J Shogren

Artist Information

Biography

J Shogren
Pulp Americana

2011

"J Shogren bears the same approximate relationship to traditional music that the latter Bob Dylan does, namely as the major point of reference, not quite the thing itself. Any thoughtful outsider -- in other words, anyone to whom the music speaks in some sense but who grew up outside the traditions that formed it -- becomes disabused of sentimental notions of folk's meaning and appeal (i.e., Seegerist claims) and eventually sees it as comprising its own counter-reality, a kind of parallel world one can enter whenever a traditional piece sounds within listening distance and sends the imagination reeling. That realm -- Marcus called it Smithville after Anthology of American Folk Music compiler Harry Smith -- bears an occasional resemblance to the consensus-reality world from which it sprang but is, at last, very much its own place, a realm of shifting images, shadows, and elusive truths, dreamlike, unpredictable and sometimes brutal.

Like Dylan, Shogren is an intellectual dealing in pop music. He's funny, but the jokes are wry and subtle, drawn from a wide range of high and low cultural references.

Like traditional music itself, Shogren's songs occupy their own other world."

J Clark
http://www.rambles.net/shogren_bird10.html

----------
AWAITING the Flood (blog)
Sounding like some weird-ass acoustic version of Southern Culture on the Skids, “Birds Bones & Muscle” busts out of the gates, front loaded with three great songs, and while the album may be a little uneven, it’s hard to deny its best cuts. “Pulp Americana” is what Shrogen calls it, and according to his website he’s gone from a trapper in Wyoming to the King of Sweden’s professor, which kind of explains the breadth of what’s on this album.

Shrogen’s best moments are when the lyrics are their strangest. “Salvation” talks of a man who “went down to the river to wash [his] sins away,” but he also brought a fishing pole. As the song goes, if the fish are biting, “Salvation’s gonna have to wait.”

He’s got great rhythms in his songs, like the rests that create a great start-stop dynamic in “Charlie Poole, Charlie Poole.”

This is roots music — weird, raw, funny and smart. He’s one to watch.

K McCraw
http://awaitingtheflood.com/album-review-j-shrogen-%E2%80%9Cbirds-bones-muscle%E2%80%9D-jaha/
---
Bird Bones & Muscle:
#7 on EuroAmericana Chart July 2010
#15/ #18 on FAR Chart May/June 2010
#38/#48 on Folk DJ Chart May/June 2010

Played the Country Throwdown Bluebird Cafe in Denver

---

On his new album, Bird Bones & Muscle, J Shogren describes his music as “Pulp Americana”–a singular conjuring of gut-bucket blues, deep-fried southern jive, Holy Ghost revival, polka night at the Grange, she-done-me-wrong hillbilly boogie with
backwater bayou bump and swing. But instead of
ghosting over sepia-toned museum pieces, Shogren’s
music radiates a gritty immediacy, a stick-to-your-ribs soul that comes from a close understanding of the nooks and crannies of “weird old America.” Recalling everything from Dylan to Dr. John, Buck Owens to Tom Waits, Shogren shrugs and simply explains, “No veneer; Just a coat of varnish to keep out the weather.”

If there is one thing that can be said of Shogren’s music – aided and abetted here by Jalan Crossland (banjo/guitar), Andy Phreaner (drums/percussion) and Shaun Kelley (bass) – it’s his ability to summon different times, different places, different waypoints in the American experience. Yet it’s his lyrics that leave the most indelible impression. “I chose the title Bird Bones & Muscle to illustrate a notion of fragility living next to strength – how fragile and strong a person can be when lost in the wilderness within.” Shogren’s previous releases have left their imprint as well, having risen into the top-40 on the Freeform
American Roots, Euro-Americana, and Folk-DJ charts.

It’s not hard to imagine Shogren, who splits his time
between Centennial Wyoming and Stockholm Sweden, as someone at home in the wilds. But what’s more striking is Shogren’s daytime gig. A professor of Applied Philosophy, Shogren has served as the King of Sweden’s special professor on environmental science and as a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore in 2007. “It’s been a good job,” he winks. Shogren, to say the least, is not your typical, navel-gazing, journal-scribbling folk singer.

