' which was featured on the 'The Best of James Taylor' in 2003 and went platinum after selling 1 million copies.

One of the best tunes on the new children's CD is 'Stickbug Song,' which was the first song that Sheldon ever wrote that he liked. 'I was in my 20s and all my friends were writing songs, but I just couldn't write one that I liked until this one,' he said. Sheldon has a highly developed sense of humor, which you might imagine would be the case for someone to write a song about an insect you can barely see. 'Stickbug Song' has a chica-boom guitar beat with fast-talking verses a la 'Hot Rod Lincoln' and a chorus that goes, 'Like a stickbug, I'm walkin' home to you.'

Another wonderful song on the CD is 'Back in the Sandbox,' which is based on a true story. 'My Dad was a schoolteacher and one day at recess he saw a kid come running out of the school and jump right into the sand saying, 'Back in the sandbox again, thank God!' Sheldon's song is heartfelt and funny at the same time, as it tells of a rough day at school with music that twangs like Neil Young in a country mood.

CD REVIEW: John Sheldon – “Sometimes You Get Lucky”
By Stacey Board - 11/20/2003 - 10:11 PM EST

Artist: John Sheldon
Album: “Sometimes You Get Lucky”
CD Review: Somehow this CD has hints of Tom Waits’ writing, Carlos Santana’s clean guitar playing and Bob Weir’s singing. How John Sheldon fit all those people into himself is a mystery. The lyrics are largely pictures and imagery, not so much literal story telling. But I really appreciate his unpredictable writing style and the sweetness and innocence in a lot of the songs.

“Wishing Farm” is one of my favorites. It’s a great melody and hook with lyrics that draw you in. I also really like “What I Always Have” mostly for his lovely fingerstyle guitar playing and the sweet humorous lyrics. “Belize Nocturne” is an instrumental that is hot, latin, and quite gorgeous.

The production quality is first-rate and perfectly captures Sheldon’s guitar playing. His guitar tone, playing, and unique overall style are quite enjoyable in each of these 13 songs.

By Roberta Schwartz
Mon, 15 Sep 2003 14:40:27 -0400

" The Crescent Dragon Gallery and Cafe located at 59 Washington Street in historic, downtown Haverhill.

This past Saturday night I was there to check up on the latest offerings by Carol Noonan, the enchanting lead singer of the legendary band Knots and Crosses."
"... The second set featured John Sheldon on acoustic guitar with a handful of original tunes. John started out as a session musician and guitarist with Van Morrison and Linda Ronstadt. He's now on his own writing tunes and occasionally performing out of his home base in western Mass. He is evidenly one of James Taylor's favorite tunesmiths, as JT has recorded two of his songs "September Grass" and "Bittersweet" on his latest recordings. Sheldon can play the heck out of that acoustic guitar as well as write some memorable tunes. Songwriter Ned Claflin was in the audience lending some very vocal support from the back of the house! "

Like an easy conversationalist, John Sheldon engages with the kind of stories you'd hear over coffee. As an indie singer-songwriter he's had breakout success recently with the James Taylor cover of "September Grass", the first song, and now a single, on his acclaimed October Road album. What's more, the song "Bittersweet" is slated for release by Taylor as the only new song on an upcoming greatest hits collection. Actually, this reviewer immediately thought of Bonnie Raitt. But it will fit Taylor perfectly. This kind of validation is the stuff songwriters dream of, and Sheldon gives strong testimony to having paid his dues. As a performer in his own right he brings a surefooted, close to the middle-of-the-road sensibility to his work. His tempos and arrangements are in the steady four-four territory. He has a songwriter's voice, and can be heard straining a bit in the higher register, but overall he's comfortable, like a good friend. His voice is best suited to the conversational acoustic style of "Earn Your Love." Sheldon is an accomplished acoustic and electric guitarist, far more so than the average singer-songwriter. These arrangements are based on a tight band sound with healthy doses of acoustic guitar in the mix. "Reuben's Train" unleashes a great swamp groove. "Into the Flame" exhibits a classic rock feel, and two standout instrumentals, "Belize Nocturne" and "White Horse Beach" could well find a home in music for film. One hears echoes of a variety of guitarists in his arrangements. Traces of Jerry Garcia, Sonny Landreth, Mark Knopfler, and Danny Kortchmar come and go like passing trains. The record is well-mixed, with a warm, almost-vinyl sound. But the songs are the focus, and Sheldon may find even more gold in this collection, with songs like "The Right Way" practically begging to be covered. If you like JT, give John Sheldon a try.
© Steve Klingaman
http://www.minor7th.com/m7_10_03.html#Sheldon

