Hush! Hush!

Happy November!

Your free demo this month is...

“Varied Thrush”
Sign up to receive the song!
(Each month I send a free secret demo like this to my subscribers — you also get access to all the past songs I’ve sent out!)
(keep reading for more info on the song)

According to my notes, I started writing “Varied Thrush” on January 2, 2017, the day before I had surgery to remove the plate from my collarbone. (I broke it in 2015 in a bike crash.) I hoped going into the surgery and recovery period with a work in progress would keep me from losing my songwriting momentum.

Apparently it worked, because I finished the song on January 10th, 2017. But some of the lyrics were actually written sometime around 2010:

Are we a "we are" today?
Will we be a "we will be" tomorrow?
Were we a "we were" already long ago?

I had thought up those lines and kept them in my back pocket for a good six or seven years, waiting for the right song to come along so I could finally use them. I’d sing them from time to time, and mumble all the words I didn’t know yet: “We don’t know hmm-ba-dum-dum price to pay, brop-a-dum-bum-bum-bum-something sorrow, bop-a-lop-bop-boop-bop-something-ohhh…”

As far as I can recall, the inspiration for “Varied Thrush” came from just looking out at our frozen backyard, watching the birds and daydreaming. I had fallen in love with the Varied Thrush — their haunting metallic song, their burnt-orange and black and blue-gray plumage — several years earlier, and wanted to include them in a song. Even still, whenever I’m lucky enough to hear them, there’s a sharp intake of breath, followed by open-mouthed listening and probably a starry-eyed look on my face. Was that…? Could it be…?

Joni Mitchell, in “Urge for Going,” sings, “I get the urge for going but I never seem to go.” I wanted to write about that, the difficulty of leaving the cage even when the door is wide open. Why do we stay in conditions that threaten our survival? I mentioned this, how we stay too long, at my show in New York last month and everyone nodded knowingly.

In the same song, Joni Mitchell also sings about geese:

See the geese in chevron flight
Flapping and racing on before the snow
They got the urge for going
And they got the wings so they can go

But even birds don’t always GTFO. In February 2014 I found a MacGillivray’s Warbler in a blackberry bramble by the mall in Eugene, Oregon. That bird had no business being in Oregon in winter. He should have been mingling with other warblers in a shade coffee plantation in Central America.

I didn’t ask him what his deal was, but I’m sure the situation was more complicated than I could imagine. Finances, family drama…

Another time I was birding in the Wallowas — some mountains in Northeastern Oregon — and some other members of my party found a Cape May Warbler in someone’s yard. (This discovery made the paper. I’m in the second picture!) That warbler should have been in the Caribbean for the winter — and never in Oregon, not even in spring or summer.

Anyway, if it can be hard for birds to leave, or correct course, no wonder it’s hard for humans, with all the baggage of our competing needs and wants and societal expectations and on and on and on.

That being said, an Osprey who puts off migration till the ponds freeze over is either going to starve or die trying to dive through the ice. We have to look out for ourselves and leave when we need to leave, if at all possible. Hush, hush, listen to the Varied Thrush. In a quiet moment, you just might have a revelation.

This demo is a work in progress, but I’m really excited about it the way it sounds so far! It has a bunch of vocals, piano, bass, strings, marimba, and percussion. I’ve also incorporated a recording of a Varied Thrush from the Macaulay Library, taken in 1995 by Geoffrey A. Keller.

Thank you as always for letting me bring a new song to your inbox each month. And remember, I always like hearing from you! You can email me, or reach out on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

Take care,
Stephan
www.stephannance.com

Shows

Nov 8 - Sofar Sounds, Boise, ID
Nov 25 - Yotsuya Tenmado Comfort, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan
Nov 26 - K.D. Hapon, Nagoya, Japan
Nov 28 - PEPPERLAND, Okayama, Japan
Nov 29 - LIVE rise SHUNAN, Shunan, Japan
Dec 1 - LAGBAG MUSIC, Kagoshima, Japan
Dec 2 - Graf, Fukuoka, Japan
Dec 4 - Risin’, Saga, Japan
Dec 9 - HOME, Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan
Jan 17 - Sofar Sounds, New York City, NY
Jan 18 - Sofar Sounds, Boston, MA

PS Do you want me to come to your city? Tell me and I’ll try to make it happen! (I don’t always know where people want me to go…) Also, if you’re curious about hosting a concert, it’s easier than you might think! Especially if you're in the US or Canada. Piece of cake.

