Shelby Pollard

Shelby Pollard is a folk rock singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who grew up in Carmi, IL; a small town in Southern Illinois, practically Kentucky. “It was a very nice place to grow up,” Pollard says. “A small town where everyone knows who you are. I’ve been around music my whole entire life. Growing up, I was always listening to something.” The first record he ever listened to was AC/DC’s “Back In Black”, and he was was hooked.Over the next few years the Pollard family did a lot of moving around. Shelby’s mother remarried when he was ten and moved the family all across Indiana. His step-father is the person who solidified his love for music. Introducing Shelby to bands like The Smiths, Rage Against The Machine, Pete Yorn, The Police, and many more. He picked up the guitar at the age of thirteen and hasn’t put it down since.Starting out with pop punk roots, Shelby looked to chase the styles of band like Blink 182 and Green Day that shaped the movement of the late 90’sHe joined his first band in the summer of 2000 called “The Losers”Shelby’s high school years were spent in Bloomington, IL where he met some of the biggest influences of his musical career. “My horizon started to grow, taking on music like B.B. King, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Muddy Waters, Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, and also fell in love with popular singer/songwriters,” Shelby says. Songwriters like Damien Rice and Mike Daughty started to have a noticable influence on his writing.This is also when Shelby started to step out and write music on his own, recording with a friend, Jason Cipri, on a little track recorder in Jason’s college apartment. To this day, Shelby credits Cipri as one of the biggest factors in his songwriting.As Shelby continued to challenge his writing, him and Jason started a band with their then roommate, Adam Sitton, and friends Phil Lawson and Rick Pruess called Taking The Form. They transformed the basement of their Bloomington townhouse into a makeshift studio, pissing off their other roommates and neighbors. The guys mostly were working on putting together an album but also played a few shows.Things ended up falling apart the in the Fall of 2006. “I still look back on that time as one of the greatest times of my life,” Shelby says.For the next year, he slowed down from writing and really focused on moving to Chicago. “I was pulling two jobs just for a paycheck out of Bloomington,” Pollard says, reminiscing on the months before his relocation.Finally, in June of 2007, Shelby and a friend packed a U-Haul and moved to the Windy City. “The past year of my life has without question been the toughest year of my life. From being poor, to being robbed, to death, to having no job, it all has happened in the past year. All this, leading to me throwing myself back into what I love so much,” Shelby says.After trying to start the process almost five years ago, Jason and Shelby are in the studio for good. And it couldn’t have come at a better time. “I feel vocally, emotionally, creatively, I couldn’t be more ready,” Shelby reported. The two are in the studio recording Shelby Pollard’s first EP, to be followed by a full length.Shelby recently met Lexi Goddard through some mutual friends. “Sometimes, as a musician, when you meet people, you just know. Her amazing talent, and drive to create is exactly what I was looking for,” Shelby says of their collaborations.