"Brilliant storyteller from Wyoming. Hard Boiled, sometimes dark humorous stories delivered with a voice that clearly have lived through them." Lennart Persson, Rootsy

We are getting press across a wide field: "Blending more styles than we can list here Shogren ... He's traveled the world and the stories are plentiful in these grooves. At the end of the day though it's Americana at its best."- Village Records.

American Holly (2008)
- cd of the month, AmericanaOK
http://cdbaby.com/cd/americanaok
-cd of the week KAOS radio 2/09
-Top 20 americana cds in 2008-Rootsville (Belgium)
-#13 and #15 on EuroAmericana Chart for Feb and Jan 09
-#16 on F.A.R. Chart for Dec 08
-#41/#76 on Folk DJ Chart Feb 09/Mar 09
-Am Holly: Hanging tough on AMA charts Spring 09



Split the difference between Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, and while you won't have everything you need to know about J Shogren, you will have at least a place to start. His vision of a frontier world is a metaphysical, not a physical, one, where the familiar always manages to stay just out of focus. Shogren takes a host of recognizable images and influences and turns them deeply strange.
Jerome Clark, Rambles.NET

"J. SHOGREN has a voice that is a bit gravely and rough-hewn. Americana can absorb that if the songs hold up, and on American Holly (Jaha!, c/o jshogren.com), they do just that. The opener, the album's title cut, is obviously meant to be the single, but it was the third cut, Everyman, that caught my ear. As the CD glides along, it really started to reach me. The songs are catchy in a folky singer-songwriter pop kind of way, with melody lines that stay with the listener. There is really nice horn work here, like where they counterpoint with the banjo in Holes. Another piece that caught my attention was a sort of revisioning of Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition with the biting Hand Grenade (I'll be a hand grenade for Jesus / And spread His word like shrapnel). It is also amusing (or can be seen as such) that a women is bad song like Relativity is followed by the romantic She's With Me. While many of his songs are poignant, it is his closing number that touched me the most in my life right now, Come All This Way. The Quiet Corner by Robert Barry Francos, http://www.jerseybeat.com/quietcorner.html

"Like a garden full of wildflowers...there is something undeniably endearing about Shogren's ramshackle ramblings."
Performing Songwriter, Jan 2009

just when you think it is hammock-swinging-safe, [Shogren] drops in a poisonous Chuck Berry-riff or a Tom Waitsesque crazy waltz. You never feel safe. It is all good! Johan Kronquist, Lira Magazine

Split the difference between Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, and while you won't have everything you need to know about J Shogren (no period after the initial, I gather), you will have at least a place to start. Jerome Clark
http://www.rambles.net/shogren_holly08.html

"This philosopher has made an enormous step forward....Nicely worked out arrangements in which a range of musical instruments nicely complement Shogren's work on the strings and his singing." " His voice is like Newman's, not really beautiful, sometimes even off, but raw and it forces you to listen to the lyrics. I have become convinced of man's qualities as a musician, he is a little secret treasure in the Americana genre, this special little diamond is for the true music lovers." Real Roots Cafe, NL


Split between Wyoming and Finland, J Shogren is a singer/songwriter/guitarist/multi-instrumentalist who knows that the best Americana draws liberally on its traditional folk, Blues, country, hillbilly and �60s roots. For example, Casey Jones meets John Henry on the rocking and socking 'God's 9:05'. He has a slightly sneering delivery when it needs it � �Everyman� is a good example � and comes across a little like Bob Dylan on 'Deny Me'. He also possesses a wistfully melodic sense, well in evidence on 'Come All This Way'. He and his crew of associates on banjos, trombones, euphoniums, jugs, pianos, violins and accordions can sound like a vintage spasm band on �Salt Lakrits�, or offer up a highly successful parody of a vintage gospel singer (�I�ll be a hand grenade for Jesus/Spread his word like shrapnel�), and come over quite jazzy when required. He can be quite dark � okay, very dark on 'Baby On The Tracks' � or just plain fun. There are some little 'playlets', which are a little warped, but hey! This is weird America, isn't it?
Norman Darwen, BLUES MATTERS, UK