Happy October!

Your free demo this month is...

“Envelope”
Sign up to receive the song!
(Each month I send a free secret demo like this to my subscribers — you also get access to all the past songs I’ve sent out!)
(keep reading for more info on the song)

How can I explain this song? Whereas many of my songs are confessional, this one leans more toward speculative fiction — a fitting choice for this spoooooooky month. I’ll leave some of the lyrics for you to interpret for yourself, but I’ll give you the gist of the story (from my perspective, anyway).

I structured this song around ideas and imaginings from Delta Ponds, the wetlands I used to ride my bike to every day. I remember propping my notebook on the railing overlooking one pond, and thinking about what would happen if the notebook fell down into the lupine below. The notebook claimed to consist of 100% post-consumer waste — a phrase which set dystopian visions dancing in my head.

The protagonist, if you will, is some sort of paper product. In the song, the paper — perhaps a message in an envelope? — falls into the lupine.

The lupine — perhaps to help the paper get retrieved — uses its seeds to attract an Oregon Junco. The Junco can thus catch the eye of a birder who can recycle the paper. But the paper questions whether being recycled is a noble way to go.

This demo has piano, a synth bell voice called Splatter Tables, a crunchy synth bass, a piccolo, and multiple vocal tracks. Mostly there are three layers of vocals, but if you listen closely towards the end you can hear some vocal ahs in the background. I tried adding synth percussion and the whole thing got way out of hand, so I dialed it back (for now).

There are actually a couple of VINYL RECORDS of me playing this song, recorded in Brooklyn at Leesta Vall Studios in July 2018. Each record captures a unique performance, lathe-cut directly to vinyl as I played it. The song was very new then — I don’t have a record player, so I don’t know what they sound like, but it could be interesting to hear whether the song has changed any.

Thank you as always for letting me bring a new song to your inbox each month. And remember, I always like hearing from you! You can email me, or reach out on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

Take care,
Stephan

Shows

October 23 - McMenamins White Eagle Saloon, Portland, OR
November 8 - Sofar Sounds, Boise, ID
November 25 - Yotsuya Tenmado Comfort, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan
November 26 - K.D. Hapon, Nagoya, Japan
November 28 - PEPPERLAND, Okayama, Japan
November 29 - LIVE rise SHUNAN, Shunan, Japan
December 2 - Graf, Fukuoka, Japan
December 4 - Risin’, Saga, Japan
December 5 or 6 - TBA, Ibusuki, Japan
December 9 - HOME, Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan

PS Do you want me to come to your city? Tell me and I’ll try to make it happen! (I don’t always know where people want me to go…) Also, if you’re curious about hosting a concert, it’s easier than you might think! Especially if you're in the US or Canada. Piece of cake.

Happy September!

Your free demo this month is...

“What a Lark!”
Sign up to receive the song!
(Each month I send a free secret demo like this to my subscribers — you also get access to all the past songs I’ve sent out!)
(keep reading for more info on the song)

In August, I decided to take a little more time to breathe. I dug into some good books, played a couple shows at Hotel RL in Olympia, Washington, worked on recording demos, and wrote a huge blog post about my time in Kaliningrad on my tour back in June.

The song I’m sharing this month — “What a Lark!” — was inspired by my morning at the Baltic Sea on June 15th, which you can read about in the aforementioned blog post. I started writing it in London on my friend Jack’s piano, spent some time pondering over my audio notes in New York, then finished it up in Portland.

I was camping on the beach at the Baltic Sea with my Kaliningrad friends, absolutely all of whom are night owls. I, on the contrary, am a total lark. I managed to stay up until midnight the night before, and when I woke at dawn, everyone seemed to be just getting to bed. Unable to sleep in daylight even with an eye mask, I crawled out of the tent and greeted the morning.

I found myself in a small city of tents.

Everyone’s in Tent City
Sound asleep

The fire from the previous night was still burning, and my friend Seryozha sat next to it, staring into the middle distance. He’d arrived after I went to bed, and at some point burnt his hand in the fire. Now he couldn’t sleep because of the pain. He didn’t have painkillers, so he was soothing the injury by keeping his hand buried in the sand.

