The history of POWER

Hollywood calls

In the mid-1980s the Sunset Strip was the center of the rock world. Every night, bands packed into clubs like the Whisky a Go Go, Gazzari's and the Troubadour, flyers covered every telephone pole on Sunset Boulevard, and a record deal felt one good show away.

Shaun Skillin got there in his early twenties. He'd grown up in Houston, picked up the guitar at 10 and was gigging by 13. In LA he co-formed Diamond Romeo and started playing the same stages as everyone else on the Strip. He was already writing seriously: between 1986 and 1988 he registered three volumes of his own songs with the U.S. Copyright Office, each one on cassette.

Greg Edelman, a singer from Escondido who had been singing since church choir, had fronted several bands of his own. On Long Island, a teenage bassist named Greg Bier was getting ready to head west.

POWER is born

In 1988 Shaun and Greg Edelman started writing songs together. The partnership clicked right away, with Shaun's riffs and Greg's melodies, and it became a band. Greg Bier joined on bass, drummer Tony Phillips and keyboardist Larry Town filled out the first lineup, and they called it POWER.

The sound was melodic hard rock built for big rooms: big choruses, twin-guitar muscle and keyboards, written to be played loud.

Writing it down

POWER wrote originals, not covers. The words and music Shaun and Greg Edelman wrote in 1989 were registered with the U.S. Copyright Office on February 5, 1990, as Completed Works of Power, Vol. I (registration PAu001320449), with both of them named as authors.

That registration is the earliest official record of the band's songs. Some of those early songs came back years later, reworked, on Restored.

Best band on the Strip

POWER recorded steadily and played show after show through the height of the Hollywood scene. In 1991 the band was voted best band on the Strip, which was no small thing in a town where hundreds of bands were chasing the same title every weekend.

Stepping back

By 1992 the scene was changing fast, and the guys had families to raise. POWER went on hiatus.

Nobody stopped playing. Greg Edelman sang in a rock opera and with The Cauze. Greg Bier played with Passion, taking over lead vocals, and later Justice Parker. Shaun played with Gasoline Alley, then moved to Colorado, where he became a producer and recording engineer and built his own studio. He later formed the blues-rock trio Hard Blue.

Back in a room

Twenty years after the hiatus started, Shaun, Greg Edelman and Greg Bier got back together and started writing again. The old songs still held up, and new ones came quickly.

The band needed a second guitar and a drummer. In 2014 Greg Edelman called Joel Ellis, his old bandmate from The Cauze, a Hollywood club veteran who had opened for Warrant, Winger, Y&T and George Lynch. In 2015 Michael Svoboda, who had drummed with Greg Bier in Justice Parker and recorded at Sound City, took over the kit.

Restored, and back on stage

In the summer of 2016 POWER released Restored, a comeback album that mixes new songs with reworked material from the band's Hollywood years. Shaun produced the recordings from his studio in Colorado.

The band went back to playing live around Los Angeles and Southern California. On Friday, March 4, 2016, POWER headlined at 10 p.m. at Universal. On Saturday, May 7, 2016, it played a four-band bill with Skating Away (a Jethro Tull tribute), Insane Train (an Ozzy tribute) and X Nation. Other stops in this era included Bar 10 at Corbin Bowl, the Foundation Room at House of Blues Anaheim, Theory, and Arcana Brewing in Carlsbad with Witner.

"America"

On July 4, 2017, POWER premiered its first music video, "America." It's a fist-in-the-air anthem, and the band plans to include it on its next album.

Losing Shaun

On January 14, 2024, Shaun Skillin died suddenly at his home in Sedalia, Colorado. He was 59. His family remembered him as an accomplished guitarist and musician who played in many bands, most notably POWER and Hard Blue.

He wrote many of the songs this band is known for. Read the band's tribute to Shaun.

Restored again

In 2026 POWER is bringing everything back online for Shaun and for the fans who never stopped asking. Restored is being remixed and remastered for a re-release that fixes the issues the band never got to solve the first time. The next album, Shocker, is about 90% finished, and a new video is in the works.

On October 16, 2026, Shaun's birthday, the band shared "Any World" in his memory. Thirty-eight years in, POWER is still writing, still recording and still loud.