Bio
About The Artist
Residing in NW Arkansas with his wife, Sharon, Cliff Shelder is an award winning songwriter, as well as a performer, music publisher and record producer. As a teenager growing up in Michigan in the 1960's, Cliff spent his spare time upstairs in his room learning the guitar chords to the latest rock songs of the day. After joining the Air Force in 1970, a friend named Roy Glaze introduced him to country and bluegrass music. With Roy on the banjo and Cliff on rhythm guitar, they won the Bitburg Air Base talent competition that year with their rendition of Foggy Mountain Breakdown.
After completing four years in the Air Force, Cliff became a Christian, met Sharon and the two of them married in December of 1974. Cliff spent 29 years as an air traffic controller with the FAA at various locations in Arkansas, Michigan, Louisiana and Oklahoma. After graduating from Texarkana College in 1986 with a major in vocal music, he served as a bi-vocational minister of music for several years. He and Sharon now travel the mid-west where Cliff performs Country, Pop, and Gospel music at various venues.
Cliff has won several national songwriting competitions in past years. In the mid 1990's two of his compositions, Granny and Out of The Darkness, recorded by Rebecca Yerg, were playing on Contemporary Christian radio stations.
In June of 2016, Cliff's recording of What Kinda Car reached number 3 on the Radio FM Christian music chart. It remains one of his most requested songs.