John Sheldon reprinted from
http://www.james-taylor.com/features/sheldon/ (Unofficial site)

John Sheldon remembers first hearing Something in The Way She Moves sitting at his family's kitchen table. Many fans of James Taylor's music might be able to say the same, but for this fact: Sheldon wasn't listening to a recording.

Taylor, then a teenager, was sitting in the Sheldon family's Boston-area kitchen, playing the song he had written for Sheldon's older sister, Phoebe, who was Taylor's steady at the time.

Decades later -- this March in fact -- Taylor invited Sheldon to a Boston studio to listen to another song. This time it was one Sheldon had written, September Grass, and Taylor had recorded it for his upcoming album, October Road. He and producer Russ Titelman wanted Sheldon's thoughts on Taylor's rendition of the song.

The drive to Boston from Sheldon's home in western Massachusetts takes about 90 minutes. On that day in March, that was 90 minutes of prime fretting time.

"I'm thinking: 'What if I don't like it?' " Sheldon, 51, recalled in a recent interview after the release of October Road. "That would be hard."

"He was very apologetic when he played it for me. 'It's a lot mellower than yours, John. I hope you like it.' "

"When they played it, it was overwhelming. It sounded great, but it was an overwhelming experience," he says, admitting he was close to tears by the time the song ended. "It was a very emotional thing for me."

"I especially like the vocals on it. He's just with every word. It's just amazing to hear your own song painted that way."

When Taylor and Titelman asked Sheldon's opinion, he did raise one small point. His own version of September Grass featured a background guitar melody that answers the vocals; Taylor hadn't incorporated it in his rendition. The backing melody is subtle and sparingly used - "a very transparent sound," Sheldon explains. Listen for the occasional guitar chords that add a chime-like quality to the song after Taylor sings "blade of grass," "winter to come" and answering "September grass" in the second chorus.

"I wanted it there, and Russ, JT, and I decided on doing it with the harmonics," says Sheldon, who ended up adding those chords to the final track. "I think it helps the mood of the song.''

Contributing a song and some guitar work to his old friend's latest record is something Sheldon describes as "a completion of a circle" -- one that was a long time in the making.

After all, Taylor bought his first guitar, a Gibson acoustic, from Sheldon's father, Stanley. Taylor was in boarding school at the time, at Milton Academy in suburban Boston. Nearly every weekend, he'd leave the school to stay with the Sheldon family in nearby Cambridge. Taylor was taking guitar lessons, and his rapid progress impressed young John Sheldon.

Later, Taylor sold John Sheldon his first electric guitar, the candy apple red Fender Duo Sonic that Taylor played in his older brother Alex's band, the Fabulous Corsairs. "I loved that red guitar," Sheldon says, recalling he spent an entire summer mowing lawns on Martha's Vineyard to raise the $100 asking price.

So many ties, so many twists of fate. Sheldon marvels at them. After all, who could have guessed that decades after that kitchen-table concert, after the weekend visits and the guitar sales, "the kid he taught to play the guitar would write a song he would do?"

Truth to tell, the threads tying the Taylor and Sheldon families together are long ones. Trudy Taylor, James's mother, and Sheldon's mother, Sayre, were best friends from college. Both had big broods -- "They had more boys and we had more girls." When the children were young, the two families would vacation together, eventually hitting on Martha's Vineyard as the site for their annual gathering.

The Vineyard is where Taylor started to make his name as a musician, where he and friend and future collaborator Danny Kortchmar first started to hone their craft together, playing wherever they could. Sheldon, who is three years Taylor's junior, was too young to be part of the action. In the age-old tradition of younger children, he trailed after the older boys, going to see Taylor and Kortchmar wherever they'd perform, hoping for a chance to play a famous electric guitar - Taylor's first non-acoustic - that Alex Taylor had spray-painted blue.

