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#Post#: 34227--------------------------------------------------
The Regan OLeary Global Center
By: Clay Death Date: December 31, 2015, 10:45 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[move][font=comic sans ms]WELCOME TO REGAN OLEARY GLOBAL CENTER
WELCOME TO REGAN OLEARY GOBAL CENTER WELCOME TO REGAN
OLEARY GLOBAL CENTER[/font][/move]
[center][URL=
HTML http://s1322.photobucket.com/user/spartacus120/media/camelot%20forum/regan-17_zpsj6w4ddqk.jpg.html][IMG]http://i1322.photobucket.com/albums/u572/spartacus120/camelot%20forum/regan-17_zpsj6w4ddqk.jpg[/img][/URL][/center]
Hello, I'm Regan O'Leary
I was born and raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, spending a
great deal of my childhood along the Louisiana Gulf coast. I am
a lover of music, a freelance writer and researcher, and I enjoy
reading, fishing, and traveling at home and abroad. I still
resides in South Louisiana with my husband and three children.
Closer To Home is my debut novel.
Let's Get Connected:
Twitter -
HTML https://twitter.com/Regan_OLeary
Facebook Fan Page -
HTML https://www.facebook.com/R-OLearys-Bane-Shaw-893670180688533/
Email - ReganOLearyPublishing@gmail.com
[b]
HTML http://reganoleary.com/
[/b]
[color=purple]I'm Regan O'Leary, author of the Bane Shaw series.
I was born and raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, growing up in
the rural southeast part of East Baton Rouge parish. I attended
public school, which, although was unequaled to a private school
education, was certainly a better educational system than
today's children have. I was very fortunate to attend and
graduate from Baton Rouge Magnet High School, #Bulldogs, where I
met and was alumni with some of the most brilliant, quirky, and
diverse teenagers hailing from all corners of East Baton Rouge
Parish. BRHS was a liberal minded institution without
indoctrination and it was an ideal setting for a rebel teenage
girl who put out just enough academic effort to keep her GPA in
a comfortably safe-zone to maintain my enrollment status at the
college-prep school. None-the-less, it was four of the best
years of my life accompanied with my hotrod 'Stang, a rock &
roll band, and scandalous behavior that included, but wasn't
limited to drag racing down River Road. God is merciful and good
as I should have crashed and burned long before my eighteenth
birthday.
I grew up in "the country". It wasn't a ranch, although we
raised cattle, and it wasn't a farm, despite the large garden in
the back pasture that was planted spring and fall. It was just
home. I ran bare-footed everywhere I went, year round, except
into the grocery store and the like, as my mother said that it
was nasty and she would have beaten me within an inch of my life
for acting like 'poor white trash'. Every summer morning was
spent in the garden, watering, picking, hoeing, then shelling,
snapping, and shucking all preparing for the pressure cooker -
rations for the ever-coming winter. Hell, I didn't know people
bought jelly at the grocery store until my late teens: ignorance
is bliss.
My brothers and I climbed Gum trees, had gumball fights, walked
in the woods eating more blackberries than the bucket ever knew,
and we did chores: loads of chores. It's how you lived.
No cell phones: a large rotary dial in the kitchen; no video
games: I was out of high school before I ever touched an Atari;
and no cablevision: but we never missed Billy Graham's Crusade,
Miss America pageants, and John Wayne films, along with the
accompanying snack of homemade ice cream or dill pickles - yes,
home-canned cucumbers.
And we fished. From the time I could hold a rod and reel I was
saltwater fishing. I remember tenting on the beaches of Elmer's
Island or the Grand Isle state park. After some years my parents
purchased a second-hand travel trailer then eventually a lot on
a bay side street in the center of seven-mile barrier island of
Grand Isle. We spent many weekends fishing the inland bay and
the front of the island for speckled trout and redfish. The best
trips in my memory are those that took us offshore. We spent an
hour or so fishing inland for bait fish then set our sights, and
the bow of the boat, toward the oil rigs.
