The Powers of Ten.
Unless you are an elite electric guitar player, you may not be familiar with Shawn Lane, a virtuoso instrumentalist tragically taken before his career had a chance to take off. During the comet arc of his brief stage and studio career from roughly 1990-2000, during which time a teenage Mr. Lane played guitar tracks for Ringo Starr, Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and Joe Walsh before joining Black Oak Arkansas as lead guitarist at age fourteen. In the four years that followed, Lane toured and opened shows for REO Speed Wagon, Ted Nugent, Cheap Trick, and Blue Öyster Cult. When you listen to Powers of Ten, you will hear his unmistakable influence on several of our modern masters. Virtuoso players like John McLaughlin, Eric Johnson, Jeff Beck, and Buckethead were all unabashed admirers. For his part, Mr. Lane admired the classical music he was exposed to as a child, and he was formally trained on the piano. Picking up the guitar at the age of twelve, he received critical reviews as a guitarist, but was unable to follow through on those successes as cascading health problems torpedoed his chances for commercial success. Afflicted with Cushing’s syndrome, Shawn used prescription pain killers to mitigate the unrelenting pain, but did not have medical insurance coverage. Without proper treatment, his symptoms and the side effects of the medications gradually spiraled out of control. Shawn Lane died in Memphis, Tennessee on September 26, 2003 from complications of his medical treatment. Continue reading “Powers of Ten”