Singer-songwriter Stephanie Seymour continues making poignant music on ‘Grand Isle’ EP

1

Singer-songwriter Stephanie Seymour’s new six-song EP Grand Isle feels like a welcome breeze on a 94-degree day. Her poignant, intimate songs and expressive voice summon stories of loss, family and connection. Featuring backing by Ira Elliot (Nada Surf), James Mastro (The Bongos, Ian Hunter’s Rant Band), Bob Perry (Winter Hours) and Debby Schwartz (Psych-O-Positive), the recordings take flight on the strength of Seymour’s warm, vibrant vocals.

Lead track “Harvest Time” (listen at link below) is a stunning introduction to the collection, whose songs showcase Seymour’s gift for pairing emotional depth with melodic grace.

Seymour has been making music since her early 20s, first gaining attention as the drummer for the all-female New York-based power-pop band The Aquanettas. She later provided backing vocals and percussion for Psychic Penguin before forming her own band, Birdy, which released several albums, including Supernominal Paraphernalia (1990) and Quarantine (2002).

In 2019, she released her first solo album, There Are Birds, followed by the single “There Was a Time” in 2022.

With Grand Isle, she continues to craft personal songs that resonate with insight and beauty.

I recently spoke with Seymour about Grand Isle, her musical journey and the stories behind these songs.

The cover of “Grand Isle” features art by Brian Rusnica.

Q: Your opening song “Harvest Time” on Grand Isle is spectacular. You sing about clearing the fields and working the farm so that “our children’s children’s children might find a better way” and about writing “new chapters in our book from a land called Aroostook.” Can you tell me what this sweet-sounding song is about? And tell me about producing it. I hear the lovely voices of your harmony singers.

A: I’m so glad you love this one. This song was the impetus for the whole EP and the one that inspired the beautiful cover art of the Maine/Canada boreal forest by my artist friend Brian Rusnica. I wrote this song about my mother’s side of the family coming down from Canada in the mid-1800s and making their new life in Aroostook County in northern Maine, where some of my family still lives. Much of the history was taken from a booklet that my cousin John had written when he interviewed my great-grandmother Sophia LeVasseur for a school project. She lived to be 102, and when we had her 100th birthday celebration in Presque Isle — I was 13 then — John gave us the printed booklet as a souvenir.

My family worked in the mills, owned a potato farm, and did various other jobs to make a living. I often think about how difficult it must have been to have 14 children — my great-grandmother was one of 14, and then she had 10 kids of her own — with no electricity, one outhouse in those freezing northern winters, and no running water. I try to think about that before I complain about something today.

We recorded the EP right here in our own Chrometop Studio. My husband Bob Perry is an excellent producer and engineer — and an amazing musician — and it’s super convenient to be able to record when you feel like it!

About the harmonies: I actually sang everything on the EP myself except for the gang vocals on the song “One Trick Away.” So that’s just me layering my voice on “Harvest Time” and all the other songs. Fun fact: My friend Ira Elliot from Nada Surf plays drums on this track, and this is the only instance on the EP where the drums were recorded elsewhere. Ira has his own studio called Shedley Grange in Florida where he records.

SANDRA NISSEN PHOTOGRAPHY

STEPHANIE SEYMOUR

Q: Three songs are originals and three are by other artists (Daniel Lanois’ “The Messenger,” Chris Harford’s “You Brains,” Ron Sexsmith’s “Words We Never Use”). How did you decide which songs to cover, and is there a connection between those songs?

A: I don’t think there’s a specific connection between the songs as much as there is a love for the music of all the artists that I chose to cover. I picked these songs because I thought I could interpret them in my own way without changing the core of the tunes. I’m not a wild fan of covers that totally change the song to where you can barely recognize the melody anymore. So my interpretations stick to the basics of each one, but I still do my own thing.

Q: When you sing the lyrics to “You Brains” — “People they just want to live, they wanna breathe, and sow their seeds/Not fade away/I think there’s gotta be a change, I think there’s gotta be a big change/US of A, your sons they stray/They’re never gonna see the shame, they’re never gonna take the blame” — what are you feeling and thinking?