It's a magical journey crossing choppy passes to break free into
the open Gulf and sail to a place where land has fallen from
sight. More thrilling is the feel of a monster fish at the end
of the heavy gear, wondering what beast God had allowed to
snatch your line. But even more appealing is the smell of the
salt, the wind whipping your hair to madness, the gulls' song,
and the insignificance one feels floating on the surface of a
tremendous body of water that, below her surface, is home to a
myriad of life.
I believe the enchantment of being on the water is best summed
up in Henry David Thoreau's infamous quote: "Many go fishing
all their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are
after".
One particular frightening recollection was a day fishing with
friends at the sulfur rig, that seemingly lay on the surface of
the green Gulf waters. Sadly, the rig is long since gone. It was
a beast, stretching the equivalent of a city block. Watching a
worker on a smoke break at the top of the platform, which
required you to look straight up to the sky, drop his cigarette
into the Gulf between our two boats. He was shouting, which was
pointless over the loud moans of the rig, and pointing at the
ocean. We finally looked into the water between our vessels to
where he was desperately pointing. A 25-foot hammerhead shark
had surfaced between our two boats - no wonder we weren't
catching any fish!
Stay tuned. I hope to take you on a wonderful journey around
Baton Rouge and south Louisiana. Peace and God Bless.
[center][size=14pt]
HTML http://reganoleary.com/[/center]
#Post#: 34228--------------------------------------------------
Re: The Regan OLeary Global Center
By: Clay Death Date: December 31, 2015, 10:46 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to Camelot.
#Post#: 34237--------------------------------------------------
Re: The Regan OLeary Global Center
By: Regan OLeary Date: January 1, 2016, 6:35 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Thank you! Glad to be a part of Camelot!
#Post#: 34240--------------------------------------------------
Re: The Regan OLeary Global Center
By: Clay Death Date: January 1, 2016, 8:05 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[URL=
HTML http://s1322.photobucket.com/user/spartacus120/media/camelot%20forum/regan-1_zpsmtqeuw1e.jpg.html][IMG]http://i1322.photobucket.com/albums/u572/spartacus120/camelot%20forum/regan-1_zpsmtqeuw1e.jpg[/img][/URL]
#Post#: 34243--------------------------------------------------
Re: The Regan OLeary Global Center
By: Clay Death Date: January 1, 2016, 9:13 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[URL=
HTML http://s1322.photobucket.com/user/spartacus120/media/camelot%20forum/regan-301_zps5jlslifh.jpg.html][IMG]http://i1322.photobucket.com/albums/u572/spartacus120/camelot%20forum/regan-301_zps5jlslifh.jpg[/img][/URL]
#Post#: 34261--------------------------------------------------
Re: The Regan OLeary Global Center
By: Regan OLeary Date: January 3, 2016, 5:52 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Regan O'Leary was born and raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana,
spending a great deal of her childhood along the Louisiana Gulf
coast. She is a freelance writer and researcher, and she enjoys
reading, fishing, and traveling at home and abroad. She still
resides in South Louisiana with her husband and three children.
This is her debut novel.
#Post#: 34262--------------------------------------------------
Re: The Regan OLeary Global Center
By: Regan OLeary Date: January 3, 2016, 6:01 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
I'm Regan O'Leary, author of the Bane Shaw series. I was born
and raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, growing up in the rural
southeast part of East Baton Rouge parish. I attended public
school, which, although was unequaled to a private school
education, was certainly a better educational system than
today's children have. I was very fortunate to attend and
graduate from Baton Rouge Magnet High School, #Bulldogs, where I
met and was alumni with some of the most brilliant, quirky, and
diverse teenagers hailing from all corners of East Baton Rouge
Parish. BRHS was a liberal minded institution without
indoctrination and it was an ideal setting for a rebel teenage
girl who put out just enough academic effort to keep her GPA in
a comfortably safe-zone to maintain my enrollment status at the
college-prep school. None-the-less, it was four of the best
years of my life accompanied with my hotrod 'Stang, a rock &
roll band, and scandalous behavior that included, but wasn't
limited to drag racing down River Road. God is merciful and good
as I should have crashed and burned long before my eighteenth
birthday.
