About Us

Please click on our founding members profiles to learn more about them and all collaborators may explore who else is in the playground by going to collaborators and checking out the profiles.

Shannon Lyons

When I began to write this bio, I was asked to put my artistic practice into words. I wrote several with all the requisite Shannon Lyons has been, done and created things attached. There are many of those results on this site. I deleted them all to begin again as it is the least important thing I need to convey. I struggled with it until a friend reminded me I was writing of one project with its many facets. The project is my life and its impact on the world. That interactive impact will be the “media” it is encompassed within.

It is a peace project of international and hopefully world encompassing size.  World peace, it seems like a far fetched dream at times. Though it is a simple one to achieve if we all are willing to create inclusive community based on the currency of respect and contagious contentment. This website has been set up with intentional care to help create community and exchange respect as an interactive currency in the ways we have already discovered. It is expected to evolve as our understanding does. If there are ways to encourage this please share them so that our community may sur-thrive. Our intent is to encourage a more realistic view of human interaction, leaving us with honored spaces within our lives for change to be shaped into grace. You are welcome here.

Michael Frank

Michael moved to Chicago in 1972 to hang out in blues bars and meet musicians. He met Honeyboy Edwards and Jim Brewer in 1972, and managed their careers until their deaths in 1989 and 2011 respectively. He founded Earwig Music Company in 1978 as a blues record label and artist management company. Earwig’s 78 releases – most produced by Michael Frank – cover both new recordings and historical reissues of blues, jazz, gospel, early 60s r&b, world music and storytelling. Michael toured worldwide 1979 – 2011 as Honeyboy’s manager and harmonica player.

Michael was honored by The Blues Foundation with the 2007 Keeping the Blues Alive Award in Artist Management and the 2020 Blues Music Award for Best Historical Reissue and as Producer for the Earwig box set: Cadillac Baby Presents Bea & Baby Records Definitive Collection. He is currently focused on both new recordings and historical reissues and providing career development consulting and marketing services for musicians and multi-media artists. www.earwigmusic.com

Steven Hausheer

Steven Hausheer is a music business consultant and marketing professional with deep roots in the music industry. After founding a successful ad agency, Steven jumped with both feet into the digital revolution and co-founded Visionautics, a web pioneering digital agency. Hausheer also signed on with Out The Box Records as VP Marketing. Now Steven is Chief Marketing Officer at digital record label Earwig Music based in Chicago, Illinois. During his 40 years in the music business, Steven has been an artist manager, marketer, producer and singer songwriting musician — living and breathing music just as much as you.

Steven’s diverse experiences have given him unique insight into the complexities of making music and making a living making music, from both the artist’s and executive’s perspectives musicians.Steven’s visionary actions have had a positive influence on both artist development acts and established career musicians He has a penchant for creating new ways to make money in music, leveraging digital technologies to connect musicians directly with their fans. www.hausheer.com