Hello friends,
Happy New Year! I hope this finds you well. What a year 2010 was. Hot Sauce and I officially did 60,000 miles in the van, with toddler in tow. The good news is that we had a blast and that baby did incredibly well. We finished up a few days before Christmas. Since beeing home I've been able to complete writing the songbook that I promised you months ago. I really appreciate your patience. The songs that will appear in the book are as follows, in alphabetical order:

1. Bitterblue
2. Bohemian Wedding Prayer
3. Bolder Than Paradise
4. Bury My Heart On The Jersey Shore
5. Down And Dirty
6. Geronimo
7. The Hard Way
8. Leave Your Bags By The Door
9. I'll Always Be Around
10. Lovely
11. Miracle Mile
12. Now That I Know
13. Old Cyrpress Tree
14. Pale Moon
15. Start All Over
16. Sweet Forgiveness
17. Thunderhead
18. Weathervane

I had requests for two other songs 'Lovin' In My Baby's Eyes' and 'Tennesee Blues' however as I did not write either I could not include them. I do encourage you to check out the full works of both Taj Mahall and Bobby Charles the respective authors of said tunes. Both are highly admired and fundamental to American music fans so it was no surprise to me that folks asked to see the lyrics written out in print....You who ordered the cd and songbook can expect your packages no later than the last week of January!! Very exciting to me.

In other news, I'm moving forward on having the vinyl LPs mastered by one of the great mastering engineers of our time, Joe Gastwirt. Mastering is the finishing process of a recording before it goes to cd or vinyl. In this digital age that we now live in it has become something of a lost art and science. Audiophiles will appreciate that I held out for one of the greats or at least I do hope. Vinyl mastering as you might imagine is an involved process that uses special equipment that most mastering engineers don't use or even have anymore. The really good guys are in demand and are therefore hard to schedule. I know you will be happy with the final result and again apologize that it has taken so long. I admit to having something of a learning curve on my end as well - never having taken on a venture of this nature I hope you don't find the wait too tedious.

Hot Sauce and I are slowing down with the road travel for the next few months. In the meantime I'm heading to Los Angeles in February to attend the Grammys. I was nominated along with the rest of my friends in Luther Dickinson's The Sons Of Mudboys for the record we made last year in homage to my friend and mentor Jim Dickinson called 'Onward and Upward'. It has been nominated in the Best Traditional Folk Category. It's up for consideration along with some other highly respected folks. As music is truely never a competition we don't look at it as a contest - but are very proud to be in said company and feel as though we've won just by being nominated. I get to wear a pretty dress and walk down that lovely red carpet - from where I'm sitting in this sleepy little Mississippi town - that sounds like fun :)

Do check out www.ShannonMcNally.com for all the newest show dates including a great weekend in Alaska (just in case you know anyone in Anchorage or nearby....) as well as Hot Sauce's scheduled appearance at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival April 30!

Namaste,
Shannon

Hi all! Just touching base. So about 3/4 of all the packages should have arrived by now. I like hearing from you that the cd arrived so do let me know!

I'm still finishing the songbook and the vinyl so if you ordered them your package has NOT gone out but is in motion. There are still some 20 plus folks who haven't given me a mailing address so if you didn't order a songbook or the vinyl and you haven't received your cd in the mail please do forward me an address as that's what's holding up your package.

The road has been intense, with almost no days off! Check out the new website www.shannonmcnally.com if you haven't already.

Also, I'll probably launch another smaller kickstarter campaign as I've gotten a lot of mail from folks who missed this one and wanted to participate.

Hope all is well - I look forward to your feedback on the cd! Please let me know if your package arrived in good shape so that I can make any improvements on shipping that I should. Any suggestions?

Thanks again -

They arrived early last week. I've been traveling on the road doing tour dates but finish up tonight.
I'll have the CDs and Tees out to everyone this week. Thank you for your patience.

The song books and the LPs aren't ready yet but aren't far away either. It's been great to see folks out at some of the shows on this run. There are several new YouTube clips of this tour if you'd like to check them out. We are in Black Mountain NC tonight for the last show with Scrapomatic. Hope to see some of you out there.

Love,
Shanon