I grew up in "the country". It wasn't a ranch, although we
raised cattle, and it wasn't a farm, despite the large garden in
the back pasture that was planted spring and fall. It was just
home. I ran bare-footed everywhere I went, year round, except
into the grocery store and the like, as my mother said that it
was nasty and she would have beaten me within an inch of my life
for acting like 'poor white trash'. Every summer morning was
spent in the garden, watering, picking, hoeing, then shelling,
snapping, and shucking all preparing for the pressure cooker -
rations for the ever-coming winter. Hell, I didn't know people
bought jelly at the grocery store until my late teens: ignorance
is bliss.
My brothers and I climbed Gum trees, had gumball fights, walked
in the woods eating more blackberries than the bucket ever knew,
and we did chores: loads of chores. It's how you lived.
No cell phones: a large rotary dial in the kitchen; no video
games: I was out of high school before I ever touched an Atari;
and no cablevision: but we never missed Billy Graham's Crusade,
Miss America pageants, and John Wayne films, along with the
accompanying snack of homemade ice cream or dill pickles - yes,
home-canned cucumbers.
And we fished. From the time I could hold a rod and reel I was
saltwater fishing. I remember tenting on the beaches of Elmer's
Island or the Grand Isle state park. After some years my parents
purchased a second-hand travel trailer then eventually a lot on
a bay side street in the center of seven-mile barrier island of
Grand Isle. We spent many weekends fishing the inland bay and
the front of the island for speckled trout and redfish. The best
trips in my memory are those that took us offshore. We spent an
hour or so fishing inland for bait fish then set our sights, and
the bow of the boat, toward the oil rigs.
It's a magical journey crossing choppy passes to break free into
the open Gulf and sail to a place where land has fallen from
sight. More thrilling is the feel of a monster fish at the end
of the heavy gear, wondering what beast God had allowed to
snatch your line. But even more appealing is the smell of the
salt, the wind whipping your hair to madness, the gulls' song,
and the insignificance one feels floating on the surface of a
tremendous body of water that, below her surface, is home to a
myriad of life.
I believe the enchantment of being on the water is best summed
up in Henry David Thoreau's infamous quote: "Many go fishing
all their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are
after".
One particular frightening recollection was a day fishing with
friends at the sulfur rig, that seemingly lay on the surface of
the green Gulf waters. Sadly, the rig is long since gone. It was
a beast, stretching the equivalent of a city block. Watching a
worker on a smoke break at the top of the platform, which
required you to look straight up to the sky, drop his cigarette
into the Gulf between our two boats. He was shouting, which was
pointless over the loud moans of the rig, and pointing at the
ocean. We finally looked into the water between our vessels to
where he was desperately pointing. A 25-foot hammerhead shark
had surfaced between our two boats - no wonder we weren't
catching any fish!
Stay tuned. I hope to take you on a wonderful journey around
Baton Rouge and south Louisiana. Peace and God Bless.
#Post#: 34263--------------------------------------------------
Re: The Regan OLeary Global Center
By: Regan OLeary Date: January 3, 2016, 6:30 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Phillip "Bane" Shaw, a native of Scotland, is the arrogant and
impetuous owner of Shaw Sound Studios in Hollywood South. Shaw
has a thriving business, loyal friends, and a captivating
relationship with Bronagh Stewart, a woman with whom he is
wholly in love and who altogether completes him; a woman he
thought didn't exist. The compelling desire Bronagh and he
share, and their seemingly flawless relationship bring about
contentment Bane has never known, despite the mildly petulant,
ever-present thoughts of the murders he committed in Glasgow
years before. Shaw's idyllic life is threatened, not only by the
secrets of his past, but also of Bronagh's, when Bronagh's
psychopathic ex-husband reenters her life. Will this monster
succeed in visiting upon her, again, unimaginable violence?
Closer To Home is a psychological suspense thriller that
challenges the reader to consider their own notion of love,
obsession and revenge. Exactly how far would you go to protect
those precious to you?
