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The cinematic song craft of Stephan Bayley has returned on City Squirrel’s third album, defeat. The Portland-based songwriter has released the follow-up to 2010′s blow music with delicate mad worship and, like its predecessors, it’s filled with songs complete with chord changes and melodies you can never anticipate but stay in your head for days [...]

Red Pill to Release City Squirrel’s Third Record

PRESS RELEASE Red Pill Music is pleased to announce the April 17, 2012 release of defeat, the third album by Portland’s City Squirrel, who were recently named as finalists in the Red Bull Soundstage competition. “City Squirrel is one of those artists I really enjoy having bragging rights to,” Red Pill co-owner Lauren Markow said. [...]

Sometimes eighth grade music classes produce more than just a winter and a spring concert. For former St. Louisan, Stephan Bayley (aka City Squirrel), that eighth grade music class produced an awareness of a gift and a passion that would ignite the singer songwriter’s career. “Imagine a whole room full of kids who all had to learn how to play John Denver’s, ‘Take Me Home Country Road,’ chides Bayley. In just two short years, he would go from an eighth grade music classroom to club stages around the St. Louis area performing his own original music. Stephan’s first band, a psychedelic folk infused group called The Exit, garnered enough of a following to be praised by The St. Louis Post-Dispatch & The Riverfront Times.

Songwriting flowed naturally for Bayley, as did the ability to teach himself rhythm guitar, drums, bass, flute, accordion, mandolin, and even xylophone. “My dad gave me informal lessons on piano as a kid, and I took guitar for a couple of years, but I’ve been able to learn enough on various instruments on my own to at least add parts on recordings.”

Shunning any heavy appetite for aggressive rock, Stephan’s musicality was grounded in artists such as Richard Thompson, Big Star, Crowded House and Roxy Music, as well as melodies and harmonies found in Everly Brothers’ songs. Reaching back for inspiration as well as forward figures heavily in the formula of Bayley’s songwriting style. More recently as a fan of Grizzly Bear, Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci and the late Elliot Smith, Bayley continues to evolve his writing by inviting the influence of new music to inspire him. The appeal of his music is generationally ubiquitous. Millenials will find the psychedelic folk pop flavor of Grizzly Bear while Gen Xer fans of the Finn Brothers will hear the Crowded House influence and Boomers will hear delicious echoes of such greats as Spirit, It’s a Beautiful Day, and Fairport Convention. There is a quiet power to Stephan’s songwriting; an undeniable melancholy melds with something soothing and the contradiction is musically addicting.

Stephan Bayley’s twenty-years as a singer/songwriter have moved his talents through solo recordings as well as recording and performing with The Hungry Mind Review and his current project, City Squirrel. Throughout his career, Stephan has seen himself far more as a fan of others than as a performer and admits, “I go out of my way to reach out to my heroes, and sometimes I’m successful.” One hero, North Carolina engineer/producer, Mitch Easter, collaborated with Stephan on the last Hungry Mind Review album from 2004 (self-titled) as well as producing the 2010 City Squirrel offering, Blow Music Only With Delicate Mad Worship. He also played bass on that album, as he did on the first City Squirrel release ‘Storm’ (2005.

City Squirrel is currently based out of Portland, Oregon. Bayley also owns and runs Way Out West Studio out of his house, where the latest album was recorded.