User:Sistersunshine

A fortysomething mother to five, Lydia Glider–Shelley aka Sister Sunshine has been writing songs for over a quarter century, and has won awards for some of her other writing, starting as early as first grade. Beginning at the age of 15, she played as a street musician, and has only begun to play “plugged in” within the last couple of decades, primarily around the Hollywood, Florida area.

Affectionately renamed “Sister Sunshine” and “Led Head” by those whom she has embraced as “family” over the years, Lydia will go to great lengths to illustrate a point. “I read an interview with Bob Marley once,” she says, “in ‘Rolling Stone’ or something… He said his music was ‘something really serious. Not entertainment. You entertain people who are satisfied,’ he pointed out, ‘Hungry people can’t be entertained - - - or people who are afraid. You can’t entertain a man who has no food.’”

In keeping with this philosophy, Lydia suggests that she is not an entertainer. “Sister Sunshine,” or “Led Head” (whichever you prefer) is a minister of music. “The purpose of my material is to soothe and heal hurting souls,” she states, “to commiserate, identify. To say ‘I have walked in shoes very much like yours. I care.’”

Drawing her influences from such diverse sources as Janis Joplin, Olivia Newton–John, Bob Marley, Ernie Smith, and John Denver, as well as Neil Young, Alanis Morrisette, and local South Florida artists such as Billy White, Amy Carol Webb or a band called B.O.B. has made Lydia’s style as unique as the individual she is.