#Post#: 34266--------------------------------------------------
Re: The Regan OLeary Global Center
By: Clay Death Date: January 3, 2016, 7:07 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=Regan OLeary link=topic=1858.msg34262#msg34262
date=1451865685]
I'm Regan O'Leary, author of the Bane Shaw series. I was born
and raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, growing up in the rural
southeast part of East Baton Rouge parish. I attended public
school, which, although was unequaled to a private school
education, was certainly a better educational system than
today's children have. I was very fortunate to attend and
graduate from Baton Rouge Magnet High School, #Bulldogs, where I
met and was alumni with some of the most brilliant, quirky, and
diverse teenagers hailing from all corners of East Baton Rouge
Parish. BRHS was a liberal minded institution without
indoctrination and it was an ideal setting for a rebel teenage
girl who put out just enough academic effort to keep her GPA in
a comfortably safe-zone to maintain my enrollment status at the
college-prep school. None-the-less, it was four of the best
years of my life accompanied with my hotrod 'Stang, a rock &
roll band, and scandalous behavior that included, but wasn't
limited to drag racing down River Road. God is merciful and good
as I should have crashed and burned long before my eighteenth
birthday.
I grew up in "the country". It wasn't a ranch, although we
raised cattle, and it wasn't a farm, despite the large garden in
the back pasture that was planted spring and fall. It was just
home. I ran bare-footed everywhere I went, year round, except
into the grocery store and the like, as my mother said that it
was nasty and she would have beaten me within an inch of my life
for acting like 'poor white trash'. Every summer morning was
spent in the garden, watering, picking, hoeing, then shelling,
snapping, and shucking all preparing for the pressure cooker -
rations for the ever-coming winter. Hell, I didn't know people
bought jelly at the grocery store until my late teens: ignorance
is bliss.
My brothers and I climbed Gum trees, had gumball fights, walked
in the woods eating more blackberries than the bucket ever knew,
and we did chores: loads of chores. It's how you lived.
No cell phones: a large rotary dial in the kitchen; no video
games: I was out of high school before I ever touched an Atari;
and no cablevision: but we never missed Billy Graham's Crusade,
Miss America pageants, and John Wayne films, along with the
accompanying snack of homemade ice cream or dill pickles - yes,
home-canned cucumbers.
And we fished. From the time I could hold a rod and reel I was
saltwater fishing. I remember tenting on the beaches of Elmer's
Island or the Grand Isle state park. After some years my parents
purchased a second-hand travel trailer then eventually a lot on
a bay side street in the center of seven-mile barrier island of
Grand Isle. We spent many weekends fishing the inland bay and
the front of the island for speckled trout and redfish. The best
trips in my memory are those that took us offshore. We spent an
hour or so fishing inland for bait fish then set our sights, and
the bow of the boat, toward the oil rigs.
It's a magical journey crossing choppy passes to break free into
the open Gulf and sail to a place where land has fallen from
sight. More thrilling is the feel of a monster fish at the end
of the heavy gear, wondering what beast God had allowed to
snatch your line. But even more appealing is the smell of the
salt, the wind whipping your hair to madness, the gulls' song,
and the insignificance one feels floating on the surface of a
tremendous body of water that, below her surface, is home to a
myriad of life.
I believe the enchantment of being on the water is best summed
up in Henry David Thoreau's infamous quote: "Many go fishing
all their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are
after".
One particular frightening recollection was a day fishing with
friends at the sulfur rig, that seemingly lay on the surface of
the green Gulf waters. Sadly, the rig is long since gone. It was
a beast, stretching the equivalent of a city block. Watching a
worker on a smoke break at the top of the platform, which
required you to look straight up to the sky, drop his cigarette
into the Gulf between our two boats. He was shouting, which was
pointless over the loud moans of the rig, and pointing at the
ocean. We finally looked into the water between our vessels to
where he was desperately pointing. A 25-foot hammerhead shark
had surfaced between our two boats - no wonder we weren't
catching any fish!
Stay tuned. I hope to take you on a wonderful journey around
Baton Rouge and south Louisiana. Peace and God Bless.
[/quote]
it is a pleasure to learn more about you Regan. thank you for
taking the time to tell your story.
#Post#: 34268--------------------------------------------------
Re: The Regan OLeary Global Center
By: Regan OLeary Date: January 3, 2016, 8:48 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Meet Bane Shaw: self-proclaimed womanizing, arrogant, bad ass.
