For Shane Russell, music has always been an integral part of his life; but it wasn’t until he stopped drinking that his perspective shifted.
“Since I got sober, that has been a real game changer for the music for me,” Russell said.
Russell is a lifelong Alaskan and established musician in the local Anchorage scene. He began writing his own music as soon as he learned how to play guitar and sing, around 14, and played in bands throughout his teenage years.
“A lot of journal entries have written timestamps … April of 2008, I’m like ‘Oh my gosh.’ When I say I wrote this song at 13 or 14, it’s true,” Russell said. “And I still play some of them.”
After his first 21-and-over show, Russell started playing here and there, but says his work life got in the way.
“I started bar-tending, and I just let my social life, or free time pretty much just go to work … I was going to shows,” he said. “I really loved going out, but it was attached to drinking a bunch or staying up too late.”
Russell and his dad, Duke Russell, began jamming together in the fall of 2019 with a group of friends, known as The Shirt Tuckers. Russell said the group would take turns leading the band, and his dad would sing “silly songs about Spenard,” — a true family band.
Then, the pandemic hit. Russell says they would have backyard practices, and kept trying to keep things going. The group played shows around Anchorage and traveled down to Seward, and Russell recalls feeling re-inspired by being in a musical group setting after a several-year hiatus.
“It re-lit my love of wanting to study music and understand it more,” he said.
Russell started taking lessons from a good friend and music mentor, Sean Perkins, to get a better grasp on theory. After just a couple lessons, his friend asked if they could play in a band together.
That gave Russell the confidence boost he needed, and they started playing with another friend of theirs. For around six months, they had a three-piece band, with Russell on guitar, but it quickly grew to eight.
“We then blinked and we have an eight-piece mountain soul band,” he said. “I think it’s nice having seven other people up there, and that it doesn’t feel like the Shane Russell show anymore, in a good way,” he said.
In addition to his solo music ventures and Childish Tycoon, Russell plays drums for Ashley Young.
“[Ric and I] met Ashley at a birthday party and we were like ‘Hey, do you want us to back you up and we’ll jam or whatever?’” he said. “And we did a 45-minute set — never played with each other before and just jammed out. A week later, she was like, ‘I’m opening for Medium Build at Bear Tooth. Can we be in a band?’”
Earlier this spring, he, along with Young, guitarist Ric Ruttum and Rosie Rush had a west coast tour, completing seven shows.
Sam Davenport is a writer residing in Anchorage. She's a leo and a plant-person, and loves spending quality time with her dog, Aspen. She is a Real Housewives fan and has been called a Bravo historian.
