Shannon McArdle had no idea what she was getting herself into when she picked up a guitar for the first time at the age of twenty one. It was a gift of sorts from her new acquaintance, Timothy Bracy, who told her to take care of it (though it was already so banged up, there was nothing she could do to further hurt it) and to write something. And that she did. On the same afternoon, she asked her twin brother Philip, with whom she shared a house in Athens, Georgia, to show her a few chords. Shannon wrote her first song that very night, and her second song, as well as a few others, found their way on to We're All in This Alone by the Mendoza Line. It was official, at least to now band mate Timothy and herself—she was in the band.

Now feeling there was no going back, Shannon moved to New York in 1998 to join band mates Timothy Bracy and Pete Hoffman. These were not the most stable of years, but a lot of music was made, and much of it landed on the following Mendoza Line albums, Lost in Revelry, Fortune, and Full of Light and Full of Fire. In 2004, Shannon and Timothy, now an admitted “item” recorded The View from the Floor, under the name Slow Dazzle. They went on to tie the knot in October of 2005, but were sadly separated in 2007 and divorced in 2008. The final Mendoza Line record, Thirty Year Low, includes the final recordings of the couple together.

Battered and bewildered emotionally, Shannon spent the first six months of 2007 in her apartment in bed with the cats in Brooklyn, vowing never to write another song. But in July 2007, she called Adam D. Gold, a dear friend and band mate for a time, and said, “Let's do this thing.” And it was done, in the summer of 2007, later to be known as the Summer of the Whore.

It is said that Shannon never really learned any new chords after that fateful day more than a decade ago in Athens, Georgia. But this hasn't stopped her from writing volumes of songs, the last ten of which appear on her first solo record, Shannon McArdle in Summer of the Whore, which is to be released on LTI in August 2008. Rumored to be a most dark and unhappy piece of work, there's plenty of lines to make you smile as well, though maybe with a little discomfort.