Please enjoy Chapter One of Closer To Home.
It was the spring of 1985 when the tattooist yanked Shaw’s flask
from his mouth then handed him a bottle of water, as he
continued inking a date into the banner that draped over the
existing dagger tattoo on his shoulder blade. The tattoo was an
exact replica of the dagger Shaw carried with him at all times.
The deer-antler handle bolstered a four-inch blade that his
great, great grandfather crafted after tracking and killing a
stag in the Scottish Highland’s Cairngorm Mountains. Shaw
carried the sgian dubh, or hidden knife, under his armpit in the
sleeve lining of his coat, since it was illegal to carry a
weapon in Scotland. It was the very same dagger he had used just
hours before to slit open the throat of the seventeen year old
Bridgeton gang member who’d sliced his brother’s neck from ear
to ear five days earlier in the perilous streets of Glasgow. The
sgian dubh dagger tattoo was only three days old, an emblem to
honor his brother and a reminder of the first murder Shaw ever
committed. Having sought after and carried out his revenge for
Jack’s murder, the date of his death inked into his shoulder
blade completed the tattoo. This shop would be Shaw’s last stop
before taking the train from Glasgow down to London.
The tattooist handed him a mirror and his flask. He took a long
draw of whisky as he nodded at the reflection of his shoulder
blade in the mirror, “Jack April 13, 1985.” Shaw left the shop,
stepped into a misty, wind-driven rain, threw a bag over his
left shoulder and walked to the train station. He was only
nineteen years old.
He was born, Phillip Douglas Shaw, and was raised in Drumchapel,
Glasgow, Scotland. “The Drum,” as it was affectionately called
by its residents, was a post-war housing scheme built in the
1950s by the Glasgow City Council to relocate 30,000 or so
families from Glasgow’s suburbs in an effort to ease the pains
of overpopulation. Drumchapel was considered a new town, and he
always thought of his community, his home, as separate and
unique. His mum always told him that their family was fortunate
to have drawn a winning ticket to move from the slums of
Maryhill in the north of Glasgow to Drumchapel in the
west. 
Shaw’s parents were hard working, faithful people without dreams
for themselves, or at least that is what he always believed.
Their dreams were small, and only for their three boys. Shaw was
the middle boy, and he believed he would become one of his
father’s biggest disappointments. He grew up on Howgate Avenue
with his mum and da, Alva Gail and John Aaran Shaw, his older
brother, John Aaran “Jack,” Jr., and baby brother, Collin
Michael. They lived in a gray, roughcast, 4-in-a-block tenement
facing Drumchapel Park. His father was a Glasgow police officer,
like his father before him, and his mother worked as a cabinet
polisher at the Singer Sewing Factory in neighboring Clydebank
until it closed in 1979; she later worked for Clydebank Co-op
for a number of years.
Shaw never thought of his family as poor. They were like most
everyone else in the Drum; no one was wealthy. But, they didn’t
want for anything that he specifically remembered. His parents
made decent wages, and Drumchapel promised a community free from
the inner-city crowding of his mum’s upbringing in Maryhill.
They even had a small yard that held a clothesline and a modest
garden.
By all accounts, he had a happy childhood. Jack and Shaw
grappled and scrapped with each other constantly. They played
games of rounders in the park, kirby in the street, found
mischief where they could, and they both dreamed of bigger
lives. At the end of each week, Jack and Shaw would go with
their mum to the laundry and the market, keeping an eye on
Collin for her, then helping her tote their wares back through
Drumchapel Park to their house. Shaw remembered resisting the
urge to race Jack to play on the rocket at the Hecla Avenue end
of the park. He also remembered the look his mum gave her boys
that told she’d switch their rear ends if they abandoned their
packages to run off and play.
Shaw’s father was a rigid man, inflexible in his views of his
family and of the world around him. Shaw didn’t know whether it
was his da’s upbringing, or the time he spent as a cop in the
most dangerous city in Scotland that made him so stubborn. He
was also a passionate man, which revealed itself in his joy of
storytelling over a glass of whisky, his unending love for his
wife, or in his unrestrained temper that could rise as abruptly
as a storm. Shaw would learn in time that he was more like his
father than either of his other two sons.
