Live Music Entertainment
With Top-quality live performances in Trop Rock, Blues, Country, Classic Rock, Reggae, R&B
Bringing the Gulf Coast Sound to Every Performance
Live Music that Keeps the Party Going
From the music of Jimmy Buffett and other well-known Trop Rock favorites to Classic Rock, Country, Blues, Reggae and R&B, Sharky Finley delivers a fun, high-energy performance perfect for restaurants, resorts, waterfront venues, beach bars, private parties and festivals.
About Sharky Finley
Sharky Finley — Music History & Bio
Music has been a pretty constant part of my life, and now, I have gone full circle once again returning to playing, singing and writing… After a long winding road of searching, I finally found my “Peformance With A Purpose”…
I was born in Warner Robins, Georgia, just outside Macon which is my mom, Carolyn Wiley Finley’s hometown. My dad who was from Silsbee, Texas was stationed at Waner Robbins Air Force Base, and met my mom inn the local church there. My dad was a career Air Force flight engineer, so I grew up in some pretty great places. We spent about 7½ years in Hawaii, then lived in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, San Antonio, Texas, Charleston, South Carolina, and then back to dad’s home state of Texas once he retired from the Air Force.
I furthered my education at Charleston Southern University as a music major, specializing in vocal performance. By that time I was already playing music in local bars and clubs, and I started questioning the value of spending five years getting a bachelor's degree in music when I was already out there doing it.
So I changed majors. My choices for getting through school as quickly as possible had narrowed down to History, English, or Psychology.
Psychology won.
I continued studying music while I was in college, and after graduating I spent the next decade and a half or so playing music full-time. I performed in hotel lounges, resorts, clubs, bars, and pretty much anywhere else that promoted live music throughout South Carolina, Georgia, northern Florida, Louisiana, and Texas.
Along the way, I had several longer-running house musician gigs. I was the house musician at Chaps Lounge at the Hilton Intercontinental Airport Houston for nine months, the house musician at Del Lago Resort & Conference Center for eleven months—which is now Margaritaville Lake Conroe—and then spent my longest stretch at the Prickly Pear/Brewski's at the Holiday Inn NASA, where I was the house musician for two years.
It was during those two years at Holiday Inn NASA that something changed.
I began to lose the joy I had once felt in performing. Burnout set in, along with a growing feeling of, "I've got to do something else."
There's a story there too... but I'll save that one for another time.
So, I went back to school.
While continuing to perform, I earned a degree in nursing and eventually moved into healthcare. Once I entered the healthcare field, I backed way off on performing gigs and mostly kept playing enough to maintain my chops—and, more importantly, because I still loved music.
Eventually, I went back to school again and earned my MBA.
One of the positions I held for six years was Director of Outpatient Services at Shriners Hospital for Children in the Houston Medical Center. Even though music was no longer my profession, it never completely left me. I performed quite a bit for patients, families, and colleagues while I was there.
And somewhere along the way...
I got my mojo back.
The desire to perform came roaring back, and I realized just how much I had missed it. I didn't want to simply play music again—I wanted to have fun with it.
That's where the next chapter of the Sharky Finley story begins.
I've been working again with percussionist Jeremy Rehbein, an extremely talented musician who is also a high school music and band director in the Lake Conroe area. Jeremy was the drummer in a four-piece band I played with back in the early 1990s, so getting back together and making music again has been a pretty cool full-circle experience.
We've been working together again since the beginning of this year.
Jeremy's school schedule means he's not always available, especially once the fall semester gets rolling. I, on the other hand, am now retired and have the freedom to perform as a solo artist.
And I'm having a blast.
Keeping the Party Going
Jimmy Buffett's music has been part of my musical life since I was a teenager. I've been playing some of the classics for decades—Margaritaville, A Pirate Looks at Forty, Son of a Son of a Sailor, and, for the appropriate audience, Why Don't We Get Drunk... LOL..
But something changed for me after Jimmy passed away.
I felt called to Keep the Party Going.
That's when I began planning my exit from healthcare, and putting my all into music again. I started collecting the Jimmy Buffett albums, that I didn't already have, and began digging much deeper into Trop Rock, and beach music in general.
And I discovered just how much I love performing this music.
Not just the hits.
The songs. The stories. The feel. The attitude.
I love the music, I understand the culture, and most of all, I understand the idea behind it:
Don't stop having fun.
So these days, I'm back where I belong—on stage, singing, playing guitar, and harmonica, singing the songs I love, and hopefully making people smile, sing along, dance, and forget about everything else for at least a few hours.
After all...
The party isn't over.
We're just getting started.