His dad trains cage fighters, and his mom is a painter.
So it makes sense that Sean Eamon’s songs are as fierce as they are sensitive and artful.
Take, for example, the lyrics from his song “Blood on the Road” from his new album “Losing So Long”: “There’s blood on the road / and there’s tears in her eyes / Ice on the window / as fog hits the blinds.”
Talking in the basement of Len Waters’ Music Center, where he recorded the album in a studio built by former Butte musician Dave Heidt and run by KBMF General Manager Clark Grant, Eamon says the music he writes and performs comes from an array of sources, some biographical, others geographical and others musical.
Born in Butte, raised in Anaconda and a graduate of Montana Tech, Eamon first picked up a guitar when he was 15 and became heavily involved in the local music scene in 2006, when he began a six-year stint hosting the Silver Dollar Saloon’s open-mic night.
But Eamon says the turning point that led him to write and record his country-tinged, art-rock-influenced songs came in 2014, when Frank Ruffolo invited him to guest with his Butte-based group El Dealbreakers at the Montana Folk Festival and perform one of his songs.
After that, Eamon says, “They wanted to see what I had, and I had more than an album.”
So that fall, Ruffolo, local multi-instrumentalist Justin Ringsak and a host of other musicians from around the state — and beyond — joined Eamon in the studio to record demos that became his debut, self-titled album.
Eamon describes that album as being like the soundtrack to “a wild night” in the Mining City.
Since its release in 2015, Eamon has worked his day job as a recreational therapist aid at the Montana State Hospital in Warm Springs while also writing a large number of songs — perhaps as many as 30 or 40, he says — that he eventually whittled down to the more “personal and introspective” batch of 10 that comprise “Losing So Long.”
After months of rehearsal with Mike Babineaux on drums and Ringsak on bass and trumpet, Eamon entered Grant’s subterranean studio and knocked out about 80 percent of the album in just two days. They were joined on the album by a clutch of highly regarded Montana musicians, including Helena’s Aaron Parrett, who contributed mandolin and fiddle; Dillon’s Bill Dwyer, who contributed guitar and organ; and Helena’s Garrett Smith, who plays trombone.
According to Grant, who says he records about four albums a year in the studio, Eamon’s band was “very well-prepared and well-rehearsed, and Sean had a very particular vision for what he wanted for the songs from the very beginning, which really guided the mixing process and made things pretty easy.”
Despite that relative ease, it took months of work after the two-day recording session for the album to be complete.
Now that “Losing So Long” is out, Eamon has lined up a slate of shows this summer, including an album release party at the Silver Dollar on Saturday, June 23, with the full line-up that contributed to the album backing him and with Christy Hays, who splits her time between Butte and Austin, Texas, sharing the bill.
As for what listeners can expect, Eamon says he aims to bring to his live show the same thing hypnotic effect that consumes him when he’s writing.
“What songwriting really is, is it’s spell casting. You’re like a wizard or a witch. You’re trying to make people feel a certain way and relate to you,” Eamon says. “I feel like I hypnotize myself sometimes when I write. I think when you’re in front of people, and they’re listening close, you try to do it to them. I like to think it’s not in a manipulative way, but a little bit it is. It’s a dark art.”
But as much as there’s an element of spellcasting, Eamon says his songs come, too, from his roots in a “blue-collar family” in Anaconda’s Goosetown neighborhood.
“It doesn’t just happen like magic,” Eamon says. “A lot of it’s hard work.”