I gave him some Ibuprofen, and eventually he tried to get some more sleep. He retreated into his tent but left his arm hanging out and his hand buried.

In his absence, I watched a White Wagtail pecking through the sand, flinging it back and forth.

White Wagtail on the shores of
The Baltic Sea
Sifting through the sand
Wagtail, are you wagging at me?

I mused on my lark-ness, busily writing postcards as everyone slept. I thought about my constant need for clarity — “beautiful clarity,” to borrow a phrase from Russian poet Mikhail Kuzmin. What was the plan for the day? When would I find out the plan? What time would everyone wake up? What all did I need to be ready for?

I thought a lot about my Kaliningrad friends. It’s strange to become so immersed in a community (not to mention a language and a culture) for a week, then to leave it all behind. Sitting alone on the beach, I marveled at the depth of my emotional connection to these people whose lives are so different from mine. I knew that there was nothing remotely similar waiting for me at home in Portland.

Most of the people in this tight-knit group met one another through theater. As morning progressed, individuals made entrances and exits: emerging from a tent, saying good morning, going for a quick swim, finding a place to pee, going back in the tent to continue sleeping. The action passed by like a dream, or an absurdist play about time. I couldn’t figure out what it all meant, but I knew that it was somehow beautiful, and that I would sorely miss being a part of it.

Actors in a play

Besides vocals, this recording includes piano, an additional keyboard voice, an ambient synth pad, and cello. As always, remember — this is a work in progress!

Thank you so much for letting me share new songs with you, and the stories behind the songs. And remember, I always like hearing from folks! You can email me, or reach out on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

Take care,
Stephan

Shows

September 14 - Hotel RL, Olympia, WA
September 28 - Sofar Sounds, Boston, MA
September 30 - Areté Venue and Gallery, New York City, NY
October 23 - McMenamins White Eagle Saloon, Portland, OR
November 25 - Yotsuya Tenmado Comfort, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan
November 26 - K.D. Hapon, Nagoya, Japan
November 28 - PEPPERLAND, Okayama, Japan
November 29 - LIVE rise SHUNAN, Shunan, Japan
December 2 - Graf, Fukuoka, Japan
December 4 - Risin’, Saga, Japan
December 5 or 6 - TBA, Ibusuki, Japan
December 9 - HOME, Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan

PS Do you want me to come to your city? Tell me and I’ll try to make it happen! (I don’t always know where people want me to go…) Also, if you’re curious about hosting a concert, it’s easier than you might think! Especially if you're in the US or Canada. Piece of cake.

Dreaming of being a Blue Jay.

Happy August!

Your free demo this month is...

“Blue Jay”
Sign up to receive the song!
(Each month I send a free secret demo like this to my subscribers — you also get access to all the past songs I’ve sent out!)
(Keep reading for more info on the song)

It seems like every month this year has been busy and exciting! Last month, if you missed it, was the release of my “Overwintered” music video, along with this wonderful article from the National Audubon Society. I also played some shows in Portland, Olympia, and Eugene, went birding in Seattle with Heidi Trudell of Just Save Birds, celebrated my 32nd birthday, took a little trip to Vancouver, BC, helped out at Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls, did a lot of writing and reading, and worked on planning my fall (including my third Japan tour!).

If you’re interested in reading more about my June UK/Russia/NY tour, I’m writing all about it on my blog. Here are parts 1 and 2, which cover the first UK leg of the tour. I had to take a short break from the blog to work on a massive grant application, but the next entry will be up soon and tell all about my time in Kaliningrad!

As for this new song, “Blue Jay,” I literally finished writing it today! I wanted Sparkbird (my forthcoming second full album) to have at least one purely fun track, and I believe I may have found it in this song. Writing this song reminded me of writing “Pompeii” — another fun one. Sometimes you just need to capture some joy!

I owe some of my Blue Jay inspiration (jayspiration? inspirjaytion?) to Adrienne Kisner and her book The Confusion of Laurel Graham, as well as Julie Zickefoose and her forthcoming Saving Jemima: Life and Love with a Hard-Luck Jay. Both excellent and well worth checking out!

This recording is just keyboard and vocals (with a little bit of vocal layering at the end for impact). Expect it to get bigger and fancier.

