Girl with a Mirror Paul Stephenson

• 1 The Silver String 03:21
• 2 God´s Upstairs 03:45
• 3 The Frozen Bird 02:42
• 4 Earthward Bound 04:23
• 5 Windmill Sails 04:23
• 6 Rainy Day Man 04:05
• 7 Back Where You Belong 03:30
• 8 I´m Not A Thing 05:14
• 9 To Be There 03:53
• 10 Now So Far 04:40
• 11 Girl With A Mirror 04:06
• 12 Playing Neptune 03:01
• 13 Only Everything 02:54
• 14 Eyes Will Be Open 03:46
• 15 Lost Out On Below 03:29
• Total Runtime 57:12

Info for Girl with a Mirror

A decade of life with all its peaks and troughs in roughly one nanosecond. Quantum physics? Sorcery? Not quite: You can always count on a man – Paul Stephenson! No, his new Album is NOT Light Green Ball – it’s „Girl With A Mirror“.

We may wistfully revisit our youth – but no-one can ever bring it back. Not even an artist can. Although he has an advantage there, because he can transform the vicissitudes of life, losses, disillusionment and the tidemarks of time into art. Even more is being asked of him – because as an artist, he has no choice.

While Stephenson’s earlier works exude the excitement of “something’s gonna happen”, the sweet bird of youth is “on the way to Santiago” – since then, life seems to have taken the artist on the long and rocky road. In the same way, „Girl With A Mirror“ is darker; more composed, and more reflective – but hope does not desert us. In music and lyrics, Stephenson transforms the undoubtedly more sombre aspects of life, loss, disappointment and disillusionment, into pure poetry, lights up the pastel blue of an Amsterdam sky, and the dark clouds are, ultimately, not the last word.

And, what’s more: Paul Stephenson is accompanied – in the true sense of the word – supported by the outstanding musicians whose interaction is intimately interwoven in such a way that the whole is more than the sum of its parts, and the 15 songs of this album already give us a vivid impression of what Paul Stephenson sounds, and feels like, in concert – and what it’s like to be there.

Girl With A Mirror: In the mirror of the mermaid-like beauty of the girl featured on the album cover we just read one word: Masterpiece.

Paul Stephenson, vocal, guitar
Ian Melrose, guitars, dobro, flute
Don Ross, dobro
Manfred Leuchter, accordion
Lea Morris, backing vocals
Martin Huch, pedal steel
Beo Brockhausen, soprano saxophone, flute, mbira, percussion
Alessandro Gulino, electric bass
Hans-Jörg Maucksch, fretless bass
Grischa Zepf, electric bass
Ralf Gustke, drums, percussion
Geigenhof-Quartett:
Wojtek Bolimowski, violin
Aleksandra Glinka, violin
Oksana Labach, viola
Lucile Chaubard, violoncello

DSD: The here offered DSD is a DSD PCM-to-DSD conversion. Not native DSD! Future Stockfisch productions are produced in PCM 88,2 kHz / 24bit. The Stockfisch DMM-CD/SACD always has a native DSD layer. With a high quality DSD D/A converter, the sound quality should be better than the FLAC 44.1 kHz, 24 bit.

Paul Stephenson
"The story of my life: I grew up in the northeast of England and my first musical heroes were the Beatles. I'm still a fan of McCartney's songs and Lennon's granny glasses. My other big hero is James Taylor. JT runs like a golden thread through my friends in musical circles (including the acoustic guitar world's best-kept secret, Chris Jones) and my musical taste - he was first produced by McCartney, worked with lots of the other great American songwriters of the 1960s and 70s and has another big fan from the northeast of England called Sting (the nearest I have to a third musical hero). I learned to play the guitar listening to my heroes plus Simon & Garfunkel, Dylan and, from this side of the Atlantic, Ralph McTell and other folkies.

I set out for Amsterdam and Europe in 1979 to make a living of sorts from music. I played mostly in bars and youth centres, with the occasional festival or concert and appearances on radio and (once) television. I played in duos, trios and bands, and made recordings whenever I could in whatever circumstances I could afford and with whichever musicians I could round up for love of music, dressing my songs up in all kinds of usually ill-fitting clothes.

But mostly I played solo, and my most popular recording was completely solo, just a guitar and a voice (A bend in the road, released on CD in 1991). I changed my name to Tom Zola for that recording, after the two great nineteenth-century novelists Thomas Hardy and Emile Zola. TZ was paul stephenson after he'd got through the daily grind of the daytime job and getting the kids from school and had time to dream a little.

Well, it was a long dream ...

I moved to France a few years ago, and work as a translator. These days, I dream mostly in a corner of the bedroom where I keep my elementary and ageing recording equipment, which I used to finally dress up my songs in comfortable clothes. Gunter Pauler, at Stockfisch Records, got to hear them and I have the feeling that the album he's about to produce is the place I've been heading for all this time ..."

Booklet for Girl with a Mirror