Shannon Mulready

Tuesday.

It must have been on a Tuesday when I was signed up for piano lessons. None of the other days seem to fit. The other kids must have been taught the good stuff.  I learned Music Box Rock and Oom-Pa-Pa. I would soon quit.

I sang in the choir in Elementary School. It was enjoyable and taught me how to harmonize. I also pretended to play the trombone in Elementary School but I’m not sure that I fooled anyone. In seventh grade I switched to percussion. I liked that. I took five private drum lessons. Then I quit them, but I still played in the school band (and loved it) and after a few years I started playing along to Led Zeppelin CD's. 

I started writing songs on the piano when I was pretty young. They were terrible and rife with copyright infringement but I didn’t know and I didn’t care. I started recording them on boom boxes. A few years later, around the age of thirteen, I figured out overdubbing by using a dual boom box setup while I recorded a track called Kamikaze Hitmen. The song was just as good as it sounds.

When I was fifteen I started jamming with Kirk and Brian. We were sort of called The Barefoot Band. We played our first show in February of 1992 at Dean Jr. College in Franklin Massachusetts (we got paid for it too)!

When I was eighteen I bought a guitar, and taught myself how to play it by taking it with me everywhere. Random folks would often ask me if I knew this song or that song and I would say “I don’t know any songs”. They would walk away after that. Soon after Kirk and I teamed up with Justin in what would be called Majic Bullets. We played our first of many shows at Scarlett O’Hara’s in Hartford, CT in July of 1994 just as I turned nineteen. We recorded our first album at Flight Path Productions in Granby Connecticut in 1995 (Good Enough for Government Work). We continued to write and perform until August of 1997. Then I moved to Colorado for a year.

In Colorado, I played with Dark Dave. We recorded an unreleased album called Funky Backwoods Tea Farmers Volume One. Dave was amazing. I was not (but we had fun)!

After a year I was back in Connecticut. The Majic Bullets reformed and added Pete as the fourth. We wrote, performed and recorded until December of 2001 (releasing Fuzzy Doctor Five in 2000).

In 2002, I released my first solo album entitled The Unusual Temple (although previous iterations of solo albums had already been recorded but were never released). I also began playing solo acoustic shows on guitar and began to collaborate with more artists. In late 2002 or early 2003 I joined the Geoff Willard Band as the drummer which turned into Crazy Wild Muskrats in 2004 (releasing Living in the Dark in early 2005). In 2003, I collaborated with Brea on her LP entitled Overcoming. In 2003 & 2004 I recorded an EP (still unreleased) with Jim called The Howlin's. 

In 2004, I released my second solo album named Wake Me If the House Burns Down. On Halloween of 2004 I moved to New York City.

In New York I performed as solo artist and I collaborated with many other artists and bands, particularly Brollik (keyboards) and The Sofa Kings (drums). In 2006, I released my third solo album entitled Saws and Sledgehammers. In 2007 Brollik released a self-titled EP.

On New Year’s Day in 2010 Majic Bullets reformed and went on to perform, write and record (A Horse Named Juan 2012 and Blood Moon 2015). In 2023 we have begun to record our fifth album. 

As a solo act I continue to play gigs on guitar and vocals in Central Connecticut and I have also released many more solo albums which I generally perform and record in my home studio. Driggs and Roebling (2011), Collector’s Item (2015), The Lightning Power People and Bad Shadow (2017), Star Crossed Lovers and the Fall of Kings (2019), Uncle Somebody Else's Out Through the In Door (10 Led Zeppelin covers) (2021); As the Heat of the Fire Demands (2022); The Last Green Valley (only on youtube 2022) and now my newest album entitled “Upbeat” (2023).  

Lastly, since 2013, I have been the drummer of the funky bluesy jam band called Supergreen (reuniting four members of the Crazy Wild Muskrats and adding two very sane Supergreeners)!   

I don’t fly in my dreams, but I do jump pretty high. 

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