JM Stevens grew up in West Point, Mississippi, and when he was twelve years old, he formed a band, because as he says, “there wasn’t anything to do.”

“You find some like minded souls and you start playing cover songs. It felt like something positive to be doing there. It was so much fun at the time. We played school dances and stuff like that. We played little town festivals and things. My first band was called Aces High he recalls.

That however was not his first tasted of budding stardom, “I think it was the second grade talent show when I did “Eye of the Tiger.” I even have a picture of that (see the photo). It was in the local paper. The guitar is bigger than I am. I was obsessed with that song. A buddy was playing bass. He had a Fender Jazz bass that he borrowed from his dad.

We were freaking out in the whole month leading up to it. That is how I feel right now getting ready to go on this tour. It isn’t much different (laughs lightly).”

On this evening, from Austin, Texas, where he now makes his home, he talks about his new album, Nowhere To Land.

“All of the songs were (written during the pandemic). I just started recording with really no plan of which ones are going to be an album. I had a bunch of songs I was sitting on. I had done a few more, but those (songs) just felt like they fit together to me, thematically and vibe wise. They were all written around the same time, so maybe I put some sort of stock in that. Maybe whatever vibrations are going on gels the songs together somehow.

I think there is a little bit of uncertainty and a little bit of hope as well. That is what I feel is the overall run through (the common thread),” he says.

COVID, which many performing artists prefer to forget, presented a lot of certainty for many creatives. We wondered how JM Stevens coped with those days.

“It is funny all of a sudden, I was sitting around with all of this time on my hands that normally I wouldn’t have, so what do you do?  You are not playing live, because there was no band stuff going on. I just decided to dive deep into acoustic guitar, because I could just pick it up really easily when I was sitting around the house. I got working on different kinds of grooves and rhythms and I wrote songs that just really worked well, completely in that context with no accompaniment. It is something that I have never done much of before. It is something that changed my outlook on that. I was also doing all these live streams, which was a good way to try out songs. 

I kicked up my creativity pretty heavily. I thought there are two ways to go here, I could continue to sink into an abyss (he had been drinking heavily) that I had been in for a while, or I could change directions. That is what I did, and I tried to stay on this path,” says JM Stevens.

We felt there was a story behind the song, “Cherry Sunburst,” and we were right, JM Stevens, explains, “That was just one of those riffs that came about pretty quick. It was different from anything else I was doing at the time, because I wasn’t doing very many riffs songs. I was messing around with a drum loop in garage band. I was just making a groove and I had a tempo and a feel going. It was one of those (songs) that just came together. I was playing a show in Mississippi, and I started playing that E riff that is in the verse. I recorded it in my voice memo on my phone. It was this melody, and I wasn’t even saying words. I was mouthing as I call it. I recorded that stuff on my phone, forgot about it and then went back and listened to it later. I went wow that sounds cool. You are hearing it like a person for the first time.

I had the riff and I combined it with another melody and verse part that I had. The theme was about this guitar that I saw in a music store, and it triggered some childhood memories for me. I didn’t play the solo on that song. It was a guy from here in Austin named Doug Strahan. All the guys on that song just crushed it.”

Wondering if the theme of the song is about nothing seems to last forever, JM Stevens says, “That’s a good way to put it. It is also about getting hung up on stuff you don’t really need. I saw this guitar in a store in the town where I grew up, in West Point, Mississippi. It was a Cherry Sunburst J-45 and I wanted to play it. This guitar was a sixties Gibson J-45 Cherry Sunburst color. That guitar always stuck in my mind. It is like hearing a song that sticks with you forever.

I went into a music shop out here and there was one hanging on the wall just like it. It was almost like there was a halo around this thing. Everything else was out of focus, and I could just see that guitar hanging there. I certainly did not require a new guitar at that time. I couldn’t quit thinking about it. After three weeks, I kept thinking that thing is still up there. I figured out a way to make it happen. It is about something that you can’t get off of your mind and it could be anything.”

The song “With You in the Morning,” is a tender and beautiful song, introduced by these four lines, “I wanna wake up with you in the morning / Baby won’t you stay right here? / I wanna wake up with you in the morning / Please don’t you disappear.”

“That one started with that riff, which I can’t really tell you how I am playing it in kind of a thumb, finger picking, rhythmic thing. I never really did that before. I was playing that riff, and I started mouthing and the melody came to me. That first line hit me. I was going through some relationship troubles, and I wanted to be with this person, but they weren’t there.

I had the verse and the chorus down. It is a very simple lyric. There is nothing fancy about it, but it felt good. I thought it conveyed what I was trying to say. Sometimes I think it is easy to go overly poetic and a younger me, certainly would have done that. I thought I would just keep it like it was, because it felt honest and conversational. I thought the song was done and I played it live streaming. Then I thought this is not done, it needs a middle 8. I went back and added the bridge. It is one of my favorite bridges to sing. I really like it. I feel like the bridge wraps up what the song is really about. When you feel like the world is crashing in on you, you just need somebody to be there for you,” he says.   

