Shan Elizabeth Chard 17-7-66 – 16-1-14. Shan Chard was raised in her parents’ dance studio, The Prudence Bowen Academy of Dancing, (her sister being a prima ballerina with the Sydney Dance Company), and she performed dance, tap and jazz ballet all her young life. She learnt ukulele when she was four years old, progressing to her mothers’ two keyboard organ with foot pedals. By the age of six she was playing the nylon string guitar and trained on classical guitar, finally moving to steel strings in her teens. At age 20 she completed a Diploma of Audio engineering at SAE, and took up the bass guitar. She played with many original music and cover bands over the next 15 years, including FABBA, Gold Chisel, The Max, becoming one of the few female bassists in Sydney, while raising two children. At age 35 she attended the Australian Institute of Music, gaining a Bachelor of Music - Performance, Bass Guitar. Shan then attended Sydney University and the Conservatorium of Music, and gained a Masters of Teaching, Secondary Music. She worked in the music all her life. She had jobs at Triple J/ABC Radio, recording studios, acted in commercials, wrote soundtracks for short films and jingles, and consistently played in bands as a bassist and backing vocalist. She recently was teaching as a casual teacher at government high schools, and driving a mobile music teaching van to primary schools as a teacher for “The Music Bus”. The most important band for her that she performed in was her own band, The Cleanskins and the band members gave a very moving farewell to her at her funeral on January 23. Musician Steve Wernick had this to say in his tribute: “I feel so extremely privileged to have enjoyed a friendship with Shan and honoured, as do the lads, to be linked with her memory through our music together with the Cleanskins. We are also very proud to have shared many stages and unforgettable musical experiences together. What an amazing and epic journey it has been. Shan was far from being just the Bass player with the Cleanskins, brilliant though she was. She was a formidable musical force. Whether it be guitar, ukulele, tambourine or anything else she set her mind to. Despite being the best vocalist in the band by a country mile, Shan was happy to provide perfect backing vocal harmonies and her rhythms were always the driving force behind the band, in conjunction with Byron of course. Shan had a big hand in arranging every song we did and also produced and engineered all our songs. She set our website up and booked many of our gigs, and was a constant source of ideas and inspiration.” Support Act extends our deepest sympathy to Byron, Shan’s husband, and to all Shan’s family, sons William and Brendan, sister Kathy, brother John, and to her parents, Ray and Betty and the musicians in her band The Cleanskins.
Posted on: Thu, 30 Jan 2014 01:12:26 +0000