Colorado-based, Stephen Winston has released a new album, consisting of songs that range from nearly 20 to 15 years old. He likens it to the recent archive offerings from Neil Young and Elton John, citing how there was no grand design in releasing the songs in some timely fashion. Instead, he claims it was a casual conversation with producer/collaborator, Michael Pfeifer that led to the vaulted collection of songs, being reintroduced. Winston wasn’t even sure the tapes had been salvaged, and when he learned they indeed had been, he perceived it as too coincidental to not be fated. The result is One True Story; a collection of songs from yesterday that somehow feel fresh and linear.

URL: https://www.stephenwinstonmusic.com/

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/stephenwinstonmusic/

Winston is a self-taught pianist and guitar player. He is said to have taken the reverse route, so to speak, by attending university and pursuing a corporate job, too much success, and then focusing his attention on music. It’s this detail, that I believe gives Winston’s sound a sort of upper-middle-class, existential backdrop. At times, he comes across as a more conservative and strictly mannered, Billy Joel. Winston’s music does not set out to fire up the youth, but rather to quell the suppressed anxieties of the middle-aged.

That isn’t to say that Winston can’t be peculiar or even outright snarky. His personality isn’t concealed on One True Story and his caustic nature can often, seep through. It’s all about today/the future be damned, he sings on “All Quiet In The Bronx.” For me, this was a decidedly redeeming quality of Stephen Winston, in that he isn’t afraid to make slightly exigent statements, through his work. His bite can sting, particularly because like petting a cat, you may not always see it coming.

The title track is one of the first on the record to not open with piano. Instead, a well-tuned and rich-sounding acoustic sets the mood for “One True Story.” It’s the bass that really steals the show on this piece, as it straddles a steady groove and ties everything together, nicely. There is a bit of an Eagles feel to this one, and the arrangements are strong, despite some overly repetitive phrasing by Winston. He also leaves us on a rather somber and hopeless note, that falls way short of the mark. Some ambiguity would have been better served, than the bleakness of Winston’s final lyric.

It can sometimes seem that Stephen just slaps random fragments down as lyrics, without much forethought to structure or cadence. Some artists can make that work, but he hasn’t quite developed that sort of genuine iconoclast, just yet. Such as the case of “Jami,” which tells a good story, but does so in a way that doesn’t make us really care about her. She’s an alcoholic, absentee mother, whom we just end up liking even less, by Song’s end. Don’t look/she might be dying, would be better served if we hadn’t already developed a strong indifference to a character that is so deplorable and void of any redeeming qualities, whatsoever.

DOWNLOAD LINK: https://ffm.to/stephenwinston_onetruestoryalbum

Musically speaking, Stephen Winston is absolutely on fire, albeit in the least threatening way. It’s more of a calm fireplace that occasionally crackles with life. He’s like a throwback to 70’s/80’s Soft Rock. Soft Rock is a genre that is severely underrepresented, and it’s promising to hear Stephen Winston doing his part to keep it alive. He’s got the means to tell not only a true story but a great one.

John McCall