A: I have loved this song from the second I heard it on Chris Harford’s amazing 1992 album Be Headed. Sean Coleman Keenan wrote the incredible lyrics. I don’t know what he was thinking about when he wrote them, but to me, this is a protest song, and it’s as relevant today as it was almost 35 years ago. When I sang it, I just thought about the incredible injustices happening in this country and the world today and tried to give it my all.

Q: Tell me about “One Trick Away,” a perfect song to invite a live audience to join in, don’t you think? Like a Pete Seeger tune?

A: You couldn’t be more spot on. I loved Springsteen’s Seeger Sessions album, and I just wanted to create a real throw-down, singalong-type song. Having Claudia Chopek playing the violin added a special touch. And I knew I wanted a whole bunch of vocals on the choruses, so me and seven of my awesome musician friends sang around three microphones, and we belted them out. Another fun fact: My friend Jeremy Chatzky played on the Seeger Sessions album, and he played upright bass on this tune, so that was the icing on the cake.

Q: In “Scour Your Heart,” you sing of pain and loss experienced as a child and of saving yourself. It’s very poignant. What inspired that song?

A: Actually, I wrote this song about and for Lisa Marie Presley. If you go back and read the lyrics now, it’ll make sense. I’ve been a huge fan of Elvis and Priscilla Presley for years, and when Lisa started putting out her own music, I became enamored with her, too. I saw her twice in concert and I met her once. I always thought her life had an overarching sense of melancholy and sadness, so my song definitely reflects that, especially the loss of her own child, Ben. It was such a tragedy when she passed away, and I think about her often.

SANDRA NISSEN PHOTOGRAPHY

STEPHANIE SEYMOUR

Q: What inspires you to write songs and create music? Does it give you a lift in life?

A: I love when I feel that creative spark. I can’t put my finger on what inspires me, exactly, because a lot of the time, I’ll subconsciously be working out an idea and all of a sudden, I’ll realize more consciously what’s happening … an idea forms and then comes to the forefront of my mind. But sometimes it just happens out of the blue, like when I thought of the idea for my album There Are Birds. I mean, I was just sitting on my couch when the lyrics for “Ruby-crowned Kinglet” came to me, and I yelled to Bob, “I have to make an album all about birds!”

Q: Tell me what you enjoy doing when you’re not making music.

A: I think I gave it away in my previous answer! I’m a serious birdwatcher and have been since 2004. For the last 10 years, I’ve run a private hawk watch on my property. I’m a freelancer, so I take a couple months off every spring and fall during migration to count hawks for the Hawk Migration Association and contribute my data to their records. I live on a natural migratory flyway, so I’m very fortunate to be able to see thousands of hawks fly north and south every year.

Q: You have built such a wonderful community of friends in New Jersey who you often collaborate with on musical projects. Tell me about how that came about and what it means to you.

A: Bob grew up in New Jersey, so even before we got married and I moved here from NYC, he knew many musicians from his days in Winter Hours and Tabula Rasa. But before that, and when I still lived in the city, Bob and I and a few other friends started Cropduster Records, an indie label that was a cooperative and a collective. All the members who owned it were on the label and releasing music. From that, we met so many amazing musicians, artists and creative people in the New York/New Jersey scene. That was over 25 years ago, and we’ve continued to meet and befriend more and more people along the way. I also knew a lot of musicians from my way-back days in The Aquanettas and Psychic Penguin — even before starting my solo band Birdy, which was part of the Cropduster roster. It’s really special to belong to a community of like-minded artists, all of whom are outrageously talented, and some of whom you can hear on Grand Isle.

Last fun fact: Debby Schwartz played bass on two of the songs on this EP. Debby was the lead singer for The Aquanettas. It’s really cool that she and I were able to reunite and be the rhythm section on “You Brains” and “The Messenger.”

Q: What’s next for you?

A: Well, as I mentioned, sometimes an idea will just come to me, and that happened last week. Not only an idea for an overall album, but ideas and some lyrics for five or six songs so far. Just out of the blue. Hopefully making the next album won’t take me as long as this one did, but I was procrastinating too much. This time, I need to kick into high gear faster! In the meantime, enjoy your trip to Grand Isle.

Pre-order the “Grand Isle” album and/or listen to the track “Harvest Time” at stephanieseymour.bandcamp.com/album/grand-isle.

_________________________________________