Shawn Ames is a life long citizen of Topeka, Kansas and has been making music since learning to play a multitude of instruments starting in the early 1980's. He first learned drums, then moved to guitar, bass, piano, and then began to learn the magic of home recording. In 1985 he attended a recording class at Washburn University and then interned at City Spark Studio in 1986. From 1988 to 1992 he performed, wrote and recorded music with local Topeka band The Others. In 1992 he joined a local band called Backlash and by the end of his 18 year term in the band helped them to record 5 albums, 3 of which appear on CD Baby and other digital outlets. While performing with Backlash he was also a member of the band Red Circle, the Backlash alter ego when backing singer and songwriter J.D. Nash. He retired Backlash in 2011.
In all of his time from a teenager to present he has always released music of his own, playing all of the instruments and also being at the producer/engineer/singer/songwriter for the music. After his retirement from the local live scene he began recording and releasing music on Soundcloud, all for free. He released "Hopes and Fears" in 2012, "Into the Dark" in 2013, "Out of my Head - Volumes 1-4" in 2014, and released to the world his debut double album in 2015 called "The Sound of One Hand Clapping" to digital download sights world wide. In 2016 he released "Music for the Muses", and in 2017 released remixed and remastered Backlash and J.D. Nash & Red Circle albums. In July 2017 he released "Out of my Head - Volume 5". He has also scored some soundtrack music for a few films.
Shawn releases 2 albums in 2018, the first being available for free on Soundcloud, "Out of My Head - Volume 6".
The second album is Shawn's last album, hence the title "The Last of My Kind", which became available world wide on Friday September 7, 2018.
In July of 2018 Shawn formed the Dead City Orchestra to play a one time only performance of his original music but done with acoustic and string instruments, are far cry from Shawn's rockin' ways! The band performed that show on September 22. After that the band performed a handful of shows until the last performance on Halloween night 2018.
Shawn is listed on the International Movie Data Base (IMDB) as a composer. In May 2019 director and former founding member of "The Others" Christopher Forbes released a documentary about the band called "The Lost Psychedelic Album", the movie at this writing is still a work in progress. It had its premiere in Topeka, Kansas.
Shawn then decided to retire from playing live and recording song oriented albums and started making music for movies directed by Christopher Forbes, which led him to get out of his normal song writing to creating music atmospheres.
In 2020 with so much music unreleased he decided to culminate them into an album and called it "Music for Movies Volume 1" with the intent on releasing more music in the coming years.
"Movie Music Volume 2" was released on Friday February 26, 2021.
While recording in July 2021 he had composed music that wasn't right for any kind of film, they were more like songs to be crafted. It soon evolved into more songs and then enough were recorded for a new album. After updating his studio software and some new musical instruments the album really took off and "The Art of Letting Go" became available everywhere Friday September 9 2022. Prior to the release date three videos were released on YouTube; "Let You Go", "There Was A Time", and "The Redemption of Elisha Cooper". On the day of release lyric videos and a "Making Of.." hour long docu-video became available as well.
As 2023 began Shawn decided to stop making music for movies and concentrate on making music for a new album which turned into "Popular with the Unpopular", released on November 23, 2023. It includes 14 tracks, half that were written in 2023 and the other half were songs mined out of Shawn's musical vault. Three videos were released to promote the album, "Alien", Tightly Packed Rose", and "You Can't Get the Bar out of Me".
Shawn has just finished work on his seventh album, a 10 song collection of music previously released for free download on Soundcloud over the years but the songs have either been redone, rewritten, reworked, as well as remixed and remastered for a better sonic experience.
"Out of My Head" will be released on Friday September 6, 2024.