"A masterpiece" Moors Magazine

"There are two other times I can remember when a singer's voice prompted in me the same reaction I had when I first heard J Shogren's. Those were when I first heard Randy Newman and Leon Redbone. I had to keep looking at the album cover to assure myself that the singer was indeed white. Shogren's voice sounds like one of those great bluesmen from ninety years ago."
Oliver di Place, Feb 2009
http://oliverdiplace.blogspot.com/2009/02/j-shogren-american-holly.html


After only one listening the feeling returned again: the immediate and spontaneous nature in J Shogrens song poems and music. Call it charm or personality, the songs are impossible to not place into the deepest place in ones - that is my - heart. Erikssons Kultursidor, http://erikssonskultursidor.wordpress.com/

American Holly is produced by J Shogren and D Tinker; mastered by J Wilson (Richard Thompson, The Gourds, Joe Ely, Bob Mould); featuring Grammy winner Sally van Meter on resonator, fingerpikkin maniac Jalan Crossland on banjo, the dynamo Shaun Kelly on bass, and country blues chanteuses Birgit Burke and Lisa Swett on vocals. Plus a cast of other musicians and friends.


Thanks for giving us a fair hearing


Websites
http://jshogren.com
http://myspace.com/jshogren
cdbaby.com/jshogren2
http://www.last.fm/music/J+Shogren
http://www.airplaydirect.com/music/bands/18963/index.php


Js music has received airplay on:

Tap Radio, NC
Crossroads, NL
AmericanaOK, UK
Zookeeper, KZSU, Stanford University
An American Sampler, WYEP, Pittsburg
Folk Directions, CKUT, Montreal
KPFT
Folk Show, Radioactivity, WTUL
The Miller Tells Her Tale
Hootenanny Power
Americana, NL
CtlAltCountry, NL
Sunday Simcha & Traditions
Highway 61, Italy
Tuesday Night Americana Music Club, NL
PeelMusic, NL
CMR Nashville�Now that�s Americana, NL
Blue Wednesday, NL
Acoustic Rain, NL
"General Eclectic", WCVF-FM, Ithaca
Peelstar Country Club, NL
Planete Indie, BE
Upper Room, NL
Bonanza, Denmarkt
RTV Hoeksche Waard, NL
A Shake of Music, NL
Folk En Zo, NL
LON Live on Radio, NL
Songriver, NL
Landslide, NL
Roots Cafe, NL
Radiogirl, NL
WUSC
WWUH, University of Harford
NWPR, Northwest Public Radio, Wash State
Back Roads & Blue Highways, WVTF
KDNK, Carbondale
KFRC, Ft. Collins
KRCB, Santa Rosa
WETS, Johnson City
WMSR, Auburn
WVTF, Roanoke-Lynchburg
WYOU/WRRW, Williamsburg
Grass Roots Revival (KRCC)
TRADITIONS, WAMU, Washington, DC
"These Friends of Mine,"
Radio ZuSa
WMUD Folk DJ Playlist
Acoustic Planet on Erin Radio
Folk Fiasco on WDBX Carbondale, IL
The Folk Show KRFC
WSLU - The Folk Show
"General Eclectic", WCVF-FM
Sidestream
WTUL New Orleans, The Folk Show
Our Kind of Folk, WSLR
Click Your Heels Together
WMUD Folk DJ Playlist
Australia broadcasting to the North West Plains
Mahoney's new release
WMUD Folk DJ Playlist
Our Kind of Folk, February 6 2009
Folk on Sunday, no. 647
Danny Watson's Folk Show, NSW Australia Broadcasting to the North West Plains
Good Morning Folk Adelaide
"These Friends of Mine,"
Acoustic Routes
AMERICAN SAMPLER
WMUD Folk
Our Kind of Folk, WSLR Sarasota FL
WTUL New Orleans, The Folk Show
Grassroots Australia
Just Folks, WSCL & WSDL
Folk Direction Playlist
WEFT � From the Joshua Tree Inn
WFDU Traditions
Town & Country, New Zealand.
Hootenanny Power WRKF Baton Rouge
Click Your Heels Together
WBGU
Hillbilly Rockhouse
"These Friends of Mine,"
'Simple Folk' Sunday KXCI Tucson
Sunday Street
RADIO ISW-FM "Folk & Country"
Route 78 West
Gleanings on KLOI
House of Mercy
KKUP
KAOS radio
Red Hot Blues, Spain
Fox's Minstrel Show, WRFG, Atlanta, GA
WRFL, Lexington, KY
alt.country, NL
It's the Water
Amarillo Highway, KZMU Moab, Utah
BIKER STREET, RADIO COTEAUX, France
Click Your Heels Together on kfok-lpfm
Folk en Zo, NL

