Stephanie Lee is currently working on her 5th CD release. She is living in Taos, NM, and working in Los Angeles and San Francisco, CA on studio vocals, instrumental music for film and TV, and collaborations with other artists, as well as working on preproduction for her 5th CD. (See Discography page.)
She often is compared to the late, great Nina
Simone in her vocal quality, but that's just her low voice.
She is also compared to Rickie Lee Jones, Joni Mitchell,
Alanis Morrisette, Ellen Mclwaine. But, Lee says, she doesn't
want to sound like anyone else and it's true: there is no one
like her (not yet anyway). But she does have many beautiful
voices; and with that multi-textured vocal style and finely crafted songwriting she gives voice to many
peoples' stories, all kinds of stories from all kinds of folks.
She has been blending these two passions of music and socio political activism into her life and it is forming
her career in a whole new way. She admits that her life has politicized
her to the bone, being a runaway abuse survivor at age thirteen who
practiced on pianos in churches from Vermont to
Oregon.
Becoming a mother as a teenager and then becoming a single mother in
her early twenties – and being poor – deepened her socio-political awareness
into an exquisitely absurd edge that bursts out in hilarious
tunes like "White Picket Fence."
Stephanie has been an anti-war and anti-Nuclear
activist, active over the years in local groups in Taos, New Mexico
and in the past has done benefits for the Bill of
Rights Defense Committee (B.O.R.D.C, the Main Chapter out of
Northhampton, Massachusetts). She says, "I made a commitment to this
organization after being surveiled and having my CD single release, 'Get
out the Bushes, Get out the Thieves' confiscated from my
check-in luggage at JFK," then being surveiled and having her
business obstructed via the mail and email. That experience created an
automatic focus on working to uphold the Bill of Rights.
"Yeah, You smarty pants Constitution mongers oughta get
real and pay attention, quit whining 'bout your civilian rights and the
Geneva convention..." — a line from the satirical song "Why Should
I Care," a song on her third album,
"One Little Seed."
Her music – so says Sarah Meadows in the Santa Fe Reporter, Santa Fe, New Mexico – "...blends
elements of folk, fragmented, honest folk, with luscious jazz and funk."
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