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Singer/songwriter Steve Shaw’s solo debut album, “Lay This Burden Down” is 70 minutes of soul purging musicality that has the substance to stay in the mind forever. Imagine The Beatles’ White Album crashing head-on with Wilco’s Summerteeth. It’s an electric folk, americana, and brit-rock mix influenced by the likes of John Lennon, Bob Dylan, U2 and Neil Young.

Shaw has put together an array of instruments and musicians to create this 20-song vision. An abundance of guitars mixed with flute, mandolin, melodica, harmonica, banjo, piano, organ, fiddle, and dobro creates a variety and flexibility to this recording that reminds one of the pop rock of Tom Petty and The Beatles to the acoustical folk quaintness of Damien Rice.

After seven years and two albums with his modern rock band Freeze the Hopper, Shaw took a 2 year break. In 2002 he then began writing new material, some of which he performed live acoustically. “The music was evolving and eventually I sort of developed this vision of what I wanted to pursue. I wanted the music to be more eclectic and versatile with many different instruments. I wanted to give it more of an americana twist than what I was writing before. That’s what I always loved about bands like The Beatles and Led Zeppelin. They’d play all styles of music on the same album. Everything from rock to country.

Shaw set out to make this vision of his a reality without the constraints of a ‘band’ album. With it he realized much more creative freedom. “Being solo, you don’t have to compromise. In a band, you do compromise or you deal with the guilt and conflict of not compromising.” With most of the songs written on acoustic guitar, Shaw began writing and arranging all the other instruments using a keyboard and an 8-track recorder. “I locked myself in my basement and just took my time until the parts were right. It was a pretty cool experience - no pressure, no band-mates trying to change things, just me being all up in my head, creating.”

Raised in a middle-class, German and Irish Catholic family that was deeply rooted in the union labor trades, Shaw often champions the working class and writes about the social aspects of the poor versus the rich; the powerful versus the powerless. His lyrics are filled with both pain and understanding; hope and despair. He questions spirituality, religion, and politics.

As the leader of the modern rock band Freeze the Hopper from 1994-2000, Shaw toured extensively, recorded two full-length albums on the Prometheus Disc indie label, and received rave reviews for both recorded and live performances. He has appeared on both radio and television and has acoustically performed the national anthem at the Savvis Center in St. Louis. Recently Shaw has shared the stage with nationally acclaimed recording artists such as Kelley Hunt and The Mendoza Line.

An eclectic and inspirational artist, Steve Shaw makes for a truly unique musical experience as he continues to tour solo or with his trio accompaniment.

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