Sonia Shell_bluegrass banjo and vocals_interviewed 2026-02-06 on KZSC Santa Cruz's 'Bushwhacker's Breakfast Club' by "Dangerous Dan" Orange & "DJ Spark Plug" (Dylan Estevez)

Sonia didn't decide to play banjo originally...she was a cello player, but one of her oldest friends played the banjo, and Sonia wanted to find out if she could play as well (or better); was accepted to grad school when she decided to join a band instead - Sidesaddle (which had formed in 1979, but Sonia was asked to join in 1984)...Sonia played & toured with Sidesaddle for 9 years, until she quit to have kids, but later returned to the band; 90% of bluegrass is written from a man's point of view, and Sonia enjoys modifying the pronouns so that a song would be from a woman's point of view - the problem is, if the song is under copyright, she could get sued...but songs in the public domain are far game!!! (such as "I'm My Own Grandpa", which Sonia changed to be "I'm My Own Grandma") - 40 years ago she just sang it, but this last week, revisiting the lyrics (because Dangerous Dan requested it), she sees how the family structure evolves (Dan would like to diagram it sometime! :) // Sonia writes, but all of her songs are still in notebooks - but she has a plan to bring them out to work on a project with them; the bluegrass tradition has a large canon to draw from; Sonia was in The Goat Hill Girls, and later, Harmony Grits, who would play weekend afternoons at the San Gregorio Store, which was perfect for bringing her kids because she could park them on the lawn with coloring books while she played bluegrass banjo; The Money Question? A: You can make a living as a musician, but for Sonia, that involved part time "day jobs", such as music therapy for seniors, or teaching music lessons; Sonia wrote an instrumental inspired by My Fair Lady's 'I Could've Danced All Night"; Sonia still plays, & teaches, cello. An interview on "The Bushwhacker's Breakfast Club" with "Dangerous Dan" & "DJ Spark Plug", airing Friday mornings on KZSC Santa Cruz, California.