Jack was two years older than Shaw, a rebel dreamer with a
tender heart and, like most teenage boys, he began challenging
his father when he was thirteen. Unfortunately, Jack never
outgrew the father-son authority struggle. He was in and out of
trouble with the police, and Shaw always believed he took some
measure of satisfaction in being a true source of embarrassment
for their police officer father. Jack’s final act of defiance
was when he began running with a local gang in the Drum, the
PGB, or Peel Glen Boys, resulting in a number of “not proven”
verdicts from the Scottish judicial system. Jack’s PGB
affiliation would be his downfall and ultimately lead to his
father’s death.
Collin was four years younger than Shaw, with his father’s good
looks and playful smile. John adored Collin, unlike his two
older sons. Collin was a practical child with the same small
dreams his parents had. Shaw loved his little brother, but at
times he felt sorry for him. He never shared the connection with
Collin that he felt with Jack. As Collin grew, his sensible
nature limited him to a life never far from the Drum. He became
a welder at the Yarrows Shipbuilders and married Catherine
Morrison from neighboring Scotstoun. Collin’s complacency was,
without a doubt, what appealed to his father and was probably
why John always favored him over Jack and Shaw.
Shaw was born on July 4, 1965. He was a free spirited,
mischievous and happy child. He learned to love music at an
early age. His mum had a pretty voice and sang out loud every
day. Shaw would sit with her in the kitchen and listen to her
hum and sing old Celtic songs. His mum bought him a boxed record
player for his fourth Christmas and he played storybook albums
with dramatic background music. At a fairly young age, he
realized he was much more interested in the music than the
story. Shaw spent much of his younger years in a local music
shop where the owner let him tinker with the instruments on the
sales displays. Any money he had never stayed long in his
pocket; while his friends spent their money on Dandy comics,
Shaw was always buying an album or the latest music magazine. By
the age of ten, he knew music would be a driving force in his
life, and at that particular age, he dreamt of being a rock
star. As he grew older, his musical aspirations wouldn’t change,
but they would become more realistic.
The week he turned eighteen, he got a job bartending at The Rigg
just to support his music habit. The Rigg was the public bar of
the Hill’s Hotel. Shaw considered himself funny because he could
always elicit a laugh from his regular customers. In reality, he
was simply a smartass, but apparently, a funny smartass. The job
was fun, and it was always interesting working in one of the
roughest public houses in Drumchapel. Bartending at night at The
Rigg sometimes required breaking up fights, especially during
football matches between Rangers and Celtic, an Old Firm Glasgow
rivalry based more on religious bigotry than football. The
manager of The Rigg gave Shaw his nickname, “Bane,” because,
more times than not, anyone he had to throw out of the pub left
with a broken bone.
The Rigg was a jagged pub known far and wide for its vicious bar
fights. There were regular stabbings and even a couple of
murders. He was fourteen when the fighting spilled into the
streets around the Hill’s Hotel after the infamous 1980 Scottish
Cup final when Celtic brought home the trophy. Jack was a huge
Celtic fan and proudly wore their green and white colors to
support the team, and he absolutely prized the brawling
associated with every game.
Shaw finally realized his hopes to disk jockey at a local lounge
when he landed a part-time job at The Golden Garter, which was
adjacent to the Hill’s Hotel. The Golden Garter was the dancing
nightspot in Drumchapel. He stayed engrossed in the music he
played and loved it when the local patrons shouted out requests
for him to play. It was always one big party for Shaw. It was
what he was born to do.
His father hated the path he had chosen. His idea of success was
for Shaw to marry some local snatch and raise babies on a
starving man’s salary. Shaw believed he was simply an outlet for
his father, a place to deposit the disappointment he had for
Jack, and then, ultimately, a place to deposit the blame for his
death. He told Shaw he was worthless and no good for chasing
musical dreams and for running with that George Fleming.
George was a close friend who worked for the largest record
distribution company in Scotland. George always passed on early
promotional and demo records to Shaw. The manager of The Golden
Garter learned that he was playing tunes before they ever became
hits, which made Shaw a favorite disk jockey among the local
patrons.
