The Breadwinner

Bread·win·ner
-Noun
1: someone who has to learn what it means to be grown up.
Crouching in her backyard garden, Shannon Stephens is poised for greatness. Although she ran from music for almost a decade, she’s not hiding now. Recorded in her living room over the last year, The Breadwinner belies its humble roots; with themes of love, home, family, and a vision of the end of the world, the lush and exquisite sound of this album is anything but domestic.

Shannon was born into a musical family. As a baby she would crawl under the piano as her mother played old church hymns; her father, on his sunburst Gibson, would host “hootenannys” for family friends with their guitars and banjos. Shannon tried the piano, but preferred her kid-sized guitar. By the time she was a teenager she was a prolific songwriter, focusing mainly on “cheesy, romantic songs for boys liked.” In her late teens, Shannon survived the inability to “jam” and the trauma of her 80’s guitar-hero style instructor by chucking her “ax” across the room.

“This second album was a real effort – we have a child now and bills to pay – but I think those pressures may have actually made it better”.
Then, one night at a concert in college, Shannon Stephens met Sufjan Stevens (no relation), who quickly invited her to play guitar in a band he had started pulling together. Soon, along with Matt Haseltine and Jamie Kempkers, they had formed Marzuki. Shannon says, “It was the most fun I’d ever had with music—and friends! We stayed up late in the dorms, recording our jam sessions with an old boombox and goofing around.