CV’s Music Man Honored in DC
Castro Valley’s Shane Sharkey and his children visited Washington, D.C.for the first time last week, but the occasion was the Library of Congress honoring the music school owner for his work 30 years ago with the House of Blues Radio Hour. From left, Olivia, Shane, Grady and Madison.
Castro Valley School of Music owner and audio producer Shane Sharkey got a welcome blast from the past last week when some of his earliest work was exhibited at the Library of Congress.
The Library, home to some of America’s cultural treasures, on Thursday, June 27, honored Shane and others who had created the House of Blues Radio Hour from 1993 to 2010. Hosted by actor Dan Akroyd in his film persona as Elwood Blues from “The Blues Brothers,” the show featured live performances and interviews from more than 1,000 blues musicians.
With some of those musicians now passed away, the House of Blues archives preserve the oral histories of many of those who created and continued a uniquely American musical form.
Sharkey conducted many of those interviews in his first job out of college at San Francisco State and helped produce the show as well as choosing some of the performers.
Among those he interviewed were pianist Mose Allison, John Lee Hooker, BB King, Bobby “Blue” Bland, and, for good measure, two members of the progressive rock band Phish, known for their extended music jams.
“It’s amazing it’s being preserved,” Sharkey told the Forum. “Some of the most important people in American music are in there. Their contributions were enormous in inspiring other people to create music.”
The Library of Congress will digitize the interviews and performances and make them available to anyone via the Internet. While the work is ongoing, readers can follow its progress on the library’s website at www.loc.gov.
“As a 13-year-old kid, before Classic Rock was even a genre, I used to listen to Ben Manilla’s radio show ‘Flashback,’ where older hits were mixed with real ads and news from the time. Little did I know he would become my first boss!”
After community college in Fresno, he transferred to San Francisco State, served internships with KNBR and Ben Manilla Productions in the city, and then got a job with Manilla’s company.
“It was a great first job,” he said. “I got to listen to new CDs, listen to live tapes to get rid of profanities that couldn’t be broadcast, and eventually got to interview musicians. As time went on, I was able to produce shows and help choose the musicians.”
Sharkey said that before the shows were broadcast, his questions would be edited out and replaced by live music segments while keeping the musician’s responses. However, he added that both the full archived version and the broadcast version will be available on the Library of Congress website.
In 1999, Sharkey founded Big Toe Productions, which does audio recording, followed by the Castro Valley School of Music, which now has 30 teachers and 350 students, in 2013. Both are located at 21060 Redwood Road.
He was thrilled to bring all three of his children to the library event, the first time any of them had been to Washington, DC.
“It’s so exciting to see the work I did 30 years ago will live on for eternity. It’s a bit like a time machine for me,” Sharkey said. “I come back now and look at my 22-year-old self and see all the questions that I asked wrong at the time.”