Early in April of 1985, Shaw convinced Jack to go with him to a
Sauchiehall Street nightclub to see a southern rock band from
the States. Jack’s pride and loyalty to his PGB crew, his love
of the Celtic football team, and his mostly unpracticed Catholic
faith, permitted him—at least in his mind—to boldly wear his
colors. They were attacked leaving the concert, one block from
the club. A kid, no more than seventeen, grabbed Jack from
behind and cut his throat, severing his carotid artery. Shaw was
simply beaten to the ground. He watched Jack crumble to the
street before he could crawl over to his brother. Shaw
remembered hearing the taunts and laughter from their attackers
echo off the neighboring buildings, calling them Fenian
schemies, but he made sure to memorize the face of the blue-nose
bastard who cut his brother. When Shaw did reach Jack, he held
him as he bled out in his arms. He emptied Jack’s pants pockets,
and to this day, carries the keychain crafted from the stone
bottle top of a Grolsch lager bottle. Shaw believed his father
never forgave him for Jack’s death, since it was his idea to go
to the concert. He assumed his da never paused to consider that
maybe Jack’s arrogance and untouchable attitude played a role in
their attack.
Jack was murdered by a rival gang, a member of the Billy Boys, a
Protestant crew from Bridgeton, Glasgow and notoriousRangers
fans. Shaw sought after and got revenge for Jack’s death before
he left The Drum, and Scotland, forever. His mum suffered the
worst, losing two sons within days of each other. She told Shaw
she understood, but he knew her heart was broken and that Collin
would be all she and his da had left. Nonetheless, on April, 18,
1985, he took the train from Glasgow down to London with very
little money in his pocket.
He walked into Soho Sound Studios, which lay just off Golden
Square, threw down an unreleased demo, and asked for a job. He
was told they weren’t hiring.
“Play the record,” Shaw insisted.
A young prick, Andy, a few years older than him said, “I’ll play
the record, but I’m not hiring you.”
“We’ll see,” Shaw quipped.
Andy laughed as he put the record on a turntable. Shaw watched
his smug, bored expression disappear as “Money For Nothing”
played from the speakers. Andy looked at him and said, “This
hasn’t been released, yet.”
“Aye. I know. I have two more in my bag, Madonna and Duran
Duran. Too bad you’re not hiring,” he said and turned and left
Andy’s office.
Shaw knew unreleased demos wouldn’t help Andy, or anyone else at
Soho Sound, but Andy stopped him at the front door and offered
him an entry-level position where Shaw would shadow programmers
and engineers in the London studio.
They walked back to Andy’s office. “You’re a ballsy, twit,” he
said.
“I try.”
“Where’d you get the demo?”
“I have resources.”
“You’re a smartass, too!”
“Absolutely,” Shaw said.
George’s demos and Shaw’s arrogance got Andy’s attention that
day. He liked Shaw’s ingenuity; they’ve been friends ever since.
That entry-level shot was all he needed to realize his dreams in
the music industry. Shaw worked for Soho Sound for eleven years
until, in 1996, he agreed to move to the States to help
establish a secondary studio in New York City.
Shaw set up and ran SSNY for three years before deciding to make
another move, a move to the less radical, less populated
environment of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He chose Baton Rouge
after reading several articles about proposed legislation to
allow tax incentives for movie production companies that filmed
in Louisiana.
Over the years, he had saved a good deal of money, as he had no
family to support. Shaw scheduled a week of vacation, flew to
Baton Rouge and spent the week scouting properties in the
downtown area.
Over the previous two decades, revitalization efforts to improve
the downtown Baton Rouge economy met with some success and some
failure. In the mid-eighties, $28 million was spent to open a
marketplace named Catfish Town on the banks of the Mississippi
River. The July 4th festival opening drew over a quarter million
people into the downtown area, but, within eighteen months,
Catfish Town was abandoned. In 1994, the Catfish Town
marketplace became the atrium for a riverboat casino.
