Although his life started as a screaming mess, once Shaun was taken to the small Walch household in Skerries, he was a fairly even-tempered baby. He rarely woke up his mother - or anyone else, for that matter - at odd hours of the night and was not much for fussing, a mother's fantasy after raising three other noisy, stubborn children. As he got older, Shaun grew to be a little more rambunctious as he spent his bursts of energy running around with other kids his age and testing out his climbing abilities. Eventually, he got into some of the traditional sports and played both football and rugby at different points, but sports were more about having a physical outlet than building up dreams of playing professionally. From the moment Shaun began mimicking musicians and singing along with radio or his mother's blues and rock records, everyone in the family knew that he had found his first love in music.
His family may not have been rich, and really, they waffled between the working class and lower end of the middle class line half the time, but they were supportive regardless. His parents did their best to feed the interests of their children, so when it came to Shaun, that mostly meant scraping together money for music lessons and his own instruments. They were lucky when it was the piano, since his parents owned a piano his mother already knew how to play. However, as Shaun's curiosity brought him to the guitar, bass, and drums, that was trickier with each turn. New equipment was out of the question, but a couple of second-hand guitars, a bass bought off of a neighbor's co-worker, and a drum set gifted to him by his oldest sister each slowly but surely made their way into his life. Shaun leaned on acquaintances and friends to get him started on learning how to play, while he mostly advanced on his own. With a better handle on music by the time he hit his late teens, he was picking up on techniques from the musicians he admired and experimenting with writing his own music.
During his school days, he was a decent student, mostly because he had his parents, siblings, and teachers guiding his focus back to school work whenever he wanted to get distracted by music. Studying literature and dabbling in performance arts were the easiest for him, but if one thing ever consistently tripped him up by the time he hit his teens, it was mathematics. The best a math wizard from class could do was give him a false sense of security until he let himself get overwhelmed during exams. Finishing his sixth year came as a relief, because despite the small hopes that his parents held onto that it would motivate him to continue his education by attending university, Shaun wanted to leave Skerries and start a band.
After what felt like a decade-long transition period to his parents as each kid left the house to attend university or settle into steady work, Shaun was the last one to flock the nest in 2006. After moving into an apartment in the city of Dublin with a couple of mutual acquaintances, he quickly found out that one of them needed a new guitarist for their band. After a couple of rounds playing for the band, he officially joined and began writing with the band and playing gigs. The band did well for a few years, but just as the band seemed to be on the cusp on signing with an independent label, a fall-out within the band left Shaun starting from square one. He tried his luck in a string of other unsuccessful bands until his frustrations finally made him strike out on his own, playing solo gigs.
As soon as he shed the dead weight, independent and major labels alike came around again to show interest. After recording a few demos with an independent label in Dublin, Shaun was picked up by Island, and in 2013 he released his first EP. As his efforts built steam locally, it became the next logical step to get their music online through social media and youtube, and while he noticed the difference immediately, it didn't hit Shaun that a roller coaster ride had been set off until he started hearing "Take Me to Church" everywhere.
Since the rocket into fame, something he was told had been certified when he did his first Saturday Night Live performance, Shaun hasn't given much thought to the idea of being remotely "famous." Not that he hasn't noticed that his twitter and instagram pages receives much more attention now, or how his family has taken to teasing him for being the "celebrity" of the family, but he has tried to keep himself busy so that he's too tired at the end of the day to let that aspect of his career sink too far into his brain. Still, Shaun has made it further by the age of 27 than he ever expected to be by 30. He's grateful for his luck; whatever keeps him playing music keeps him happy.
