Stevie Weinstein-Foner

Boston-bred, LA-based musician and artist Stevie Weinstein-Foner offers songs of sincerity, optimism, and cosmic perspective on new album Wondering, which features contributions from Herman Dune, Jolie Holland, and Levon Henry, among others.

“What we need is some good medicine,” sings Stevie Weinstein Foner on the opening track to Wondering—specifically, “a dose of something strong and bright”. For those feeling battered, fatigued and discouraged after a globally tough year, it’s an apt sentiment; and the real joy and balm of Stevie’s sophomore album is that it supplies exactly what it seeks. Its songs are edifying, reassuring like a post-bath hug in a towel—from Levon Henry’s languorous, breathy saxophone on Good Medicine to the glass-half-full strut of Promised Land, and the windows-down, chiming sweetness of My Friend Guitar.

Above all, these are songs that are designed to be shared—“campfire rock songs”, in Stevie’s words—with choruses that feel like home. Considering Stevie’s own family history, steeped in socialism, it’s hardly surprising. His grandfather, Philip Foner, was a labor historian whose friends included Pete Seeger and Paul Robeson. Stevie’s own artistic awakening began at Camp Thoreau-in-Vermont (described affectionately in the Wall Street Journal as “a nudist colony with kayaks”)—via afternoon “Sing” sessions, with giant lyric cards for songs by Pink Floyd, REM and the Indigo Girls, plus his camp counsellor’s love of Pavement and the Flaming Lips. Where Stevie’s debut album, 2013’s Let It Be Told, offered fuzzy, lo-fi grooves, Wondering is gloriously fully-realized, honed over years of playing and touring with partner Jolie Holland.

Recording on the album began in earnest in fall 2018, in the Brooklyn, NYC studio of Jared Samuel (Kevin Morby, Sean Lennon), whom Stevie describes as a “song midwife”, with relaxed, easeful sessions continuing over the course of the year. Friends who appear on the record include Samantha Parton (the Be Good Tanyas), Adam Brisbin (Buck Meek), David Ivar (Herman Dune) and Joanna Sternberg. Its arrangements trade in the warm sounds of mellotron, Wurlitzer, piano, guitar and accordion; in “ooh-la-la-las”, irresistible harmonies, and, at its close, the haunting call of loons on a lake.

The fact that these songs connect so powerfully is because they’re lived-in and real. “I’m always reaching for vulnerability in my songwriting,” says Stevie. You can hear it on Give Me a Song, which, with Blythe Gruda’s harmonies, has all the tenderness of a Gram Parsons/Emmylou Harris duet. Elsewhere, there are echoes of musical heroes Daniel Johnston and fellow New Englander Jonathan Richman, as well as nods to mystic poet Kabir and American romantic Mary Oliver. Alongside its many rousing moments, there is room for reflection on Wondering, culminating in the album’s gently heartbreaking elegy, Echo. This album was seven years in the making—paraphrasing Oliver’s poem “Don’t Worry,” Stevie sings, “Things just take the time they take”—and it arrives now with perfect timing.