BIO
A rootsy singer/songwriter, Nashville-based Jack Shields emphasizes a guitar-driven, '90s-infused style of melodic, modern indie rock.
Born and raised in Connecticut, Shields began writing and performing music as a teenager, imbibing a steady diet of classic rock, folk and indie rock that included Neil Young, Wilco, Nirvana, John Prine, and Pavement. An enthusiastic multi-instrumentalist, but a guitar player first and foremost, Shields spent his formative years in the woodshed, studying artists like Jimi Hendrix and Phish and plying his trade in local bands.
Shields relocated to Los Angeles following his high school graduation in 2016, generating some attention as a hip hop producer before dropping out of college and rediscovering his roots as a songwriter. Shields’s early successes include the nostalgia ballad “Radio Flyer,” and the ironic “I Kidnapped Willie Nelson,” which Rolling Stone called a “deranged bluegrass romp” rescued from novelty by its biting wit and sheer inventiveness, showcasing Shields’s wicked sense of humor and Zevon-esque range. But the buzzy single also signaled a close to Shields’s flirtation with a country and western sound—like Dylan at Newport, the future was electric.
Disenchanted with waiting tables and the dismal sprawl of LA, Shields rotated back east. Settling in Nashville, Shields cold-pitched a handful of demos to Sadler Vaden (Morgan Wade, Jason Isbell) that got the producer’s attention. The pair cut four singles together in early 2023, and in the pressurized creative atmosphere of the studio setting Shields discovered a brand new sound: an imaginative, updated blend of 90’s alt nostalgia, pointed lyricism, rawer vocals and blistering guitar work, marrying the visceral angst of his grunge-obsessed teenage years to the plainspoken storytelling of the folk and western music he dabbled with during his COVID quarantine. The result is Shields’s most authentic musical self yet—past, present, and future bound up in a mixture of Kurt Cobain and Neil Young.
On “Sister,” Shields tells the story of mismatched romantic expectations expressed with rhyming and lyrical interplay that is just as intricate as the lovers described, cut through with a jangly, trembling guitar tone redolent of Georgia rockers R.E.M. The Nevermind-sounding “Hit My Line” plays on the ironies of the FOMO age with both lyrical subtlety and staggering volume, while “Feel” jauntily thumbs its nose at the modern fetish for self-expression heightened by the mass adoption of social media. “Might As Well Be On The Moon,” meanwhile, harnesses anguished vocals, Vaden’s virtuosic slide playing, and Shields’s trademark fretwork to delve into themes of loneliness and longing in an era of interconnectedness.
This latest batch of songs are Shields’s most original, emphatically staking his claim to latter-day rock antihero status by means of a new sound that is best described as either a lost transmission of MTV or something entirely new and unexpected, waiting just around the corner.
PHOTOS
Press
“With a bad mustache and an eye for the eccentric, California songwriter Jack Shields cold-cocks and kidnaps a country music legend in this deranged bluegrass romp. The accompanying video is just as outrageous, as Shields indulges in a Misery-like fantasy to get Ol’ Willie to listen to his songs. His method? A baseball bat across the leg. “I never knew an old man’s femur would be my lucky break,” he sings, a line destined for the Play on Words Hall of Fame. Such cleverness is what keeps “I Kidnapped Willie Nelson” from descending into novelty, and the twist ending only reinforces that Shields isn’t afraid of sacrificing a sacred cow.”
- Jospeh Hudak, Rolling Stone
Jack Shields is a living testament to the possibilities that can still be explored when it seems like every idea has long been run into the ground. He seamlessly melds the old and the new, the East and the West and the roots and the radio together for an eclectic, tremendous mix of sound, light, and life. Efforts- and artists- like this deserve to be far more than unsung and underground, and with the help of the Internet and a willing collection of good ears for talent, the reality of far greater exposure may just, and should, come true.
- Tinker Talavera, Muzique Magazine
CONTACT
For all inquiries, email:
management@jackshieldsmusic.com