As always, I hope you enjoy the new song! It’s an honor to share such fresh work with you.

Till next month!

Take care,
Stephan

www.stephannance.com

Check out LOOK AT THE HARLEQUINS! on

Bandcamp | iTunes | Spotify | Amazon | Google Play

PS Do you want me to come to your city? Tell me and I’ll try to make it happen! (I don’t always know where people want me to go…) Also, if you’re curious about hosting a concert, it’s easier than you might think! Especially if you're in the US or Canada. Piece of cake.

Shows

August 9 - Hotel RL, Olympia, WA
August 10 - Hotel RL, Olympia, WA
August 27 - Literary Arts, Portland, OR
September 13 - Hotel RL, Olympia, WA
September 14 - Hotel RL, Olympia, WA
September 28 - Sofar Sounds, Boston, MA
September 30 - Areté Venue and Gallery, New York City, NY
October 23 - McMenamins White Eagle Saloon, Portland, OR
November 25 - Yotsuya Tenmado Comfort, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan
November 26 - K.D. Hapon, Nagoya, Japan
November 28 - PEPPERLAND, Okayama, Japan
November 29 - LIVE rise SHUNAN, Shunan, Japan
December 2 - Graf, Fukuoka, Japan
December 3 or 4 - TBA, Saga, Japan
December 5 or 6 - TBA, Ibusuki, Japan
December 9 - LUSH, Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan

WHAT A MONTH!

Last month, I mean. Not November. “November” is your demo for July, but I’ll get to that in a moment!

I spent June playing a handful of shows in the UK, Kaliningrad (Russia), and New York. It was a strange, surreal, magical month. I met so many wonderful people, and had so many wonderful experiences — it’s too much to describe in this newsletter, but you can peruse my Instagram, Facebook, and/or Twitter for a lot of the details! And I’ll be writing several posts about it this month on my blog.

Sign up to receive the song!
(Each month I send a free secret demo like this to my subscribers — you also get access to all the past songs I’ve sent out!)

Content warning: sexual assault, self-harm

I concluded the tour with an interview with Tara Santora, a reporter for the National Audubon Society, talking about the intersection of birding and my music. I actually mentioned this month’s song, “November,” when talking to them about how birds can be used as characters in songs. In “November,” a Loggerhead Shrike appears briefly. Shrikes are carnivorous songbirds who impale their prey on thorns and barbed wire fences. Cute but deadly, this bird struck me as a fitting character in a song about abuse and sexual assault.

I haven’t been particularly vocal in adding my voice to the #MeToo movement — but yes, #MeToo. Experiences of sexual assault are among the many issues I’ve addressed in years of therapy. The incidents that most strongly inspired this song took place when I was 16 and 18. I still struggle with the repercussions of other people’s violence against me. These experiences have impacted my confidence, my belief in my own abilities, my sense of self-worth. At the time, they fueled a tendency toward self-harm — specifically, cutting — that I thankfully haven't engaged in in over 10 years.

Can't pick them out,
Can't press them in;
I'll never hide my scars.

As a cis-assumed non-binary person, it’s often tough to know where my story fits in. And I worry about speaking over other people who are even less represented than I am — black and indigenous trans women, for example. So I usually keep it to myself. But of course my story matters too, and one place I feel comfortable opening up about it is in my music.

In writing this song — and all of my songs, really — I was influenced by the queer Russian poet Mikhail Kuzmin, who used chains of symbolic associations along with intertextuality (references to other writers’ works and his own) to create poems loaded with intriguing imagery. (Whether or not I ever come close to succeeding is for the Kuzmin scholars among you to judge!)

My other time machine: 
A pungent, putrid 
Brownish-green 
November smile 
Blandishing 
My two-timing door—

As dark as this subject matter is, I love performing this song, and I’m so excited about this demo! As always, it’s a work in progress, and subject to change — but the strings and bass and recorders and percussion are really bringing it an intense, driving energy.

I hope you enjoy the song — and I hope you’ll be able to join me for a show sometime soon! I’ve got some upcoming dates in Portland, Eugene, Olympia, and Boston, with more to come.

