Life and Work with Sharone

Today we’d like to introduce you to Sharone.

Sharone, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I started taking classical piano lessons when I was about six years old. My little child brain loved the feeling of making music happen through my bare hands. I was experimenting a lot. My piano teacher would sometimes get annoyed that instead of practicing what they wanted me to practice I was just noodling, and showing them little things I wrote every week while I should have been going over my Beethoven and Bach pieces.

I write my first song when I was eight years old. Looking back on it now, it was awful. But at the time, I was really proud of it. I took lessons for about four or five years until I really started experimenting on my own and developing a style that I wanted to play in.

When I was about 11 years old, it finally hit me that music was what I wanted to be doing for the rest of my life. I spent every free minute I had slamming on the piano and singing at the top of my lungs in my parents’ basement. I even picked up guitar and bass during this time. I got the door slammed on me a lot, haha. It only took about four more years until I finally played my first show, when a friend of mine reached out to Aaron Saye over at Seventh Circle Music Collective and told him that I just needed to be on stage. In March of 2014, I played my first show.

It took a whole year until I was asked to come back, but once I was, I began playing there 2-3 times a month and began branching out to other venues around town. I remember my grandmother driving me around town with my keyboard that I was dragging  out to a million different coffee shops for open mics.

In 2015, I recorded an E.P. called ‘Breathe’, and used it to pull in a lineup of musicians to play behind me. I eventually began playing with a full rock band in 2016 and released a demo album of my new full rock sound in 2017 called ‘Storm’.

Two weeks after the Storm release, I was well into the writing process for what would become my love child of an LP called ‘Enchiridion of Nightmares’, which came out in April of 2018.

Since Enchiridion was released, I’ve gone on three and a half (haha) tours, and have been writing my ass off for my most proud body of work to date, an LP called ‘Reflection’, which is due out December 7th, 2019.

Has it been a smooth road?
This journey has been the exact opposite of a smooth road, haha. I’ve dealt with more than my fair share of difficult musicians, manipulation, criticism, and disrespect from both men and women.

Being a woman in music isn’t easy, and having seen a lot of that harsh reality first hand, I salute my fellow chicks in the music world.

My advice to anyone who is just starting out in music, regardless of gender, is to be kind, be honest, and stand your ground. Carry yourself with the same amount of respect that you want to receive from others, and know your boundaries.

Please tell us more about your work, what you are currently focused on and most proud of. What sets you apart from others?
Being a solo artist, despite collaborating with other musicians, I take care of everything you could think of both in front of the curtains and behind them. Over the last several years, I’ve learned a lot more about music technology than I knew when I first started playing shows, which is safe to say was close to nothing.

When I write a song, I write the piano line, vocal melody, and lyrics first, then I add in the guitar, bass, and drum lines, create a demo of the song, and pass it off to my band. They take their own spin on each of their parts from there. My drummer likes to just rewrite his entire part almost all the time. Which is fine, he does it well.

Aside from creating the music, I have to think about scheduling rehearsals, booking recording dates, planning releases, music videos, photoshoots, promoting shows, and making each show a little different from the one prior. When I have a live keyboardist, I am really able to create a theatrical performance for each of the songs on stage, and that’s something I really love to do. It allows me to take my creativity beyond the songwriting, and create a visual representation of the emotions behind the song. It’s for the same reason that I love making music videos.

Are there any apps, books, podcasts or other resources that you’ve benefited from using?
I love reading books about bigger musicians and how they got to where they are. The different journeys they go through fascinate me and inspire me to continue working hard. I’m also a really big fantasy and sci-fi fan when it comes to books.

In terms of podcasts, I love a lot of the underground podcasts I’ve been on, particularly Coffee Over Suicide. It’s a local podcast that focuses on mental illness and how those who suffer from it are able to live with it day by day. I also love listening to horror podcasts on Spotify such as Two Girls One Ghost.

Apps are my savior. The large majority of the work that I do for my music brand I am able to do from anywhere on my phone thanks to apps. Keeping up with social media is far less overwhelming than it would be were I just using a laptop, there are apps for building stage plots, for scheduling, even for throwing down song ideas. We are truly blessed with the technology we have nowadays.

Contact Info:

• Website: Sharone-music.com
• Instagram: Instagram.com/sharone_official
• Facebook: Facebook.com/Sharone.official
• Twitter: Twitter.com/sharone_music
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3AmKAuGRZ8Ir8XTRl2IlXp?si=_Wn-sC11T2aKyYe8KL2_EQ

Image Credit:
Ethan Kerr, Vincent Renn, Quincy Darling, Justin Johnson, and Edgar Barcenas

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