But Sheldon was a quick study too. By the time he was in his mid-teens, he was getting regular work in music clubs around Boston. When he was 17, he was hired as lead guitarist for Van Morrison, who was making waves with his latest release, Brown Eyed Girl.

For a time, Morrison hung out at the Sheldon home in Cambridge. Morrison's band was rehearsing in the basement, in a "band room" Stanley Sheldon had built for his son years before. Sheldon recalls fooling around one day on a chord progression he liked, while Morrison was behind the drum kit. "He started bashing away to my chords, then swung a microphone around and started singing nonsense into it, something about 'domino,' " Sheldon says. "I thought it was because of the Domino brand sugar which was by the hot plate where we made coffee." Morrison liked what he was hearing and they played the future classic at their next gig.

"He was doing a lot of writing, and I remember him sitting in our backyard and playing through songs that would later come out on Astral Weeks," Sheldon adds, referring to one of Morrison's seminal early albums.

"I think the thing I took away from that experience was that Van actually believed in me. He didn't care that I was an upper middle-class kid living in a big house in Cambridge, that I was only 17 and weighed a hundred pounds, that I myself was shy and moody. He listened to me play, and that was it."

Amazing stuff - especially considering Sheldon was still in high school. ("I quit Van Morrison so I could finish high school,'' he recalls.) But by that time, Sheldon was used to being "the whiz kid guitar player."

All the while Sheldon played in bands of his own. After high school there was Bead Game, an acid jazz/rock band that snagged a record contract and earned a cult following in the Boston area. "It would do really well now," he says of its sound. But Bead Game, like the other groups he was in, eventually drifted apart.

By the time he was 21, he was in Los Angeles, trying to break in as a studio musician. Work came his way and his connections multiplied. By 1980, an old one paid off.

Kortchmar, who had recorded a solo project, Innuendo, was hired to open for Linda Ronstadt on her spring tour. He was putting together a band. Taylor recommended Sheldon. Maybe Kortchmar was remembering a kid who trailed him around, but Taylor's say-so wasn't quite good enough. Kortchmar made Sheldon audition. He ended up hiring Shelton, who then lined up the bass player and the drummer.

When the tour passed through New York City, Sheldon visited Taylor in the studio, where he was doing some recording. Taylor was looking for some musicians to back him in a half-dozen or so concerts he had planned to raise funds for independent presidential candidate John Anderson's campaign and he invited Sheldon to be part of it.

Sheldon says it felt great to get that invitation, "to know that he thought I could do it. I knew he thought of me as a guitar player."

By the time the Ronstadt tour was over, Sheldon -- who was by then living in San Francisco - figured he could probably finally make a go of it as a session player in Los Angeles. He also realized it wasn't what he wanted to do. He wanted to write.

"I wanted to write a classic. I wanted to write a really great song. Little did I know that it would take 20 years of my life to do it."

Sheldon and his wife, Susan, moved back to Boston. They had a couple of daughters: Spring, now 21 and Elisabeth, 15. And he went back to school, studying music at the New England Conservatory.

"I thought I'd like to know the nuts and bolts of how these things are done, so I'm not relying completely on intuition,'' he says of the decision.

With babies and school and gigs and carpentry work to help pay the bills, it was a busy time. He was making a living, playing weddings and dances and "hotels where people drank tea," but the work left him little energy for song writing.

"I was playing a lot and making some money but I wasn't playing my own music enough."

By 1990, he was ready to call it quits. He was about to turn 40 and was seriously thinking of taking early retirement from music. He recalls thinking: "This didn't work out the way I thought it would. I'm not making enough money playing guitar to make a go of it."

So he and his wife sold their Boston home and moved to the country, west of Boston but east of the Berkshires. The farmhouse they bought came with a horse boarding operation, which they took over. Sheldon found he was writing again, with a vengeance.

"Sometimes I've thought that cleaning horse stalls is good for song writing," he says, explaining that a couple of hours of manual labor seemed to turn on his creative tap.

"When I was working all these music jobs, I didn't have any energy left for my music."

