BIO
Indie singer-songwriter Aaron J. Shay is a Pacific Northwest native living in Seattle. With an earnest and charismatic style of performance, Shay blends his songs with storytelling, instigating upbeat sing-alongs that leave audiences delighted and inspired. A writer turned musician, Shay integrates narrative into his songs and his onstage persona, engaging audiences with tales both real and imagined.
Shay has been developing his particular brand of narrative music-telling since 2015, singing songs that tell stories about faraway and unreal worlds, which bear some resemblances to our own. This culminated in the debut of a one-man sci-fi adventure show, Apocalypse Songs, a concept-concert about a inter-dimensional poet-scientist only known as Captain Redacted. An album for this project was released in January of 2019.
A graduate of Western Washington University’s drama program, Shay is also intermittently active in Seattle’s theater community, bringing his narrative musical style to drama as a band leader and music director. He currently lives in Ballard with his girlfriend and their dog, Bruno.
PHOTOS
VIDEO
ARTICLES
Apocalypse Songs: A Sci-Fi Singer-Songwriter Adventure by Tom Pymer and Eleanor Sheppard, EdFringeReview, 2019
First Look Reviews, by Mark Magee, PortFringe, 2019
Rogue Reviews 2019 by Terrance McArthur, Kings River Life, 2019
Review: Discrete Packets of Song by Elizabeth Alvarado, Drama in the Hood, February 2017
Rogue Reviews 2016 by Terrance McArthur, Kings River Life, 2016
Aaron J. Shay Takes His Ukulele Folk Down the Coast by Katrina Charles, Inside Right Wrist , November 2012
Aaron J. Shay Is John Darnielle With A Ukulele by Gwendolyn Elliott, Seattle Weekly, June 2012