Take care,
Stephan

www.stephannance.com

Check out LOOK AT THE HARLEQUINS! on

Bandcamp | iTunes | Spotify | Amazon | Google Play

PS Do you want me to come to your city? Tell me and I’ll try to make it happen! (I don’t always know where people want me to go…) Also, if you’re curious about hosting a concert, it’s easier than you might think! Especially if you're in the US or Canada. Piece of cake.

Shows

July 5 - Artichoke Music, Portland, OR
July 19 - Hotel RL, Olympia, WA
July 20 - Hotel RL, Olympia, WA
July 21 - Eugene Piano Academy, Eugene, OR
August 9 - Hotel RL, Olympia, WA
August 10 - Hotel RL, Olympia, WA
September 13 - Hotel RL, Olympia, WA
September 14 - Hotel RL, Olympia, WA
September 28 - Sofar Sounds, Boston, MA
Other East Coast shows are possible for late September — stay tuned, and get in touch if you want to make sure something happens where you are!

Tracking vocals for the “Arboretum” demo.

Happy June!

There’s so much happening right now! I just filmed a music video for “Overwintered”, directed by Dawn Jones Redstone. How can I describe Dawn in brief? The word "phenomenal" comes to mind. I think it's also fair to call her a mover and shaker. Stay tuned for news on the video release, which will likely involve screenings in Eugene and Portland!

I have a ton of gorgeous new merch — T-shirts, tank-tops, hoodies, tote bags, and stickers — designed by Chad Lowe.

And I’m about to leave on a mini-tour, with shows in London, Frome, Kaliningrad, and New York! Check my website for dates. And make sure you're following me on Instagram and Twitter for updates from distant lands!

Now, for your free song. For this lush spring/summer month, I present to you a demo of “Arboretum”.

Sign up to receive the song!
(Each month I send a free secret demo like this to my subscribers — you also get access to all the past songs I’ve sent out!)

The orchestration will need some pruning. But for these monthly demos, more-or-less-finished is better than perfect! It’ll all be re-recorded in a fancy studio with real instruments. A percussion wizard will add percussion. Someone will use expert knowledge to get the levels right, and expensive plugins to make everything sound crisp and polished. At the risk of belaboring the point, this is a work in progress. Got it? Good!

In early 2008, I was in a long-distance relationship with a guy from Ohio — the Buckeye State. (He’s actually the person who suggested I start posting my music to YouTube! He was there when I filmed The Penny Song.) Our relationship inspired a number of songs, including “I am not a stranger here” and “Spring”.

Once, when he was visiting Eugene, we were walking on the University of Oregon campus and happened to pass by a tree with piles of nuts underneath. A buckeye tree, he declared. The state tree of Ohio!

We took a nut back to my apartment and somehow convinced it to germinate. It grew in a plastic cup for a while, even mustering up some real leaves before Georgie, my Senegal parrot — then just a few months old — destroyed it.

Later that year, we broke up. Walking by that tree he’d pointed out on campus, I imagined a palimpsest before me, with the specters of our past selves still hunkered down examining nuts. 

Every day I pass this way
I expect to find you
Waiting for me
Beneath the branches
Of the buckeye tree...

He was gone, but in a way he’d rooted down into my life, and there was no getting around the memories.

But for whatever reason, I didn’t finish the song then. Still, the ideas floated around in my head from time to time, transforming slightly over time. I had other relationships, and for each one, I quickly established symbolic tree connections. A sugar maple for the guy from Vermont. A Northern Red Oak for the guy from New Jersey. And for the guy from Florida — a palmetto, an orange tree, a Bald Cypress stand, a whole ecosystem.

It was a formidable plot for one amateur gardener to manage. 

When I returned to my notes for this song in 2016, I delved deep into the world of trees with the help of an incredible book called Trees Live Here: The Arboretums of America. I went back to the U of O campus — itself an arboretum — and wandered around, admiring the collection. Passing again by that tree the Buckeye boyfriend had found, I wanted to determine whether it was an Ohio Buckeye or a Yellow Buckeye. I tracked down a guide to the U of O arboretum and learned that the tree in question was actually a Red Horsechestnut.

In the end, I really leaned into the Florida imagery, because GOD, the biodiversity of Florida. I nearly start salivating at the thought of those glorious swamps, and then I remember the mosquitoes. 🙃

Now, I really need to get back to practicing and packing. Feel free to write back to me! I always love hearing from you!