Sheldon describes writing music in much the same way as Taylor does - as hearing something that already exists as opposed to deliberately crafting combinations of chords and lyrics. "It's like I hear something and I follow it and turns into a song." For him, the process is fairly constant. Sometimes he's working on several songs at a time, other times will be quiet and he'll be just working on one.

He estimates he's written hundreds, but says the keepers probably whittle down to about 100. (Case in point: Sheldon wrote several entirely different songs to the music of September Grass, but none seemed right until he arrived at the current union of lyrics and music.)

Sheldon put together a band -- John Sheldon and Blue Streak - and started playing dates in a corridor through western Massachusetts, Vermont and Connecticut. Playing original material in bars can be a pretty tough task, but his music has been well received. He says he has a small "but rabid" following. "I'm a small cult figure at this point."

The group, which has since disbanded, recorded three CDs. Taylor produced the second, Boneyard, which was released in 1994. Over the years, Phoebe Sheldon had been giving Taylor tapes of her brother's songs and making sure he listened to them. Taylor liked the collection of songs destined to be Boneyard, so he helped out with time and money and sang on one track, a duet with Sheldon called Little Things.

But Sheldon wanted to get his music out to a wider audience than he and Blue Streak could reach. He knew that required persuading a bigger name to record some of his songs. But that was proving to be no easy task.

"There's just so much unsolicited work out there. You don't get anywhere unless you have a relationship with someone. People would say: `Why don't you get James to do one of your songs? Get James to do a song and then we can talk.' "

Sheldon would point out Taylor makes an album every five years or so at this point in his career and each only features one or two songs by other writers. "It's great that I know him but...."

In fact, Taylor had been talking about recording one of Sheldon's songs, a tune called Georgia's Valley, on his 1991 release, New Moon Shine. "He told me that he'd worked it up," Sheldon says. But the song didn't make the final cut.

Still, Sheldon had the sense that Taylor was interested in his work. "He always would ask for more," Sheldon says.

For his part, Taylor has high praise for Sheldon's music. "This is a song of his, out of dozens of songs, really wonderful songs, that I resonated with, " he said recently when asked about September Grass.

The song may have resonated for Taylor, but he sat with it for quite awhile, "reconstituting it," as he puts it, into his own guitar and voice style. Sheldon got the song to Taylor shortly after Hourglass was released in May of 1997. Sometime later, Taylor sent Sheldon a cryptic message through his sister: "It would be nice if John didn't record September Grass."

It was a positive sign, but nothing Sheldon could take to the bank -- especially after the disappointment of Georgia's Valley. "How could I?"

Two years ago this month, Sheldon finally heard Taylor was planning on recording September Grass. Again, the route the news took was circuitous. "This is how I get communication: He called Phoebe's house and talked to my niece, Meredith," Sheldon says with a laugh. Taylor's message: "Tell John that the song sounds great."

A little while later, he and Phoebe travelled to Great Barrington, Ma. to hear Taylor's daughter, Sally, play a gig. Taylor was there and the three old friends met for supper. Taylor filled them in on his plan to use the song. "It's like: 'Steve Gadd played drums on my song? Unbelievable!' "

Still, Sheldon didn't allow himself to get his hopes up. September Grass could have been another Georgia's Valley. "There was a part of me that wasn't going to know it till the record came out," he says.

"I was sweating bullets the day before the CD came out, wondering if there was any way they could shave the outside of the disk off at the last minute. Especially when I found out that it was the first track. Wouldn't that be easy?"

September Grass did make the final cut. In fact, it is being widely praised as one of the standout tracks on a standout album. From the sounds of it, Sheldon's feet have barely touched the ground since mid-August when October Road was released.

"It's still amazing to me and I think it will be for some time. That I was able to write a song that matched him so perfectly.''

To date, September Grass hasn't been released as a single. And Taylor didn't include the song on the set list during his recent short swing through Europe. Sheldon is quietly confident in the staying power of September Grass. "I have faith that song is going to be heard."

In fact, Sheldon has had faith in his song-writing future all along. "I've always had a feeling that there's something I'm supposed to make," he says. "What kept me going was that I knew I had a job to do."

