Sun Beyond the Storm

• Track Listing

Jacob Robert Stephens grew up near a small logging community in northwest Montana as the youngest son in a Timber family. He began working and learning about the woods at a young age, and by twenty five he had held jobs as a logger, fishing and raft guide, English teacher, and firefighter. Returning home to Montana in 2010 after a three year stint in Alaska where he studied literature and worked as a fishing guide, Jacob was ready to leave the 'music closet' where he had quietly learned to cultivate his stories and find his voice. Upon his return, Jacob wrote and recorded his debut album, 'Here Comes Hindsight,' over a year period. Immmediately following, Jacob began writing the songs for what would become, a year or so later, 'The Sun Beyond the Storm' (released in November 2104). Notably, Jacob's footprint on the latter album has only increased as he recorded much of the material himself and worked solo in production, editing, and mixing. Thus, the album is unique, moody, and undeniably a brainchild of Jacob's. The Missoula Indendent wrote of his first album, 'Here Comes Hindsight:' 'Jacob Robert Stephens gets back to the basics of a well-worn genre, mixing graceful melodies and familiar chord changes with rural, working-class themes and characters. This album is a perfect listen for long nights in candlelit cabins, and you can almost hear the flames flicker and the hardwood floor creak in the very fabric of Stephens' songs.' These assertions hold true on his new effort, 'The Sun Beyond the Storm,' and he rarely strays from the rural north where he grew up. These songs do not use the landscape as a novelty though, nor employ it's cliches as many modern country and 'regional' artists do. Rather, the sense of place is understood as the universe in which it's characters navigate, and hold conversations, through song. The place just happens to be Montana. It is neither celebrated nor packaged and sold, but merely studied with a poetic eye, perhaps a broken heart, with a voice smooth and fit for such tales.