Love,
Stephan
www.stephannance.com
Check out LOOK AT THE HARLEQUINS! on
Bandcamp | iTunes | Spotify | Amazon | Google Play

PS Do you want me to come to your city? Tell me and I’ll try to make it happen! (I don’t always know where people want me to go…) Also, if you’re curious about hosting a concert, it’s easier than you might think! Especially if you're in the US or Canada. Piece of cake.

Happy May!

This month, instead of sharing a demo of a song I’m working on orchestrating, I’m sharing a demo of a song I just finished writing. This brand new baby song is called “Вертишейка” (Vertisheika, or “Wryneck” in English). A wryneck is an absurd little bird in the woodpecker family.

Sign up to receive the song!
(Each month I send a free secret demo like this to my subscribers)

When I was on tour in December 2017, I played two shows in Russia — one in Kaliningrad and another in Saint Petersburg. Ever since, I’ve been especially eager to return to Kaliningrad, where I met many wonderful people whose creative energy impacted me profoundly.

Now I’m finally going back! In June (next month!! yikes), I’ll be visiting and playing a show in Kaliningrad! I’ll also be playing shows in London, Frome, and New York. (The next Portland show, while we’re at it, is July 5th at Artichoke Music. And I’m playing a Sofar Sounds show in Boston on September 28th! Stay tuned, dates keep being added.)

For this new song, Вертишейка, I wanted to try and write something that would on some level convey in Russian what my English songs are like. Not that I began writing with a mission statement in mind, but as I wrote it occurred to me what I was doing.

The key lyrical elements of a Stephan Nance song, it turns out:

Signs of queer life in Kaliningrad

• Birds (specific birds)

• Trees (specific trees)

• Queer undertones

• A touch of magical realism

• A vague reference to the cartoon Steven Universe

At the beginning of this song, we find our protagonist at dawn, at the end of summer, in a persimmon orchard. (Kaliningrad is where I ate my first ever persimmon.) A lichen falls from a tree and startles some Bee-eaters. (Possibly these are actual European Bee-eaters, but they may represent the protagonist and some companion of the protagonist. Maybe they are bee-eaters in some symbolic way — always eating society’s stingers, or something along those lines. I’ll let you decide.) This lichen was evidently disturbed by a snake-like bird with a backwards head — a Wryneck! (Wrynecks are famous for imitating snakes and twisting their heads 180 degrees.)

The protagonist implores the Wryneck to stop looking at them, but evidently the Wryneck won’t be dissuaded. On the protagonist’s stroll out of the orchard, the Wryneck — that sneaky little busybody — lurks nearby, obsessively monitoring the protagonist’s every move and word.

Now, thanks to that Wryneck, the protagonist finds themself the subject of gossip. Everyone knows they’re “not normal” (which in Russian can be interpreted to mean not straight). Fine! They admit it! They’re not normal! But not-normal people can’t be normalized.

So, the protagonist declares, that Wryneck — and everybody else, no doubt — can say what they will and think what they want. The protagonist is over it. They don’t need your respect; they already have their own.

These last lines, about respect, allude to the Steven Universe song “Change Your Mind”. Steven Universe has been censored in Russia to remove the show’s groundbreaking queer representation. Far be it from me to not include a Steven Universe reference in my first all-Russian song.

I will say outright that my Russian lyrics are not without flaws. I have a BA in Russian, but I’m not a native speaker, and my level of fluency fluctuates wildly from year to year and even minute to minute. I’m fine with the lyrics reflecting that reality. Finished is better than perfect! And I’ve got a lot of irons in the fire right now, so time for songwriting is somewhat scarce.

More on some of those other irons soon…

Love,
Stephan
www.stephannance.com
Check out LOOK AT THE HARLEQUINS! on
Bandcamp | iTunes | Spotify | Amazon | Google Play

PS Do you want me to come to your city? Tell me and I’ll try to make it happen! (I don’t always know where people want me to go…) Also, if you’re curious about hosting a concert, it’s easier than you might think!

Hi there! It's April, and that means it's time for another secret demo!

The following story (as usual!!!) is kind of a bummer, but I’ll start with the happy ending: the song I got out of it! “After the Ball” is one of my favorite songs to perform, and I’m excited to record it for SPARKBIRD. You can hear the direction I’m taking it in this demo, but of course it’s a work in progress.