That job's not over. "I don't think I'm finished. I definitely feel like there's more to do. Even if September Grass becomes a classic, it's still not finished for me."

In the short term, more to do means giving some interviews, registering his Web site (www.johnsheldon.com) with search engines like Google and finishing up a new CD. It, like Sheldon's other CDs, can be ordered from his Web site.

The new release will be called Sometimes You Get Lucky, after the aptly named title track he wrote about two months ago. Sheldon's version of September Grass, which he recorded with Blue Streak, will be on the new release as well. "I can't sing like James, so I made the track more lively," he says. ``It's a little more raw."

So will September Grass open doors for Sheldon as a songwriter? He can't be sure, but he's choosing to be optimistic. "I'm going to act like it is going to open doors.

"I know I've got a lot of really good songs that I've written and I want to get them heard. I've got a bunch of people to call -- and of course, more songs to write."

Sheldon has led an interesting musical life, beginning as a child in the Boston area. At a young age, he bought a guitar from no less a talent and inspiration than James Taylor, and as a seventeen year old got the job as lead guitarist for Van Morrison. A few years later, he moved to Los Angeles and began doing session work. Later still, he moved to San Francisco, and in 1980 opened a national tour for Linda Ronstadt.

After relocating back to Boston to raise a family, he worked as a carpenter and continued his involvement in music, playing in bands while also earning a degree from the New England Conservatory Of Music. Throughout the years, Sheldon put out a few albums with his band Blue Streak, and worked more and more at his songwriting, eventually sending some songs to his old friend Taylor. This led to the kind of break that most of us don't even dare dream about: James Taylor recorded one of his songs!

Taylor's October Road included, as one of its' many excellent tracks, Sheldon's September Grass, which appears in its' original version right here on Sometimes You Get Lucky. Six months later, another of his songs, Bittersweet, was included as a "previously unreleased" cut on the most recent Best Of James Taylor album, the recording having been done with Sheldon playing guitars on it!

Sometimes you DO get lucky, but to paraphrase the old saying, luck is often the product of a lot of hard work. The two Sheldon songs that Taylor has recorded are clearly worthy of a talent like Taylor, and not simply the result of a longtime friendship.

The best parts about it, and they're top-notch, are his songwriting, the recording quality (i.e. the sound) and the instrumental prowess he exhibits. He plays all guitar parts and bass. His singing is serviceable on most of the songs, not great but certainly above mediocre. His voice itself is appealing enough to compensate for whatever technical shortcomings may exist. Interestingly, it's probably at its' worst on September Grass - and not just when compared against Taylor's recording. But don't misunderstand that to suggest that he's a bad singer - far from it.

Many of the songs call to mind other well-known artists, in their style, sound or feel. A few make me think of Lindsay Buckingham, due largely to the guitar style. Another brings to mind Al Stewart, and the instrumental opening to The Right Way (To Say It) immediately conjures up Tom Petty. That's not to suggest that any of the songs are derivative, simply that some of them show some of the influences that have gone into creating John Sheldon, songwriter/musician. When your influences include the aforementioned, having it show isn't a bad thing at all.

One of my favorites on the album, Reuben's Train, has a little riff in it that I knew I recognized, and finally sussed it out as reminding me of an old Atlanta Rhythm Section song, So Into You. There are two instrumentals that are also very nice, the first of which has some Santana overtones, the second - the album closer - being an acoustic number that puts a pleasant finishing touch on a very enjoyable album.

If forced to come up with at least some criticism, albeit insignificant, I'd say that there are occasional spots in which all of the playing seems to not be quite in synch. It's very minor, at best (or at worst), and my sense is that the cause is one explained by one of the differences between a group of musicians playing together and a multi-tracked recording - the synchronization isn't quite as organically harmonious as when you have a group of people sharing the same vibe at the same time, "locked in" to use the musicians terminology.

But, as I said, this is so minor and infrequent as to be indescernible by most listeners.

Fans of well-crafted, melodic songs, performed by the songwriter, should enjoy this album. It's acoustic enough to not be electric rock-and-roll, but has some excellent electric work on it - folk-rock-pop, with the best elements of each. It'll get plenty of play on my stereo.