Shaunna Hall

Shaunna Elizabeth Hall (born July 28, 1963) is an American composer and musician from the San Francisco Bay Area.

As guitarist, she was a founding member of the band 4 Non Blondes and is currently a member of George Clinton's Parliament-Funkadelic.

Hall played trumpet in school, studying under Jon Simms, the founder of the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Marching Band and Twirling Corps, at Benjamin Franklin Intermediate School in Daly City, California.

She started taking the guitar seriously as a teenager at Serramonte High School, and studied songwriting at the Blue Bear School of Music in San Francisco with Bonnie Hayes.

Hall joined her first band, The Crash Puppies, in the early 1980s.

In the late 1980s, she and bassist Christa Hillhouse formed Cool and Unusual Punishment, a new wave duo.

Later, they joined, along with drummer Wanda Day, The Lesbian Snake Charmers, led by singer Jai Jai Noire.

Hall met vocalist Linda Perry, and when The Lesbian Snake Charmers broke up, they co-founded the alternative rock group 4 Non Blondes with Perry, Hillhouse, and Day in 1989.

In 1990, 4 Non Blondes won the SF Weekly Award (Wammies) for Best Rock Band.

Throughout the 1990s, Hall played with the theatrical six-piece group The Eric McFadden Experience.

Bigger, Better, Faster, More! by Interscope Records was released in 1992 and was the only studio album released by the band.

It includes performances and five compositions by Hall ("Morphine & Chocolate", "Spaceman", and others).

The album peaked at number 11 on the Billboard Top 200.

Hall left the band in 1992 during the recording of "Bigger, Better, Faster, More!"

over musical differences with the band as well as with the producer.

The album was completed with session guitarist Louis Metoyer.

Hall and Pat Wilder subsequently founded Bad Dog Play Dead in 1992.

The all-female ensemble played funk, rock, country and pop songs written largely by Hall and Wilder, and the group reunited Hall and 4 Non Blondes drummer Wanda Day.

They recorded a demo, engineered and mixed by Garry Crieman at Hyde Street Studios, San Francisco.

Janis Tanaka played bass on the demo but did not join the group.

The band played live in San Francisco for several months until the permanent disability of Day in December 1992.

"Spaceman" was released as a single in 1993 and peaked at number 39 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart.

Hall played as a part of the agro-core hard rock band The Alcohol of Fame (named by studio engineer Garry Crieman) from 1993-95.

The group began as an ensemble Hall put together to perform a benefit for Day at the I-Beam in San Francisco in early 1993.

The band changed line-ups, with the core trio of Hall, Crash and Spingola finally teaming with drummer Becky Wreck from the Lunachicks later that year.

Their first official performance was at Female Trouble's "The Dykemare Before Christmas" in December 1993.

With the addition of bassist Erica Liss of MDC in early 1994, the lineup made a six-song demo, Mendocino Demo 1994, and played the New Music Seminar in New York, NY followed by an east coast summer tour in 1994.

Though Wreck remained on the east Coast, the core trio of Crash, Hall and Spingola returned to San Francisco.

Drummer Peter French and a series of bass players including Dennis Dismore and the late Warner Harrison joined The Alcohol of Fame in 1995.

The group recorded a second demo in the spring of 1995 at Gush Studios in Oakland, California.

Warner announced his departure from the band only weeks after finishing the demo, and the group disbanded.

In 1996, Hall and Tribe 8, Bay Area queercore pioneers, joined Nirvana, Soundgarden, Joan Jett, The Gits, and others on the ''Home Alive!

Compilation''.

The project raised funds and awareness for self-defense education for women in honor of Mia Zapata, the singer of The Gits who was beaten and murdered while walking home.

Hall appears on Frat Pig and another song from the Tribe 8 CD Fist City on Alternative Tentacles Records.

She co-produced Tribe 8's Role Models for America released in 1998 on Alternative Tentacles.

In 1998, the group received the SF Weekly Award (Wammies) for Best Americana Band and released Our Revels Now are Ended.

The CD includes one Hall composition, "Macaroon", which also appeared on an early 4 Non Blondes demo.

Alien Lovestock's 2000 CD Planet of Fish includes the composition "Alien Love" co-written by Hall, Eric McFadden and George Clinton.

Hall composed eight tracks with Storm, Inc. for the independent release The Calm Years in April 2001.