Shawn Hebb

I play guitar, some bass, learning pedal steel and I’m a songwriter.
I was born in Ottawa on a cold February 11th back in 71…my family moved to a trailer park in Brighton, Ontario when I was 9 months, stayed there until just after kindergarten, moved to Cape Breton, where, in my mind, I got the crap beat out of me almost everyday. The only thing I have a fond memory that year was seeing Star Wars.
Grade two to 5 we lived in Trenton on the airbase. (My dad was in the military…). I started using my hockey stick as an air guitar, taking piano lessons, and playing my toy drum kit from sears on top of the pool table in the basement…I started becoming obsessed with guitars, and assumed that all life’s problems would be rectified if I could only get my hands on a real one…(they had all been plastic or a hockey stick up to that point.)
Beginning of the 80’s I found myself living in Germany…I took a job bagging groceries and stocking shelves and saved up to get a no name flying V. (A pretty cool guitar which I have over time painted purple, used a band saw to part of the V off, put a monkey grip on it, and painted it black….I should really put it back together.)
But I digress.
When I was 13 I started a band with a few guys from school, and practiced in the basement of the local youth centre. Why they gave us a key and free reign to that place was beyond me. We did our first gig there at the youth centre, and then played my first bar gig when I was 15. I had to borrow an amp for all those gigs….at the time all I had was a Realistic Tuner from Radio Shack, a speaker I “borrowed” from the AV squad at school, and a Pearl distortion pedal. My sound was less than stellar with that setup.
We moved back to Brighton in 89, where I had absolutely no interest in going to school at all, and I frequently cut class to play guitar and rehearse with a band I got together….we basically played house parties and a few battle of the bands.
1990…..by some miracle I got into Humber College for music, and like most people…bailed after a couple of years to go gig. 1993 or so I started playing the bar circuit in northern Ontario…that was a blast. It’s a wonder I’m not dead with the trouble we got into.
After that, let’s see..maybe 1996 to say…98 I played in some funk bands around Toronto, and then landed a gig in a dance type band in Bangkok and Hong Kong for 8 months.
I guess in 2000 I joined a beach boys tribute act and started playing festivals in the states, went back to hong kong, and played a cool casino circuit down in the states.
Somewhere in there I also played the part of a tree stump in a kids play, and got to drive a cool 5 tonne truck across the United States.
Now I’m holding down a day job and write and play my own stuff. I put out an album in 2005, (Tourist) and I’m working on another one now.
I think that about covers it.
This video just cracks me up.
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“Shawn Hebb is definitely a melody guy, right down to the handful of tasteful guitar solos...warm-up your vocal cords, there's plenty to sing along to.” Kevin Zarnett – The Muses Muse
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“Easy, breezy, jangly guitar pop is the order of the day for Shawn Hebb. Guitarist, pianist, singer, lyricist, and former army brat, Hebb is a multi-talented performer, and Tourist is the shimmering product of all that talent.
There’s nothing too challenging about the 10-track record—hence the initial easy, breezy comment. Hebb’s got those kind of vocals that ring of normalcy and comfort, and sound like they could be coming from that earnest English major who lives two doors down in res, never to be seen without guitar in hand. That might sound more like an insult than a compliment, but a compliment it is nevertheless—not everyone needs to be Jeff Buckley anyways.
It’s a little bit Shins, it’s a little bit Snow Patrol, and it’s even a little bit Jack Johnson. But most important of all, Tourist is all good. “
Jaclyn Arndt – soulshine.ca