When I was a kid, 6 yrs old or so, my uncle used to give me tapes to check out. I would take them and play them on an old boom box while I acted out some kind of Highlander journey playing with toy guns and swords in the basement. Whatever tape I put on would become my theme music. He had given me Ummagumma which I gladly accepted because of song names such as “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict” and “Astronomy Domine.” Needless to say I think it influenced my inner journey that day, definitely took me to some new places in my mind, and served as a great intro into a life of listening to Floyd while appreciating their psychedelic origins.
—John Shannon
“For his second studio album, singer/songwriter John Shannon offers Songs of The Desert River, an 11-track collection that envelops the listener with its own sense of time and space. On songs such as “Darkness,” “Hurricane” and “New Winter,” Shannon and his band Wings Of Sound float weightlessly along an ethereal through-line of delicately fingerpicked acoustic guitar, lyrics of spirit and mysticism, ghost-like vocal harmonies, flourishes of french horn, bowed-bass and other subtle atmospheric sounds. He’s drawn comparisons to the likes of Jose Gonzalez, Iron & Wine and John Martyn, but Shannon views himself as more a “song-seeker” than a part of contemporary tradition. Searching for his words and music in nature, he’s embarked on vision quests in the wilderness to find songs “in the winds and sunrise.” Shannon’s “found” songs are the focal point of all-encompassing journey into a multi-dimensional psyche and wide-open heart. Songs Of The Desert River offers a path of aural transport that sustains long after the music has faded and ultimately beckons the listener back time and time again.”
