Blane Lyon & The Real

Blane Lyon’s voice, words, performance and presence echo his deep history and commitment to soulful uplifting music. With over 500 live concerts to his credit, his performance is crafted and inspiring. With over 200 original songs, in multiple genres, Blane Lyon’s music is evolved and beautiful. Singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, dancer and producer Blane Lyon performs original works of Funk, Soul, Reggae, Electronica, Dub, Acoustic and many other forms of groove.

Born a San Francisco native, to a radical political family, Lyon was influenced young by a vast mix of different music , from the latin sounds of the mission to the soulfully psychedelic funk of the 70’s and the birthing hip hop. Lyon started writing poetry at 13 as an antidote to the overwhelming sadness accompanying personal tragedy. Upon setting his words to music he stumbled into a lifelong passion and has continued to confront political and spiritual challenges with a trademark lyrical urgency ever since. After completing a degree in music and dance composition at University of CA. at Santa Cruz, he traveled and performed extensively in Europe, Thailand, Hawaii, and the Pacific Northwest with guitar and notepad close at hand. Eventually returning to California he formed the popular funk collective Family Soul, which became a crowd packing mainstay of the Northwest club circuit throughout the late 90’s. Lyon was also the founder and singer for the punk/funk Sonoma County group, The Louies in the late 1980’s and the Santa Cruz based Brothers of Other in the early 90’s.

Releasing his first solo album, “All People” in late 2005, Blane formed his present band The Real, which maintains Lyon’s conscious tune-smithing with a penchant for booty shaking grooves, and fat backed soul anthems. Lyon also performs solo, both acoustic and electronic live sets. The “All People” cd has experienced steady sales throughout 2006 and 2007, and is available on iTunes, and many other digital downloading sites. The new Album “Rebel Lion” will be released summer 2009. Recently Blane wrote the funky theme songs for the US Bicycle lobby “Ride My Bike” & “I Want to Walk!”. He also volunteers by performing in mental institutions thru the Bread & Roses Foundation. Cleaning up the great mass of plastic in the ocean “the Gyre” has also been a focus of this year. Blane has performed several benefit concerts in California and Hawaii in order to promote awareness about this environmental tragedy/responsibility.

Instrumentation:
Blane Lyon – lead Vocal , Guitar, Harmonica
Ben Krames- Drums & Percussion
Lewis Garcia- Bass
Sage – Guitar
Sasha “Butterfly” Rose – vocal, flute, percussion
Kimiko Joy – Vocal
John Varn – Organ and Keys