URBANA — World-renowned guitarist and singer Isaiah Sharkey is performing at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts for the final special edition of Uncorked with Illinois Soul on Thursday, Feb. 27th at 5:30pm.
Sharkey is featured on a Grammy-winning album, has toured with multiple Grammy-winning artists and has released two albums of his own. IPM’s Kimberly Schofield spoke with Sharkey about the upcoming performance and his musical journey.
Audio PlayerThis interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
SCHOFIELD: You came from a musical family. Was it from the time you were a kid that you knew you wanted to pursue music as a career?
SHARKEY: That’s something I just always knew I wanted to do, you know, from the jump. My first memory was a guitar and music and so that’s all I was always interested in.
SCHOFIELD: What is the zone that you get into when you’re playing?
SHARKEY: What I try to do is capture the moment and be able to be honest and true to the moment of whatever is going on, you know? And that’s the fun part. That’s the part that is unpredictable and exciting [to] me, as well as the listeners and people that are in the room with me. So I don’t really think when I play, I just kind of go for it and feel it. Be honest and true to the energy in the room and the people.
SCHOFIELD: Did you have any musical influences, and have they shifted at all since you’ve grown as an artist?
SHARKEY: I would say that, yes, I have some of the same musical influences, and, again expanded it. It started out with my my mom and my dad and my brothers and sisters and my uncles, of course. From there, you know, at the same time, I was listening to a lot of different music. My grandfather owned a record store, and so my dad acquired all of those records after my grandfather passed on. And every day, we would listen to these different vinyls and stuff, from classical music to jazz music to pop, R&B. Some of my favorites were people like George Benson and Steely Dan and Earth, Wind & Fire, and Parliament Funkadelic and Fly, and Marvin Gaye, and all these other people, and tons of guitar players, of course. And then you can’t forget like Charlie Parker and all of the greats.
SCHOFIELD: Your first album, LOVE.LIFE.LIVE…was there any inspiration for you in your life to make an album called that?
SHARKEY: I was just inspired by some of the things that I was dealing with and experiencing in life and watching other people. I wanted to have something that kind of touched on different subjects as it pertains to those three words. Loving people. Life, you know, in general, what you deal with from day to day. And just choosing to live, and choosing to have an experience and not just exist, but live.
SCHOFIELD: Are there any artists who you found were really fun or any who were your favorite to collaborate with?
SHARKEY: It’s kind of hard to say the favorite because I’ve been fortunate and blessed enough to be able to play a lot of different genres with some incredible people, but I would say that I had a really great time working with D’Angelo. I’ve had a great time, and I still have great time, working with Raphael Saadiq. He’s very creative on the production side, very creative musically, and just a down-home type of guy. He’s really cool and very wise, and full of information.
SCHOFIELD: For the people coming to see Uncorked, especially it being the end of Black History Month, is there anything specific that you want the audience to take away, or anything that you hope to have highlighted?
SHARKEY: Well, I think my music is always going to be connected to the Black history in general. So, you know, I’m very much influenced by Black Americans, African Americans, and so being an African American, I mean, I can’t help it. I grew up in that culture. I just want people to get in a space where they can really enjoy themselves, forget about certain things that might be troublesome to them. Think about happiness, think about good times, and also hear music. Kind of a gumbo of all of the history of the Black music that has been created in this world in general, and hear all my influences, you know, from the blues to all of these different genres. They’ll hear a lot of that stuff that I grew up on and [am] still listening to, and it’s just fun.
The Krannert Center for the Performing Arts is an underwriter of Illinois Public Media.