Shawn Lane (March 21, 1963 – September 26, 2003) was an American musician. He quickly became a noted player in underground guitar circles and joined Black Oak Arkansas when he was just fourteen years old.
He is best known for his solo album Powers of Ten and his long stint with former John McLaughlin bassist Jonas Hellborg.
Shawn Lane was born in Memphis, Tennessee. At the age of eight he accompanied his sisters on the piano, but did not play guitar seriously until he was ten. Lane progressed very rapidly on the guitar, and he found it to be his natural instrument. At thirteen, he began to practice heavily, developing his technical abilities. Word began to spread around Memphis about a talented young guitar player, and at fourteen he auditioned for the lead guitar spot in Black Oak Arkansas. Black Oak Arkansas had been a popular Southern rock band but at the time when Lane joined the band's popularity was declining. At age fifteen Lane saw Allan Holdsworth perform at a UK concert and was inspired to develop his own method of playing guitar. Shawn toured with Black Oak Arkansas for the next four years. As the original band members dropped out, Lane began recruiting players from his high school days and began to play a style closer to fusion than the country rock style for which the band was known.
At eighteen Shawn Lane was married and burnt out from touring with Black Oak Arkansas so he decided to take a break and learn more about music. Over the next eight years he studied music and composing on his own and mainly worked on playing piano. Much of the material on Powers of Ten was written on his piano as Lane considered it his main writing instrument.[1] [2] He quickly developed his technique on keyboards as well, taking influence from pianists like Liszt, Tatum and Cziffra. [3] He began to create demo tapes which garnered interest from Warner Brothers Music and Lane was offered a recording contract. Except for one cover song, Lane wrote all the material and played all the instruments on his debut album. The album did well and earned several magazine awards.[4] During the production of the album Lane continued to play live shows and did session work. He also performed on the Mark Varney Project's Centrifugal Funk album along with Brett Garsed and Frank Gambale.
Lane released two more solo albums following his debut. Powers of Ten Live!, recorded live in 1993, and The Tri-Tone Fascination.
When Lane met Jonas Hellborg a musical relationship was formed. They both enjoyed classical, rock, Pakistani, and Indian music. Lane and Hellborg played with drummer Jeff Sipe in a jam band commonly referred to as HLS (Hellborg, Lane, Sipe). Sipe was already well known in the jam band scene as the original drummer for Aquarium Rescue Unit, and helped HLS get exposure all over the world.[citation needed] Later, Lane and Hellborg formed an East-West fusion band with Indian musicians V. Selvaganesh and Umamahesh. In February 2003, Lane and Hellborg toured India with drummer Andrea Marchesini. Lane's last concert performance was at Smilefest in North Carolina with Hellborg and Jim Britt.
Lane had psoriasis his whole life and also suffered from psoriatic arthritis from the age of about 13. This did not impair his playing but caused difficulty walking, and required treatment with steroids which seriously affected Shawn's weight so much that he weighed over 300 pounds in the years before his death (though Shawn was slim in his youth). He also smoked constantly. On September 26, 2003, Shawn died in a hospital in Memphis, shortly after being told that he would have to remain on medical oxygen the rest of his life. He is interred in the Memorial Park Cemetery in Memphis.
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