Music
Press
Vance Stephens' album "S/t" was released this year.
Somber tones and Eliott Smith-esque melodies permeate Stephens' songs. His tunes are reflective and melancholy and embody a loneliness most of us can relate to. Self recorded, Stephens enters Chicago with an album that best soundtracks cold and wintry city nights, or dusk on warm and rainy summer days. The album is relaxing and tranquil. You can purchase Vance Stephens' album at cdbaby or itunes. - The Examiner Chicago
Discography
Vance Stephens-(self-titled)-Self released 2009
Vance Stephens-"a stranger in a van"-To be released November 2010
Radio/Podcasts:
Chicago Acoustic Underground-
Podcast interview and Live performance-Oct. 2009
WCRX, Chicago-Sounds From the Underground-
Air Date: April 2nd, 2010
WLUW, Chicago-Razor and Die Show,
Air Date: March 26th 2010
Photos
Bio
In May of 2004, Vance Stephens found himself displaced and wandering the desolate baron wasteland of West Texas, after dropping out of college. Locutions and idioms of shattered Captain Beefheart lyrics secretly guided Vance to then whimsically drive to Austin, TX where his uncle owned a few acres of land in Spicewood, near the infamous Luck Texas and Lake Travis. It was then and there that it all began.
Since the age of twelve, Vance has been an ambitious and almost emulous musician, starting with playing the trumpet as inspired by his grandfather, an accomplished west coast jazz musician. Since then he has picked up a guitar, bass guitar, piano, harmonica, glockenspiel, drums, as well as other instruments, teaching himself every one.
By age 16, Vance was a proficient multi-instrumentalist, and began writing songs of his own. He had been in a punk rock band, as well as a post-punk grunge-esque band in high school, but his calling to writing songs and performing them on his own quickly took hold.
Since the first scribblings of desultory high school poems, Vance has written over 40 songs, and recorded many of them on his own.
He is also an audio engineer, (and firm believer in analogue and lo-fi recordings), who has worked with many Austin area punk bands in the studio as well as recorded and produced his own self-released debut album in late 2008. Much of Vance's engineering endeavors, however, are on account of his uncle, Sid Stephens, who taught him most everything he knows about the world of recording.
Vance also has been a regular in several locally notable coffee bars around Austin, such as Flipnotics, Clementine, and Thunderbird. He has also played the entire Red River circuit as well as other venues around Austin.
These days, Vance resides in Chicago, migrating to the frosty northern mid-west after filmmaker, Jay Beck, took great interest in his music. To date, Jay Beck has used several of Vance's songs, as well as commissioned scores in his films. Three of the films being Mellitus, The Day Job, and most recently Pretty Country. The Day Job has so far been accepted into the L.A. International film festival, Cleveland Film Fest., as well as the Rhode Island Film Festival. Ranking is still pending, however.
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