[1] Born in Okinawa, Shepherd grew up in Washington and developed an interest in music after watching Johnny Cash on TV.

[2] Shepherd played in numerous punk-rock bands with friends as a teenager like March of Crimes, Mind Circus and 600 School, meeting future musicians such as Stone Gossard, Krist Novoselic and Matt Cameron.

[4] His introduction was deemed by Soundgarden as helpful towards their musical evolution, bringing his own compositions that showed a new style, and guitarist Kim Thayil adding that Shepherd gave "a creative and emotional punch".

Shepherd also introduced some of the now signature alternate tunings to the band, such as in the singles "The Day I Tried To Live", "My Wave", "Pretty Noose", and "Burden in My Hand".

In 1993, Shepherd and Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron formed a side-project band called Hater with John McBain of Monster Magnet.

Shepherd sang vocals and played guitar in Hater, in addition to writing several songs on the band's first release, a self-titled album.

The latter of which was heavily influenced by The Beatles and was written after experimenting with mic placement on his Gibson L-50, picking up the guitar and strumming it to find he liked the wildly out of tune sound, making up the song's composition on the spot.

With the band in a bad mood and facing technical problems in their performance, Shepherd eventually got so frustrated he smashed his bass during "Blow Up the Outside World", gave the audience the finger and left the stage.

He then started a heated argument with Thayil backstage that nearly escalated into a fistfight, leading to only Cornell and Cameron returning for the encore.

Following the incident, a downtrodden Shepherd decided to quit music altogether and became a carpenter's assistant until he was eventually coerced into making his solo record In Deep Owl and reuniting with Soundgarden shortly thereafter.

[14] In an August 2010 feature about the Soundgarden reunion with Spin, Shepherd stated that before reuniting he was "totally broke" and was sleeping on friends' couches.

[11] Shepherd has since downplayed the statement, stating that he was only "sleeping on couches in studios when I was recording my solo album", preferring to stay in Seattle rather than go back home to Bainbridge Island.

Shepherd's contributions included two songs which he had written years before and recorded in the eventually stolen demos, "Taree" and "Attrition",[15] and two collaborations with Cornell, "Been Away Too Long" and "Rowing".

In 2014, the band released a reissue of their 1994 album Superunknown as part of its twentieth anniversary and has toured with drummer Matt Chamberlain filling in for Cameron.

He considers his predecessor a major influence, particularly as Yamamoto differed from bassists "relegated to a role of following along", even if his bass "was mixed so damn quietly on the recordings that I could never hear him well enough to develop a deep understanding of his fluidity or his textures."

[citation needed] Shepherd followed a fingerstyle playing based on Yamamoto, punk rock musicians Chuck Dukowski from Black Flag, and Mike Watt.

Bass-minded tracks such as "Switch Opens" are rare because, as he explained "you don't want to write a whole wandering bass line wondering what the drum beat and the guitar chords are going to be.

Shepherd uses GHS Bass Boomers Heavy gauge (50-115), and likes them to be as worn as possible, oftentimes leaving them on for years until they eventually break.