Shaw calculated that if the Louisiana legislature passed the tax
incentive programs, the Bayou State would triple film
productions. South Louisiana, which had already earned the
moniker Hollywood South, steeped in film tradition from the
early movies of Tarzan of the Apes, to the classics, Easy Rider
and Hush…Hush Sweet Charlotte, in addition to the more recent
block-busters Steel Magnolias and Interview With The Vampire,
needed a proper sound studio. There were only a couple of small
sound studios in Baton Rouge, but none like he envisioned.
With the help of the Federal and State Historic Rehabilitation
Tax credits, the tax increment financing, and other economic
growth incentives, he found an abandoned warehouse in downtown
Baton Rouge. Because the downtown economy continued to dwindle,
he learned he could purchase the warehouse for a song and
finally realize his dream. He flew back to New York, packed up
his apartment, and turned in his two weeks’ notice at SSNY. In
the Fall of 1999, Shaw moved to Baton Rouge and bought the
property because he knew the boom would happen. And it did. Shaw
Sound Studios was born.
He took his time learning the city. Louisiana had parishes, not
counties. There was a heavy Cajun French influence among the
residents of Baton Rouge as well as other predominant cultures
including Spanish, Irish and Italian. There were churches of
every denomination within blocks of each other. He found it
refreshing to walk along streets where Catholics and Protestants
mingled and worshiped together without conflict. And, unlike his
life in New York, faith and religion held a priority with
Louisianans, regardless of their beliefs. He learned the area
around his warehouse was surrounded by two universities and some
slum areas with crime-ridden neighborhoods just blocks from his
new investment. Welcome home, he told himself, thinking about
his old hometown of Drumchapel.
William “Billy” Morrissey had worked with Shaw at Soho Sound,
and he was also part of the team that relocated to New York to
set up SSNY. He was Shaw’s hire at Soho Sound. He abandoned New
York and followed Shaw to Louisiana and was now his tech guy.
Billy had grown up in County Kilkenny, Ireland and was seven
years Shaw’s junior. He had a more privileged life in Gowran
than Shaw had ever known in Glasgow, raised in a middle class
home, and educated at the prestigious Trinity College in Dublin.
He was smart and a technical miracle worker, able to manipulate
anything electronic at his pleasure, and command computerized
technology with ease, earning him the nickname, “Morse Code,” at
Soho Sound. Shaw rarely called him that anymore, unless he was
trying to twist him up. He simply called him Billy. He was one
of Shaw’s closest friends.
Billy and Shaw lived in the barren warehouse for months as Shaw
got funding together to renovate the warehouse and build a
studio out front. Once it was built, it was a state-of-the-art
sound studio with multiple recording dens specializing in studio
recordings, sound design, sound animation, voiceovers, mixing
and dubbing, and audio post-production. Shaw’s loft apartment
was built upstairs on the west side of the warehouse. In
addition to the large executive offices in the studio, the
warehouse also held additional office space, an employee kitchen
and lounge, and an inventory of every imaginable musical
instrument.
Shaw purchased the musical equipment from a man who would later
become his best friend. Marsh owned a music store that Billy and
he wandered into one day after eating lunch at a nearby café.
Marsh was teaching bass guitar to a fifteen-year-old boy when
Billy and Shaw walked into his shop. Marsh had long, dark brown
hair, green eyes, and a beard and mustache, which surprised Shaw
once he noticed the eagle, globe, and anchor Marine Corps tattoo
on his left bicep. His build and features reminded Shaw of an
old-world Viking. Marsh was tall, long-limbed, with a broad
chest and narrow hips. He wore a braided leather wristband, a
gold chain around his neck, and a gold Marine Corps ring on his
right hand.
Billy and Shaw browsed through his inventory as Marsh continued
the lesson. Near the end of the lesson, Shaw sat at the front
counter engrossed in the jam session he and his student were
having. Shaw was captivated by Marsh’s ability to simultaneously
play lead and rhythm on one guitar. No one can do that, he
thought. Marsh turned out to be the most talented musician Shaw
would ever meet.
To Continue Reading Closer To Home:
HTML http://www.amazon.com/Closer-Home-Book-Crime-Drama-ebook/dp/B0157G0J8Y/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1451875663&sr=8-2&keywords=Closer+to+home
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