Album Notes

Born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Shane Ryan-Roberts began writing songs at age fifteen, inspired by The Beatles, The Doors, and The Rolling Stones. In his twenties, Shane studied 20th Century composition with JOHN CELONA and RUDOLF KOMOROUS, writing several works for chamber orchestra. In 1993, Shane joined the Canadian Forces and became an air navigator on the CC-130 Hercules transport aircraft, serving in the Arctic, Africa, and Europe. In the summer of 1997, while on leave, he returned to writing and recording original music. During a ground tour in 2001-2003, Shane looked to the Mississippi for fresh ideas, studying the works of blues artists such as Son House, Robert Johnson and John Lee Hooker. Since his release from active duty in 2006, he has pursued music full time. Shane recorded an album of originals, BLUE ON YOU, at Jupiter Studios, St Louis in November of 2008. The final track, Young Goodman Brown, first written in 2002, had undergone several alternate arrangements over the years, including a mildly atonal work rehearsed by the local jazz orchestra of Wainwright, Alberta in 2007. It now appears on the BLUE ON YOU album as a progressive rock ballad, its final treatment. What is one of Shane’s best memories of St Louis? Looking across the Mississippi River into east St Louis while listening to Leadbelly’s “Becky Deem, she was a gamblin’ girl.” Shane is currently working on his repertoire of blues standards, but looks forward to recording originals again in the not too distant future.