Événement

3 Hand Stephen

About 3 Hand Stephen

3 Hand Stephen is performing and recording artist Stephen Cohen, who performs original, poetic folk music using voice, acoustic guitar, homemade and custom made cigar box guitars, a one of a kind custom made miniature guitar and an original homemade 5 String Thing instrument.

Stephens first album, The Tree People, was a vinyl album recorded in a studio in the woods near Eugene, Oregon in 1979 with his creative acoustic ensemble of the same name. It was originally sold only in Eugene, but somehow appeared across the ocean, and was discovered worldwide by record collectors twenty five years after it was first recorded. Stephen was contacted by several record companies, leading to CD and vinyl reissues of the first two Tree People albums by record companies in Japan and Spain. Stephens solo acoustic guitar piece from the first album, The Tree People, No More School, was included in an acoustic guitar compilation, Wayfaring Strangers, Guitar Soli, by the Chicago record company The Numero Group. The Tree People, whose original music was hard to classify the first time around, were now being called Fathers of Freak Folk and Psych Folk Pioneers. Stephen brought the Tree People back for one last series of concerts and one last album, and Guerssen Records of Spain released CD and vinyl editions of a 3rd Tree People album, It's My Story in 2010, and Stephen did his last performance under the Tree People name in 2011 at the Musiques Disperses Festival in Spain.

Stephen has added cigar box guitar to his repertoire, released 3 String Stephen Plays Cigar Box Guitar in 2014, and performed at the Pennsylvania Cigar Box Guitar Festival in 2015 and the 12th Annual Cigar Box Festival in Huntsville, Alabama in 2016. Stephen was a Resident Artist at Jack Straw Cultural Center in Seattle in 2015, and has released a vinyl EP, Talk to Me, of music he created at that residency using his voice, the voices of 3 guest artists, and 5 of his instruments. He is releasing a single of 2 songs with his one of a kind miniature guitar, Miniature Planet and Little Bluebird, this fall.