Lifest Artist Spotlight
Shawn Smith
Ken - Shawn can you give us a little background about where you're from and how you got into the business?
Shawn - I'm originally from Michigan. Right there (pointing to his thumb) just north of detroit. That's where I grew up and I recently moved to West Palm Beach, Florida where I'm a current resident. Right there (pointing to his palm). I'm sure you can see that on the tape.
I do about 100 to 150 concerts a year primarily through Lutheran churches, although I've played every denomination. I've been doing this full-time for about twelve years and a third of my work is concerts at churches, a third would be youth gatherings, doing both keynoting and music leadership, and then a third would be camps, festivals, pot luck diners, barmitzva's. I'm just kidding.
Ken - Can you describe your music to us?
Shawn - It's tough. My current CD "More Songs From Camp" is an acoustic CD with myself, a guitar, and about 300 screaming-singing-praising kids. It's kind of a departure. I have two CD's that are in the camp song genre, praise and worship, camp sing-along type music. I would say the style is folk-rock but ranges from heavy rock to praise to reggae, and accapela. It's kind of diverse. Being a one-man band I can dabble in different styles and let the lyric and the meaning of the song dictate the style.
Ken - What is your general audience?
Shawn - It's youth focused so I'd say middle school to high school is the primary target audience. Although most of my concerts are families. The gatherings that I do are primary middle school or high school and then concerts and churches would be multi-generational.
Ken - Is there anything special you have to do to prepare for a 1:00am show? (One of Shawn's scheduled appearances at Lifest.)
Shawn - A nap in the afternoon helps. That's the biggest challenge, that is getting the proper rest. The toughest thing about this (show) is that I don't know who the audience is going to be. I don't know if it's going to be adult, kids, or mix. So trying to figure out the set list is going to be challenging and much of it is going to be on the fly.
Check out Shawn's official web site for more information. http://www.shawnsmith.com