Search - Ken Shane :: South Ridgeway Avenue

SOUTH RIDGEWAY AVENUE "I feel kind of funny telling people that I grew up on South Ridgeway Avenue in Atlantic City. The fact is that my grandparents had a house there, and I spent my first twenty summers in that house. I suppose the key phrase is ?grew up?; because that?s where I think that I did all my growing. Those summers. That street. That town. The place where my memories live." Ken Shane has decided to pay tribute to that time and place on his first album. Everything from the photos on the front and back covers, to the songs of memory and loss that fill the album is inspired by those childhood experiences. "It?s really about my grandmother. She owned that house. I?ve never been closer to anyone than I was to her. When she died a few years ago, I knew that I had to find a way to honor her memory. So I did what I thought I could do, which was to write these songs, to make this album. For her," Ken says. "Atlantic City was a great town in those days, before gambling. I?ve heard people say that it was a dying city, but if it was, I never noticed it. When I visit now I feel all at once sad, angry, and bewildered by what has happened there since the big casinos took over. A lot of my songs are about those feelings," Ken adds. "There?s a lot of frustration in the knowledge that things will never be as they once were." "I had written these memory songs, and I was ready to start recording. Then September 11 happened. I?ve thought a great deal about that day, as we all have. It?s clear that that tragedy is also about loss and redemption, although on a much, much larger scale. But the same frustrations emerge with the certainty that we will never be the same again." "I also think that an artist has a responsibility to respond to important events. I was on vacation in Arizona that day. I was in a wilderness that couldn?t have been any further from New Jersey. I live less than thirty minutes from downtown Manhattan. My immediate reaction was that I wanted to be home. This was an attack on my home, on my neighbors, and I wanted to be with them. That?s where I belonged. Again, I did what I could do, which is to write songs. So, there are a couple of songs on the album that deal specifically with that terrible day and its aftermath." "Despite all of the loss depicted on this album, I remain full of hope for the future," Ken closes.