Instrumentation

J Shogren - vocals, guitar, mandolin, resonator
Dan Tinker: vocals, guitar, drums, keyboards
Mandy Bohlender -- vocal, percussion
Mark Zieres, bass, vocal
Bill McKay, banjo, guitar, mandolin, accordion, saw


and on occasion other friends hop on stage with us:
S Kelley -- Bass, vocals
J Crossland--banjo, 5 & 6 strings
A Phreaner--drums, percussion
T Thunker-- guitar, vocals
E Barbier -- drums, harp
M Krupp-- Percussion
S van Meter--Resonator
Bliss R--guitar
Jerry G--bass
D Woody--violin, accordion
C Nicholas--Trombone
Free Range
Mandy Bohlender: vocals, percussion
Mark Zieres: double & z-bass
Bill McKay: all things strings, and then some

Discography

Bird Bones & Muscle (2010)
cdbaby.com/jshogren3

American Holly (2008)
cdbaby.com/jshogren2

Jahamericana (2007)
CDBABY.COM/CD/JSHOGREN



JAHA! records
PO Box 136
Centennial WY 82055
307.745.0862

AND WITH
Mumbletypeg 2007
Wake Me When It's Time to Play

Official Website

http://www.jshogren.com

Links

• Facebook
• Last.fm
• MySpace
• homepage

Audio

• Burnt Fields
  Listen   Download
• wandering foot (AirShow)
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• Charlie Poole, Charlie Poole
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• Big Blue Bird of Happiness
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• Paper Barn
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• Salvation
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• American Holly
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• Me & Genghis Khan
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• Salt Lakrits
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• Hand grenade (for jesus)
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• Early in the evening
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• Deny me
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• Dont Worry
  Listen   Download
• Come all this way
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• Everyman
  Listen   Download
• wooden saints
  Listen   Download
• god's 9:05
  Listen   Download
• Holes
  Listen   Download

Lyrics

• American Holly
• Me & Genghis Khan
• Holes
• Dont Worry
• As good as I been to you
• Holes
• Wandering Foot

Video

Photo Gallery

Press

• Split the difference between Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan... [+ Show ]
  

  Split the difference between Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, and while you won't have everything you ne...Split the difference between Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, and while you won't have everything you need to know about J Shogren (no period after the initial, I gather), you will have at least a place to start.
  
  Shogren -- who even bears a vague physical resemblance to him -- has Cohen's mordant wit. Cohen could have written lines such as "Every man's Aristotle when he's drunk" and "I'll be a hand grenade for Jesus." Shogren, too, has a foot in the soil of traditional American music, sharing ground with Dylan. Like Dylan, he writes his own songs even as he nods to or winks at others. Here it's old songs like "John Henry," "Keep the Skillet Good & Greasy" and -- wonderfully -- "My Name is John Johnson."
  
  "His adventures have taken him," it says here, "from days as a trapper to an endowed professor." He lives in Wyoming but is also an academic in Sweden. We may be confident that no other singer-songwriter claims a comparable resume. From this diverse biography he has fashioned American Holly, his second album; I haven't heard the first.
  
  Though endearingly odd, it is also not a little disorienting. A part of that owes to the distinctive production, bringing to psychic eye and ear the sepia tones, in the first instance, of 19th-century American-village photography and, in the second, of the small-town folk orchestras so often captured in those pictures. Or this could be a lost America in a parallel universe.
  
  If Shogren and his band summon up ghosts, they are not necessarily of persons once extant in the earthly flesh. The powerful opening cut, also the title song, is set in a war-ravaged landscape that one at first presumes to be a Civil War battlefield but whose geography and circumstance become ever less fixed, notwithstanding the singer's repeated, insistent reference to "American Holly." A woman? Something else?
  