When we reminded JM Stevens that he wrote the songs, produced, mixed and engineered the album, as well as playing on Nowhere To Land and how he manages all of those responsibilities, we got a surprising response.

Laughing he says, “You scared me when you listed all of those things. Whoa, what am I doing here?

I don’t know any other way honestly. I started “geeking” out on recording when I was probably in junior high. I love the recording part of it. It is just something that is part of me. The sounds, the tones, tell a story to me and they create an emotion. I know what I am looking for and it doesn’t seem like too much, because it is just what I know how to do.

It is a lot and when I start mixing, I can sink into a private hell. With mixing I almost treat it like I am mixing somebody else. I have some trusted people I will send out some mixes to. I trust their opinions and tastes and they will be honest with me. I just want to know that I am not getting into a bubble too much, because that can be dangerous. I compartmentalize. I will get all of the recording done that I am going to mix. I went back six months after this record was done and touched some things up.

I remember (when he was growing up) distinctly being in the tack room of our barn and hooking old VCRs together to try and make a multitrack recorder. This has been a natural progression how I got to this point. I don’t have any formal training for mixing or production. I have had some people along my path that I look to that helped me to learn things. I don’t know how many albums I have worked on in all different forms and I kept doing it, doing it, and doing it. That’s the only way.”

As for the other musicians on the album, “I will start from the bottom up. That is how I made this album; it was a little different than I have ever done. Because of the circumstances I couldn’t get everybody live in the room. I recorded all of the songs late at night in solitude. I would just create a loop to the song, because I knew where I wanted the group to be, and I would record the vocal and the guitar. I did it to a loop, because I knew I was going to bring in musicians. I wanted it to be locked in timewise.

Once I had a take and if I had to and someone said I have to release this right now with nothing else on it, I would have felt okay about it. I thought okay I am ready to see where this goes.

The drums are George Duron from here in town. He played on my last album too and I get him in to play on other studio sessions. He is a super versatile drummer. He is easy for me to record, and he always plays something I wouldn’t have thought of. He takes it somewhere else. I don’t even say anything. I just play the song for him, and I like to see what his instincts are. That is the reason you get other people involved, you (want) to see what they will bring to the table. He is always somebody who surprises me. He came in and laid the drums for the whole album in I think a day or a day and one-half.

The bass is a fellow named Dave Wesselowski. I met him when he came into the studio to do sessions with Doug Strahan’s band, and I will get to him in a minute. I just like his playing. He has a great feel and because I am so into the production side of it, he has great tone. I like his touch on the bass. I like his melodic sense. I had gotten him to play some live shows and he came in and he nailed every song perfectly the first time. I like to record things quickly and when he came in to do the bass, we did it really, really quickly. In maybe a half day he did the parts.

I had that foundation (established) with the bass and the drums.

Jonny Grossman who plays keyboards is a killer solo artist who goes by the name “Sleepy John.” I made a couple of albums with him, and he played live with me. He can jump on any keyboard, and it sounds great, whether it is organ, piano, Wurlitzer, Rhodes or synth. He makes it easy.

Doug Strahan came in and played guitar. He sang harmonies as well. I had laid all of the harmonies, but I just replaced them with other people. I did it to mark the parts out. I have always loved Doug’s playing and he has worked on several sessions that I have worked on. He is one of those guys who nails things live off of the floor and he can just break into a solo and it will sound killer the first time. He is also open to new ideas and trying different things.

That was the core band right there.

BettySoo was going to come in and sing on maybe one track (originally), but then it sounded so good, I said hey try this one and try this one. She ended up singing on nine songs. She is just so damn good. She can match my inflections. If I say hey you sound too good here, let’s dumb it down or let’s put this in the alley a little bit, she will know exactly what to do. That’s who you hear on the whole thing.

Marty Muse came in and played pedal steel on one song and dobro on another.  I met him through the scene here in Austin. For decades he was in Robert Earl Keen’s band. He kept it loose and free.

The only other person on there is Beth Chrisman. I just wanted a different tone on song “Cobwebs,” and I love her fiddle playing and I love her voice.

I wanted to put more things on there, like for that song, “With You In the Morning,” I wanted to put horns on it, but I wanted it to be more intimate sounding than fleshed out like that. One of the things I wanted to do with this album was to keep it really open sounding, honest and organic. That is what I was going for,” but when the opposite happens, “It is like what are we trying to do here? Are we trying to impress with our production and the things that we can do? Everything can evolve with albums and the production and all of that, but I am always trying to make things that look past that. I am seeing a picture of the songs that I can sink into. Everything else is a part of the gumbo. In other words, when I am tempted to add that third layer of guitar on this album, I did a lot of things that made me uncomfortable in not doing that, not doubling things and turning up the vocals louder than I normally would and drier. I was going through something that felt risky to me.”

