Music Milker - Discover new moosic

Recently named one of Rolling Stone's top 25 artists on MySpace, Shannon Hurley fits into the new line-up of artists who make quietly beautiful music. It borders on the edge of pop, folk, and rock.
After even one listen, the melody has already been carved into your soul, rich with imagery and sensation. Her music is reminiscent of Sarah McLachlan, Keane, and Aimee Mann.

This Indiana-born musician has been playing music all her life, being brought up in a family of singers. Picking up piano at age 8, she then moved on to trombone. She graduated with a music degree from University of Colorado at Boulder, where she became the stage manager for Fox Theatre. After working with Julian Lennon, Willie Nelson, Bonnie Raitt, and Rufus Wainright, she became enamored with songwriting. She studied with Pat Leonard (hit songwriter for Madonna) and moved to Los Angeles is 2001.

Shannon is a sought-after session musician and spent 2005 touring with Universal Motown artist Brie Larson. This has given her the opportunity to open for Jesse McCartney, Gwen Stefani, The Black-Eyed Peas, and Gavin DeGraw.
Shannon also recently lent her voice to Insects Rock!, a collection of sunshine-pop 60's style children's songs by Corey Leland.
Currently she is playing keyboards for international artist Marina V.

Shannon was so kind to donate a song to all of us. The song is titled Matter of Time and you can find it in her album Ready to Wake Up. We've been listening to this album for quite a long time and we deeply encourage you to do the same.
You can get her music from Amie Street, iTunes and eMusic.
She has got a MySpace profile, too, and while we were googling looking for her we found a video of her song Sunrise on YouTube! She is ubiquitous! :)

Below, you can read the interview we had with her.

How long have you been singing? when did you decide you wanted to become an artist?

I have been singing since college, where I got my minor in voice (and a major in trombone!) Sadly, I don't play trombone anymore, because I ditched it in favor of the piano.I think it was around '96 when I started singing and playing Kate Bush and Tori Amos songs just for fun..and I just connected with it. I wrote my first songs shortly after, when I studied songwriting with hitmaker Pat Leonard (he wrote "Like a Prayer", "Cherish", "La Isla Bonita" for Madonna).

Do you write both lyrics and music for your songs?

Yes, I write both lyrics and music for my songs. I have also collaborated with other writers (although none of those songs appear on the new album).
When I write with others, I usually take the musical responsibility while a partner takes the lyrics, or sometimes we both work on the words and music together.

What does inspire you? what artists did influence you the most?

Great melodies, well-crafted songs, and soulful singing. Is it any coincidence that one of my favorite artists is Dusty Springfield, for whom Bacharach/David wrote for? I also like Keane a whole lot. The singer has the voice of an angel.

Thanks to the Internet, things are starting to change in the music industry, it seems like there's a lot more space for artists to get out and build their own success. How do you feel about it?

The internet is great because you can reach so many people. I have been able to reach many people with music by using myspace, cdbaby, and various podcasts. The downside is that there is so much music out there, and alot of it is not very good at all, so it's hard to filter out the bad from the good.

What do you think about Music Milker?

I love it! Talk about a way to filter out the good music from the bad. You are doing a great service for music lovers :)

A little correction to her last sentence, not music but moosic! ;)

Thanks Shannon for taking part in Music Milker.