The Times

The Times is a band that not only blurs the lines between genres, but dances all over them. They fuse roots reggae, ska, funk, and the blues to create a unique sound. Known for their high-energy shows, the band is developing a name for itself in New York as one of the more exciting emerging bands on the scene.
The Times was started in the fall of 2009 by front man Christopher Sheard. Growing up on early 90’s rap, Chris’s musical perspective was narrow until his teen years when the doors were kicked open by the likes of BB King, Jimi Hendrix, Guns N Roses, Ray Charles, and Django Reinhardt. An enthusiastic devourer of all things music, Chris made the guitar his best friend through tough teenage years and hasn’t left it since. Growing up in Brooklyn, the world was always a wide open place to him, full of politics, poetry, music, love, tragedy, and survival.
For years Chris toiled in dead-end jobs: moving furniture, cooking, bar work, dog walking, until deciding to give up thinking of music as a fantasy and make it his life. He began writing and performing music with a few friends, calling themselves 12 Hour Shift. It was a bluesy, funky project with a lot of vision but little success. Feeling they needed a change of scenery, the band packed up in the fall of 2008 and moved to Chicago. There, the band got a fresh start and new sound but it didn’t last long. Tragedy struck in the winter of 2009, with the untimely death of bass player and 12 Hour Shift co-founder Scott Shaeffer.
After spending some dark winter months in Chicago, Chris moved back to New York to pick up the pieces and start over. It was at a memorial show for Scott that the Times first performed in May of 2009. Filling some big shoes, Ian Halbwachs stepped in on Bass, Joe Wilson on sax, and childhood friends Joshua Sol and Jake G on keys and vocals, respectively. The show was a revelation, not just to the audience that night but for the band on stage. A new energy, a new sound was forming. It just needed a name.
The members of the band shared a mutual vision of what great music should be. No gimmicks or flash, power ballads or pop songs, just good funky music that speaks to the soul and gets the body moving. The lyrics relate to the lives of everyday people, not fantasies about rich superstars and their pets or trying to be like them. Believing that their music should represent the world around them in the their time, Chris and the boys stirred up the name The Times. They played their first show on the day after Halloween at Trash Bar in Williamsburg and have been steadily reaching wider audiences since, winning crowds over one person at a time.
In the summer of 2010 the band finished their debut EP “Everybody Be Cool”. Recorded by producer extraordinaire Dave Ahl for Stepwise Sound, the album gives a glimpse into the band’s world in its home Borough of Brooklyn; birthplace of both Walt Whitman and Biggie Smalls. Since completing the album the band has been on a tare in NYC playing memorable shows at The Bitter End, Public Assembly and The Knitting Factory. Look for the band to be playing a show near you soon.