Cary Sheldon is a singer, songwriter, and beloved Berkeley voice teacher with 30 years’ worth of grateful students. She has been playing and teaching in the Bay Area for the last 40 years. Her love for R & B music led her to be part of Zazu Pitts Memorial Orchestra in the 1980’s.  Other affiliations include The Henry Kaiser Band, The Henriettas (a recreation of DeZurick sisters, a popular country music duo from the 1940’s), who appeared on Prairie Home Companion, and most recently her band DanceChant, a joyful community-inspired R&B band that encourages audience participation. She continues to be inspired by her love of singing in community. “Singing together with others is one of the greatest joys in my life.” Now in her 60’s, she returns to influences from her early life. Her grade school music teachers included John Langstaff, creator of the Christmas Revels, and the repertoire was based on the American folk tradition, including old English ballads, spirituals, freedom songs, and the popular folk and protest songs of the 1960’s. She hopes to inspire others to explore the depth of this material and rediscover the joy of community singing.
Photo by Jeanette Yu

Known nationwide as a purveyor of literate, improvisational folk-rock with looping, singer/songwriter/producer/photographer/author David Gans has composed, performed, and written about music for the whole of his adult life. His eleventh full-length album, Drop the Bone, is his most ambitious and accomplished record yet.

Arriving in 1966 in time to catch the initial wave of psychedelia and the birth of the counterculture, the LA-born Gans settled as a teenager in the San Francisco Bay Area amidst the full flowering of a music scene burgeoning with bohemianism and creativity.  While his primary source of gratification remains the composition and performance of original material, Gans’ career has also focused on providing interpretive context to the songs of myriad influences, primarily the enduring legacy of the Grateful Dead. Other inspirations include John Prine, Steve Goodman, Emmylou Harris, Merle Haggard, Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, Little Feat, Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, Donna the Buffalo, and (of course) America’s own Nobel-winning literary lyricist, Bob Dylan. Gans is the author (or co-author) of five books and host of the nationally-syndicated radio programs The Grateful Dead Hour and Tales from the Golden Road.
Photo by Rita Hurault

Learn about all other great guests on the Song Circle Guest Artists page.