You Me Future Now

Overview

Los Angeles native Brian Shapiro is a musician, performer, and educator. Shapiro’s work is about transformation and the will to create a more grounded and meaningful life. Through multiple genres, he explores the struggle to hold on to one’s convictions in the face of growing up in a world filled with smoke and no mirrors. Shapiro dismantles anger and disappointment piece by piece, rearranging it into something far more constructive.

Shapiro tackles the very human desire to transcend our beginnings and become more than what we were, as he builds new narratives designed to heal and inspire. Shapiro is one of five children from a messy family where infidelity, abuse, and divorce were regular visitors. He experienced how myth was employed to obscure truth and the confusion, loneliness, and self-doubt that generated. With a powerful, yet intimate voice, Shapiro speaks to the hyperbolic times we live in.

Shapiro’s storytelling focuses on themes of distorted thinking, the idea of what it means “to be normal,” and the question of how to accept hard truths we may not be ready to accept. Shapiro has been called a “keen observer in his songwriting capacity” with a “freewheeling creativity” that “sparkles with skewed humor.” His songs are said to be “percolating with idiosyncratic intelligence,” possessing “a tone and phrasing reminiscent of Nick Cave.” Shapiro’s singular narrative style is quirky, thought-provoking, and whimsical.

About the Artist

Art-rock sensitivity. Post-punk edge. Folksy yet experimental. Brian Shapiro's songs shine a light on our world's celebrated dreamers, scheamers, users and abusers. Make no mistake about it, this music comes directly from the heart of someone whose world-class dysfunctional background allows him to share an unexpectedly candid and compassionate perspective on the self-serving undercurrents guiding modern life.