It’s always on my mind how we somehow manage to make creativity into something not everyone can afford. Art stores, craft stores; creators are targeted as a market & offered workshops, fancy equipment, one-weird-tricks guaranteed to elevate your music/art/productivity. You can take classes that will teach you how to give classes. But the truth of art & music comes straight from the sky. Sure, it can be cultivated, but art will manifest even when your cupboard is bare, maybe especially then.

Let me introduce you to 3-hand Stephen.

Stephen Cohen has hitch-hiked across the country, performed internationally, and had his own music come creeping back into his life from across the globe. It does not surprise me to find him amazing and also down-to-earth in conversation. We spent an hour on the phone while he walked his part of the Oregon woods. I’ll do my best to share here what you won’t find on his website.

me: Tell me about Spain.

SC: We played the Musique Disperses Festival in Lleida, Spain, about 10 years ago – me and my double-bass player (Rich Hinrichsen) and my brother-in-law photographer (Ben Sussman). Jeff (Stier, co-founder of Tree People) couldn’t make the trip. Antony, the producer of the festival, found us two Spanish musicians: Jordi Gallen, a cello player, and Hector Beberide Farrus, a guy who played mandolin and just about anything else. Those guys were well prepared. I sent the mandolin player music for everything, and he wrote it all out. The cello player was a classical player who played in the symphony. We had a rehearsal with them, I think it was the day before before the performance. And there was a guy who was visiting Antony who has a label. That guy said it sounded like those guys had been playing with us forever. That guy even had a rain stick and a wooden flute for Rain Song, which is the best-received song when we perform live.

photo by Ben Sussman

On the way back to go catch a train back to Barcelona, we walked by the plaza and I sat down and started playing. You know I did a kids album, so this is another way that one things leads to another. We had a friend from Barcelona to translate, but you know music is the universal language. The concert is always a big deal, but anything leading up to that is important to me. The high-speed train from Barcelona to Lleida was pretty amazing. That’s something we could use here. That would be about a 2-hr drive, but by high-speed train was less than an hour. Also the food – the guy who threw the concert took us out to dinner. Fresh food and vegetables; the food is really good. It’s on my list if I was gonna move somewhere that would be it.

me: but I want to talk about the confluence of art and music in your life. How can you tell which way a new idea wants to go?

SC: Since I have been creating music and art and writing songs and poetry all my life, any new inspiration may come in either ideas, words, music and visuals, sometimes all at once, sometimes with one thing naturally leading to the next. The songs More Than Yoko and The Closing List both started with the words, and then the guitar part and  music followed. The Closing List video was inspired by the sight of restaurants closing during the pandemic. Anytime I make a new instrument, like the 1 String Thing or a musical sculpture, like Sister 7 Strings.

I am inspired to write a song or compose music with it. I structurally think of each piece of music like a piece of art and each piece of art like a piece of music. My art and music also merge in my drawings for my album and book covers.

me: Is there something innate that makes you keep all the broken instruments and shiny things?

SC: I definitely save everything, and especially during the pandemic when I was making things, I’d have an inspiration to make a work of art, and think, what am I gonna use? I realized I started doing that a long time ago. In some of the workshops I’ve done, for kids or special needs kids. I’m just in the habit of saving everything. I always save guitar strings. Just about everything has strings in it.