Culture

A Go-To Producer, Burgeoning Pop Singer Stephens Now Takes the Mic

Steve Visneau
A Go-To Producer, Burgeoning Pop Singer Stephens Now Takes the Mic

Producer, songwriter and recording artist John Allen Stephens, 32, is arguably one of the most important people in Houston’s music scene. As the owner of Third Coast Recording Co., a private recording studio he runs out of his East End home, Stephens has produced albums for many of H-Town’s top acts, including The Suffers, Camera Cult, Space Kiddettes, Tee Vee and Mantra Love.

Stephens has an artist career of his own, though, and will drop his R&B- and pop-tinged sophomore LP this summer, an autobiographical album that delves into what the young musician has learned from his past mistakes. “I’ve been wild my whole life,” he chuckles, before mentioning that one of the singles from the album is titled “Molotov.” (Listeners will have to pay close attention to the lyrics to find out why.)

Stephens encourages fans to check out his Bandcamp, where he’s releasing lots of new tunes recorded during quarantine, on Fridays, when the site waives fees and sends 100 percent of revenue to artists. 

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In Homecoming Show, Isabel Wallace-Green Dances Her Way Back to Jones Hall with Alvin Ailey Company

Isabel Wallace-Green (photos by Kent Barker and Xavier Mack)

HOUSTON-BORN DANCER AND arts educator Isabel Wallace-Green vividly recalls seeing a performance of Alvin Ailey’s landmark 1960 dance work Revelations as a child, peering over a high balcony in Jones Hall. “The dancers were pretty small!” laughs Wallace-Green, who nevertheless was captivated, especially by a section in Revelations titled “Wade in the Water,” where translucent white, cobalt, and aquamarine cloths are stretched across the stage to evoke baptismal waters and — for African American slaves — the riverbed as a pathway to freedom. “I’d never seen anything like that.”

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Just Desserts: Is This Artist’s ‘Sweet’ Work Good Enough to Eat?

FOR ANNA SWEET, the hunger for sugar, carbs, and fat is much like the art world’s hunger for art — especially art made by attractive, colorful, larger-than-life individuals.

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