  A warning to those seeking easy pleasures:
  
  In some ways Shogren's recording is a demanding one, not always suited to casual listening. At 17 cuts this is, in my estimation anyway, three or four too long. Still, even the occasional slow patch rewards the patient pilgrim, and it helps if you keep in mind that Shogren is far more the professor than the trapper. His vision of a frontier world is a metaphysical, not a physical, one, where the familiar always manages to stay just out of focus. Shogren takes a host of recognizable images and influences and turns them deeply strange.

• J. SHOGREN has a voice ... [+ Show ]
  

  “J. SHOGREN has a voice that’s a bit gravely and rough-hewn. Americana can absorb that if the songs ...“J. SHOGREN has a voice that’s a bit gravely and rough-hewn. Americana can absorb that if the songs hold up, and on “American Holly” (Jaha!, c/o jshogren.com), they do just that. The opener, the album’s title cut, is obviously meant to be the “single,” but it was the third cut, “Everyman,” that caught my “ear.” As the CD glides along, it really started to reach me. The songs are catchy in a folky singer-songwriter pop kind of way, with melody lines that stay with the listener. There is really nice horn work here, like where they counterpoint with the banjo in “Holes.” Another piece that caught my attention was a sort of revisioning of “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition” with the biting “Hand Grenade” (“I’ll be a hand grenade for Jesus / And spread His word like shrapnel”). It is also amusing (or can be seen as such) that a “women is bad” song like “Relativity” is followed by the romantic “She’s With Me.” While many of his songs are poignant, it is his closing number that touched me the most in my life right now, “Come All This Way.” The Quiet Corner by Robert Barry Francos

• americana at its best [+ Show ]
  

  Blending more styles than we can list here Shogren somehow ties it all together for his own unique s...Blending more styles than we can list here Shogren somehow ties it all together for his own unique sound. Thoughtful and larger than life songs set to a hard acoustic background make for some exciting listening. He’s traveled the world and the stories are plentiful in these grooves. At the end of the day though it’s Americana at its best.
  http://www.villagerecords.com/product_info.php?products_id=4833
  

• Music for your inner grifter [+ Show ]
  

  Music for your inner grifter. J's Jahamericana cd makes me feel like a grifter in a movie who has ...
  Music for your inner grifter. J's Jahamericana cd makes me feel like a grifter in a movie who has been getting kicked around a while, but has stumbled on something that will change his life. The perfect con, the perfect-imperfect woman, news of a rigged horse race. It leads you to feel that feeling good about life is a guilty pleasure. That salvation isn't always far from a barstool. I wish people heard Js songs when they saw me walking down the street. It would be a hell of a soundtrack, the right soundtrack.

• seamless ease [+ Show ]
  

  "Great album !!! Where have you been all those years ?? 4 & 1/ 2 stars" -- F Braeken, e-magazine . ..."Great album !!! Where have you been all those years ?? 4 & 1/ 2 stars" -- F Braeken, e-magazine .
  
  

• wow [+ Show ]
  

  “your cd is just amazing!” -- DJ R Pieters, Somewhere Between on Internet Radiostation Golden Flas...“your cd is just amazing!” -- DJ R Pieters, Somewhere Between on Internet Radiostation Golden Flash (www.goldenflash.be)

• Ja Jaha!
  

  “a song writer with many edges, all of them loveable…” -- Country Home, Germany (www.iwde.de)

• Music from a life exaggerated [+ Show ]
  

  "Fourteen songs which seem to reflect what must have been, for all intents and purposes, a life ... ..."Fourteen songs which seem to reflect what must have been, for all intents and purposes, a life ... Exaggerated."

Setlist

SET LIST

Likely Originals:
Burnt Fields, Salvation, Polkagris, Paper Barn, Dont Worry, Me and Genghis Khan, American holly, Early in the evening, deny me, Relativity, Salt Lakrits, Thunderstorm, Shuffletown, Hand Grenade (for jesus), Wooden Saints, As good as I been to you, Shuffletown, Outsider, Opposite, French Creek, God's 9:05, She's with me, Holes, Bird Bones & Muscle, Big Blue Bird of Happiness, Burnt Fields, Procrastinator blues, Salvation, Charlie Poole, Charlie Poole

Typical Covers:
Dear Prudence, Creep, I feel fine, Cant help it if I'm still in love with you, Take me to the hospital, CC rider, Black Jack Davey, Diamond Joe, To be alone with you

Basic Requirements

Calendar