The song, “Why Won’t You Call,” is another gem from this fabulous album, and JM Stevens creates for us a cinematic experience of the one who is waiting for the love of his or her life to just call, just let me know where you are and why aren’t you here. The lyrics echo this sentiment with, “Do you think about / What it’s like when you’re out in the city / I bet you’re having the time / Of your life out there without me,” and in the chorus, “I’m looking at your number / And wondering why won’t you call.”

It is on this song, that you fully realize how smooth and rich JM Stevens’ vocals are. The easygoing tempo allow the listener to reflect perhaps on an experience in their own life, without pushing you in one direction or another, without creating angst in the listener, because after all you are the one watching the story unfold before your eyes or as you imagine it would.

“It is not about any particular person or one thing. You have those things when somebody is not there as much as they used to be. That goes both ways. I have been on both sides of that coin when somebody said they were going to be home at a certain time and they don’t show up. It is about getting in that inner panic. It is about being in a state of not knowing what is going on.

(And the WD40 reference) The whole thing was inspired by something someone once said to me about needing to keep the hinges oiled on my front door. If you are ever sneaking in late at night when you shouldn’t be, nobody will hear you.

It was a silly little thing in the last verse, and I liked it. People who pick up on it when I am doing it live, always get a kick out of it. I am always fascinated by the stuff (WD40). You can use it for so many things. With WD40 if you have something sticky just put WD40 on it. I messed around with saying oiled or something else and I thought I am just going to say WD40,” he says.

When asked, if the protagonist in the song is a man or a woman JM Stevens replies, “It could have been me. I might be writing that from someone else’s perspective, just as much from my perspective. You may look at it a little later and think I could change this line when there has been some time with clarity on the situation, but I think that it is good to capture those raw emotions.”

The song “Cobwebs,” and the metaphor came about in an interesting way, “We are going back to BettySoo on lyrics. She was doing a thing during the pandemic, called Nobody’s Happy Hour, which was one of the most brilliant names ever. It was a live stream show, and she would have guests on there. She had this wheel, and it was kind of like a game you would play.  You would spin the wheel and it would have different things on the wheel that you had to do. It could be like talk about a book that you are reading or anything. One of the prompts was, write a song on the spot. I was thinking I don’t want to do that. Can you take that off? Wouldn’t you know it the first spin that I did I landed right on that. There is something even more harrowing about it when you are doing it online. I landed on that thing and there was sweat beading off of my head. It was just a small thing, but in my mind, it turned into this huge incident.

I was thinking what in the heck am I going to do, and I was looking around. There were these cobwebs up in the corner of the studio I was in. It was one of those things when you keep saying I need to get at that (remove the webs), but I kept putting it off. I just started playing a little riff and I started singing “Cobwebs on the ceiling / cobwebs on the floor.”

Thomas Martin was watching from Alexandria, Louisiana and he sent me a text that said he really liked the cobwebs number that you came up with. That is about all it takes for me to think I am going to finish this out and turn it into a song. It is like when someone says I like that shirt. I will wear it every day (folks this an analogy, we are quite sure he does not wear the same shirt every day).

I fleshed the song out and it turned into a song about things growing a little stale.

I played it live without a bridge and I just felt this song needs a bridge. It needs to go somewhere else. They kind of sum up the feeling of the song. That is how I look at bridges. It is the place that you get to, the destination. That cake was ready to come out of the oven with the bridge on that one,” he explains.

What do you like best about being a songwriter, singer, musician and all those other hats that you wear?

Thoughtfully he says, “I would say playing the songs live in front of other humans. When there is a real connection there is no other way to get that. When a great melody hits me or a great song comes to me, and I get a little tingle when I know that it is right. When I listen back to a take on a record that I am making, and I hear the take and I know this is the one. It is a feeling that almost makes you well up. You need that encouragement now and then. When somebody tells you that a song touched them in some way, it is heavy for me. I take it really seriously.”

Take time to visit the website for JM Stevens here and take time to listen to “Why Won’t You Call” and “Cherry Sunburst.”   Return to Our Front Page

Photos by Mark Abernathy protected by copyright © , All Rights Reserved

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This interview by Joe Montague  published May 14th, 2024 is protected by copyright © and is the property of Riveting Riffs Magazine All Rights Reserved.  All photos and artwork are the the property of  JM Stevens unless otherwise noted and all  are protected by copyright © All Rights Reserved. This interview may not be reproduced in print or on the internet or through any other means without the written permission of Riveting Riffs Magazine.