VAN STEPHENSON 'Same Pen, Different Voices' Arrives July 26 on MRC

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The arrival of any new VAN STEPHESON music is met with huge anticipation. This release is just a little different from the norm, but no less exciting or musically brilliant.

This is Van Stephenson, but with a little help from his friends.

As most will be aware, over the course of the last couple of years, I have been archiving Van’s vast collection of unreleased songs and demos. There are more than 500, covering all styles from 70s singer/songwriter, 80s AOR and pop to 90s country…and then some.

The ultimate goal is to pay tribute to Van with some form of all-inclusive box set/s. During the course of sorting the archives into categories, a certain number of tracks were found to feature vocalists other than Van. I decided that the box sets should be dedicated to just Van with his songs, so the idea came to put together a separate release that featured these songs - Van’s own or co-written demos and the various vocalists used on those original sessions.

Hence the title – ‘Same Pen, Different Voices’.

And while Van’s voice may be absent from this release – his spirit and his style are all over it, with some absolute melodic classics about to be launched. This is a double disc of lost Van Stephenson tunes written with many of his regular writing partners such as Dave Innis, Sam Lorber, Robert White Johnson, Bob Farrell and Dave Robbins.

But that isn’t all. Lost among the hundreds of songs were a set of session tracks written with Dann Huff for the classic Giant ‘Time To Burn’ album. One of those songs has already been featured on the ‘Van’s Versions’ release (‘Get Over It’), but I’m excited to announce the others will all make their debut on this release and they all feature the voice of Dann Huff himself.

Three of these tracks have never been released before and I must thank Dann for his co-operation in this release and allowing the tracks to finally see the light of day.

They may have been lost for 30 years, but they are magnificent!

It doesn’t stop there – there is a trilogy of songs co-written with Jaime Kyle (previously released), two featuring vocalist Robert White Johnson and another featuring TJ Seals, son of Dan Seals.

Sadly, we couldn’t ask Van himself about the details behind these songs, so many are still missing credits and even the vocalists themselves are unknown in many cases. I have managed to fill in the details behind some of them thanks to the co-writers, but to all those that are featured on the songs – thank you for adding your talents to Van’s legacy and please know that the performances delivered some 20-30 years ago now live on today and sound as good as ever.

Disc 1 is all male lead vocals; Disc 2 is mostly female lead vocals.

Van Stephenson – Same Pen, Different Voices 2CD set will be released by MelodicRock Classics July 26.

The debut of the rocking Giant demo ‘Holding On For Dear Life’ will happen this Saturday on Steve Price’s Rock Show on ARfm – tune in via www.arfm.co.uk

The song will be launched online here next week.

The awesome cover art is the brainchild of Arnaud Leger.

Track Listing:

CD1:

01. Holding On For Dear Life

(Van Stephenson, Dann Huff)