Sign up to receive the song!

Now for the background on this song.

In my years of creative block and weekly therapy for trauma, I often had surprisingly little to say about the more obviously traumatic events I’ve experienced. And the nightmares that left me drenched in sweat every night for three years were also rarely, if ever, about those events.

Instead, they were about a housing situation I found myself in after a difficult breakup.

It’s a complicated story, and one that I won’t go into completely. I can only tell my side of it, and they’re welcome to tell their side, wherever they are. (If they do, I hope they won’t name names,  because I’m not naming names.)

It’s confusing to look back on it, because I see that I made a lot of mistakes. I wish I had done many things differently. At the same time, I feel compassion for this younger version of myself. I know they were trying as hard as they could.

Following my difficult breakup, two of my closest friends offered to let me live with them while I got back on my feet. I had recently been diagnosed with PTSD, and I wasn’t able to pay rent, but we agreed that I could contribute in other ways (helping out around the house, etc.).

At first, it was nice to live with friends. (Calling it “a ball” might be a stretch, but it was better than living with my ex.)

But the breakup was just the first in a series of unfortunate events. Soon after, a close family member attempted suicide. My mental health declined. I was continually grateful to have the support of my friends through this difficult time, and when I checked in about where we stood over the finances, they said things like, “We’re so glad to have you here, and you do so much for us. It’s such a relief to have all these chores done when we come home from work.”

A few months later, things were looking up. I was playing more shows. I met someone really great and started writing a song I felt excited about (I finished it many years later — “Grey & Green”). I found a counselor who was helping me get back on track at the University of Oregon. And I was finally able to get a bunch of work done for the professor I was working for.

And then everything fell apart. On a single day, I lost my job as a research assistant, the person I’d been dating broke up with me, and I found out my grandpa was in the hospital and didn’t have long to live.

When my friends came home, I told them the things that had happened. And in response, as I sat there crying about my dying grandpa, they gave me a lecture about how I needed to pull myself up by my bootstraps and stop being so irresponsible. I needed to stop working on music and focus on real work.

My jaw dropped. If there had been any hope of my pulling myself up by my bootstraps, it was dashed in that moment. I felt overwhelmed by the most gut-wrenching sense of betrayal, and a sort of cognitive dissonance set in. I thought I knew these people — how could they respond so cruelly? Did they think I wanted to have all these awful things happen?

And music —  that was the one thing that always brought me joy.

Where compassion might have bolstered me and helped me be more the person they wanted me to be, their chastising crushed me. I stopped allowing myself to work on music, like they wanted, and as a result I lost hope.

And I became extremely resentful of these people and the cushy middle class lives I saw them living every day. They complained about money problems while going on fancy vacations and spending frivolously. Meanwhile I was on food stamps and skipping meals.

I don’t envy the position they were in. If I were them, I never would have let me live with them. I was never going to be what they wanted me to be — that is, someone who would succeed in the particular way they were succeeding. After I moved out, I still couldn’t manage the bootstrap thing and ended up on disability.

My advice to you, if you’re ever feeling charitable, is to ask yourself a lot of questions: what expectations do you have of the person you want to help? Does your compassion depend on a certain timeline? Does it have an expiration date?

I wish my friends had asked themselves these questions before they invited me to live with them. Maybe then we’d still be friends.

All of that was in 2011. In the years that followed, whenever I tried to work on music, a nagging voice would hiss: “Stop it. Stop being so irresponsible.” It wasn’t until 2016 that I was able to finally shake it out of my system.

And I wrote this song to finally wrap that whole experience up, once and for all. Ta-da!

With love and grit,

Stephan
www.stephannance.com
Check out LOOK AT THE HARLEQUINS! on
Bandcamp | iTunes | Spotify | Amazon | Google Play

Happy March! ❤️ Spring is almost here! 🌷

The song I’m sharing with you this month is called “Rebreather,” and I wrote it for my partner Adam. Today (March 3rd) is his birthday, and the anniversary of the day we first met. And our actual anniversary is March 15th — the Ides! 😱

Sign up to receive the song!

If you haven’t heard the story, it’s a pretty cute one. In November 2012, Adam saw an ad for my music on Facebook.

