42-year-old Country music singer Shane Yellowbird passes away

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) -Award-winning country music singer and songwriter Shane Yellowbird passed away at the age of 42-year-old Tuesday.

Yellowbird was a two-time Native American music award winner for Best Country Recording, which he won for his 2011 debut album “Life Is Calling My Name” and his 2012 follow-up project “It’s About Time.”

In addition to those two awards, Yellowbird was nominated for Best Music Video in 2009. He was born on July 7, 1979, in Alberta Canada, and overcame his challenge with stuttering by singing sentences.

Yellowbird’s talent as a singer would soon surface, as he was signed to the label O’Reilly International in 2003.

“He had a tremendous voice and a tremendous charisma, and kind of a shyness and an ‘aww shucks’ bashfulness that people saw in him and gravitated to him for that reason,” Louis O’Reilly, Yellowbird’s manager from the label said.

O’Reilly knew his former artist had epilepsy and sometimes suffered seizures, but he did not know how Yellowbird died Tuesday. Tributes have been posted on social media since the news of Yellowbird’s passing.

Yellowbird performed live at the 11th Annual Native American Music Awards hosted by actor Gil Birmingham. He won the Canadian Country Music Association (CCMA) Rising Star Award in 2007. That same year he was nominated for a total of five awards at the Native American Music Awards.

The official cause of his death has not been released.