Andria Shinn

Andria Shinn spent her career in corporate finance and nonprofits and only started playing music in public about three years ago.

Shinn drove up from Fernandina Beach to the McBastard Studio for a Salty's Live Music session on a day when Georgia had ice on the roads, and her crew hit some of it on the way. She and Brad had been talking on and off for a while and neither of them was willing to call it off. She brought the big red truck and muddled through, which she put down to being Pacific Northwestern. It was the first music podcast she had done.

She has been singing since she was old enough to get in a swing in the backyard, and sang in church growing up and on worship teams as an adult. Everything else is recent. Formalizing her songwriting, working with a band and standing in front of an audience all happened inside the last few years. The guitar is there to help her sing, and she is honest that what she can play is limited, so songs come out of her vocally first. She will record a melody into her phone and send it to a friend asking what chords go over it. Half her songs she cannot play now, because the guys put progressions behind them that she never learned. One of the songs she played in the studio that day is called Broke Ass Chords, which she brings up alongside the joke her writing friends make about how often she mangles her own guitar. People keep telling her they hear country, southern rock and blues.

Her regulars named themselves the Shinyans. She says a lot of them would not have given each other the time of day outside of a show, and once they found common ground there, everything else moved to the background. This year's Shindig is March 15, an all day festival at a brewery in Fernandina Beach, starting with a kids open mic and running bands until night. She closes those nights with friends on stage, and her fans turn up because whatever happens is unlikely to happen twice.