The next couple months were really rough for a multitude of reasons (some of which are discussed here). When Adam saw me post something cryptic and depressing online, he found my address and sent me a sweet, supportive letter in the mail.

In February 2013, when I was trying to get back on my feet, I got a message from Adam’s friends. They wanted me to come to Tacoma to to play music at Adam’s surprise birthday party.

March 2013.

I agreed, and a few weeks later took a train up to Tacoma. Adam found me hiding in a recycling bin, so I guess that’s technically where we met.

Over the first few years of our relationship, I was focused on improving my mental health. It was an incredibly challenging process that took a ton of work, and a ton of support from Adam. I know there were times when it looked like that struggle would be part of our life forever, but our relationship remained strong throughout it all. Most people would have given up, especially so early in a relationship, but Adam always saw that I was more than my mental health struggles.

I started writing this song when we first met, and was finally able to finish it four years later in February 2017. When I started writing it, it was all about this sense I had of him guiding me through hostile terrain. And at the time he’d been planning to go on a school trip to Nepal, so I had Everest in mind. (He didn’t end up going on the trip, so it’s sort of funny that it’s forever embedded into a song.) When I returned to the song in 2017, the story shifted. It’s not about me relying on Adam to carry me through everything — it’s about how his support empowered me to empower myself. Now, whether I’m faced with a new obstacle or dealing with the ghosts of my past, I know he’s there for me — but more importantly, I know I’m there for me, too.

February 2019.

Thanks for reading and listening. 😊 Till next month!

PS  If you're interested in having me play a house show sometime this year — anywhere in the world — let me know! Here's my helpful guide to hosting a living room concert.

PPS If you're in Portland and looking for a piano or songwriting teacher, look no further!

Hello! Happy February!

I was so caught up in the release of Look at the Harlequins! (Bandcamp | iTunes | Spotify | Amazon | Google Play) that I forgot to send out a new song last month! To make up for it, I'm sending a big one — the demo for the title song on my next full-length album, Sparkbird. I've been busy orchestrating ten songs for it, and I'm hoping it will be ready later this year.

While this song doesn't mention any birds by name, it's very much a tribute to birding and the joy that the pursuit of birds has brought to my life.

A "sparkbird" is the bird that gets you obsessed with birds. For me, that's the Western Tanager. Actually, I have a picture of the Western Tanager who sparked my passion and ultimately inspired this song! There he is.

This is the "incredible, bright yellow bird with an orange head and black wings" I mentioned to Kelsey Greco when she interviewed me for this Vortex Magazine article.

As exciting as the discovery of this Western Tanager was, way back in 2011, I didn’t really start birding right then. But more and more, birds became tied up in my self-care and mindfulness practices. There were individual birds I looked for on my daily bike rides — a hummingbird who was always perched at the top of a certain tree, a pheasant who was always on top of a certain pile of bark chips.

I was appreciating birds but kind of tiptoeing around them. For some reason, I had this idea that if I dared to go out with a pair of binoculars, some Real Birders would call me out and tell me to get off their turf. Eventually I met a Real Birder — my friend Rebecca Waterman, who contributed backing vocals to "Grey & Green" — and I asked her very sheepishly if she thought it’d be okay if I looked at birds even though I didn’t know anything about birding. She told me to just do it, and that she didn’t know a ton either but you just learn as you go.

It makes me wonder — how often do we wait for permission to do something that could make us happier?

If watching birds happens to be something you're interested in but feel unqualified to do, let me be the one to say: you have permission! Or maybe you want to learn to play an instrument, or to speak another language, or do calligraphy, or write a poem, or make something out of clay. You have permission to do those things, too! You'll probably be terrible at it at first, but being terrible at something is the first step towards being good at something.

On the subject of birds — this week I'm going to the Winter Wings Festival in Klamath Falls, Oregon, to do research for the young adult novel I'm writing (which, if you haven't guessed, is bird-related). If you follow me on Twitter and Instagram, you'll be seeing some glimpses of that trip, which promises to be very cold and snowy.  ❄️⛄️

Oh — also, this demo is of course a work in progress! In the end, it'll have real instruments, and definitely some percussion. 😊

PS If you're interested in having me play a house show sometime this year — anywhere in the world — let me know! Here's my helpful guide to hosting a living room concert.