We recently connected with Sharon Lewis and have shared our conversation below.
Sharon, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
I knew I wanted to be a musician in a band when I first saw The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. My father had a state-of-the-art stereo system with a huge variety of albums that he liked to play so loud that the music filled our red brick ranch house in Atlanta where I grew up. His record collection included everyone from LouRawls to Frank Sinatra to Kate Smith. Also, Oklahoma, South Pacific, Camelot, Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture and The Norman Luboff Choir were some of his favorites. So, Daddy instilled in me a love of music. I sang in church choirs from age six to adulthood, and in fourth grade my parents started me on music lessons at the local primary school where I learned how to play trumpet, cornet, French Horn, baritone horn and eventually valve trombone in my primary- and later high school bands. In high school I played the valve trombone during marching season and baritone horn during concert season, but I always secretly wanted to be a drummer.As a child I banged on my mom’s pots and pans whenever I got the chance, and I harbored that dream until age 36 when I decided to take drum lessons with the goal of joining a band.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
At 36 years of age I was living in New Haven, CT when I decided to pursue my lifelong dream of learning how to drum, so I took a package of eight lessons from a local drummer/drum teacher, and at the end of my lesson package with his encouragement (and being too scared to audition for guy bands) the feminist in me decided to start an all-woman country band. My best friend helped me advertise and coordinate a day of auditions out of which was born my first band, Amethyst Country. The Band included two women guitarists who also sang, a woman on bass guitar and me on drums and vocals. Amethyst Country lasted five years playing local venues and theatres, and our crowning achievement was opening for The Grassroots on the Branford, CT Green. We featured a few original songs (I wrote a country blues song we still perform called, Get Your Own Money inspired by country star and pioneer, KT Oslin and a country waltz about my partner’s suspected betrayal called, Old Lovers Best Friends.) but mostly we played country covers. Amethyst Country broke up in summer 1991 when the other three women told me they’d like to start playing smoky bars, which I didn’t want to do. About a year later I founded a new band, Deep River, built on the philosophy of yin and yang, including three women and three men by design to launch a vibrant, dynamic band harnessing both feminine and masculine creative energy and a balanced power dynamic, which is what has made Deep River unique and rewarding for almost 32 years now! I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that one of the three women who auditioned and became Deep River’s primary vocalist in early 1993, Sandy Howard, ended up becoming my partner then my wife. Sandy and I have also written several songs including two that were rated ‘Honorable Mention’ in Music Row magazine, Civil War a ballad about my younger sister’s abusive marriage, and Silver Eagle a fast truck ‘n’ train country song about making it in Nashville and riding a tour bus to play for your fans.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
One day back in 1999 Sandy and I got called to a meeting at our entertainment lawyer’s office on Music Row in Nashville. He was and still is one of the most respected if not the preeminent entertainment lawyers in Nashville with many famous country artists. Our publicist was also there in the conference room. Sadly, our attorney, who’s still our entertainment attorney and handles our Federal trademark logo for its periodic renewal, gently broke the news to us that Deep River was NOT going to get a major label record deal because we were “too old’. We were 41 and 49 years old, respectively, and looked 10 years younger, and we could look at the latest country charts and see there were successful men in country music much older than we, so in our hearts we knew it was because we were a lesbian (technically bisexual) couple. Our attorney and publicist both encouraged us to continue to play our music for our own satisfaction and enjoyment.
I broke down and cried while Sandy remained stoic, and we did keep playing for the next four years, though less and less, while Sandy finished her bachelors in nursing then earned her nurse practioner masters degree. After graduating with her masters in 2003, having spent a decade pursing our musical dream in Nashville, we moved to Asheville, NC where we’ve lived ever since. We went on a musical moratorium for a couple of years before I joined the Asheville Choral Society, and that led to us getting new guitars (well, I got my first ever bass guitar and started a package of lessons—-Sandy had played acoustic guitar for years) and in 2007 we held auditions, chose some wonderful local musicians then relaunched Deep River…and we’ve been performing ever since!
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
Perhaps my biggest pivot was during our Nashville decade when I was a newspaper executive at The Tennessean by day, then after changing clothes, a country singer-songwriter at clubs down and around 2nd Avenue in Nashville by night.
More recently, we’ve pivoted to add lost of huge hits by the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, Fleetwood Mac and America to our country repertoire of originals and covers, along with fiddlers, keyboardists and sometimes an extra guitarist to our core six members of three women and three men…and expanding our repertoire like that has been a lot of fun!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.reverbnation.com/deepriver
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/deepriverasheville
- Twitter: @DeepRiverTM1996
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/deepriverasheville
Image Credits
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