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 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 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 2017 released remixed and remastered Backlash and J.D. Nash & Red Circle albums. At the same time Shawn was writing and recording some soundtrack music for films directed by Christopher Forbes. For this work Shawn is listed on the International Movie Data Base (IMDB) as a composer.
In 2018 Shawn released his 2nd album "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 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.
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. On September 6, 2024 Shawn released "Out of My Head", 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.
Between September 2024 and February 2025 Shawn wrote and recorded 12 new songs for his latest release "Another Roadside Memorial", which will be available everywhere Friday May 16, 2025.
Shawn is currently writing and recording his next album scheduled for release in February 2026.
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