Sometimes life throws you a curve. By the time you read this profile about Denver singer-songwriter Stephanie Mabey, she’ll no longer be officially based in Denver. The day after she interviewed for this piece, she moved to Utah, largely for economic reasons.
Even so, the buzz already being generated around Mabey’s upcoming CD release, Wake Up Dreaming, really suggests that she’s destined for a bigger platform than the local scene of any one town, including Denver. Her fun, quirky single from the record, “Zombie Song,” has generated over 125,000 YouTube views to date—quite an accomplishment for an indie artist without national promotion.
Wake Up Dreaming marks a milestone for Mabey as a performing artist, but her journey actually began with an interest in the craft of songwriting itself. “When I was younger,” she says, “I wasn’t exposed to a lot of, like, really off-the-radar music—a lot of what I heard was just like on the radio, like a lot of these 90’s bands…but when there would be a song on the radio that was crafted in a way that really seemed to connect with people, those were the songs that stood out to me.” While many musicians cite a number of specific artists as their influences, Mabey claims that her biggest musical influence is when she hears a really good song, regardless of the genre.
“I even have a weak spot for like really well-crafted guilty pleasure pop music,” says Mabey, “just because something about a perfectly crafted song is like the best feeling to me, to listen to something like that. I think you can mess it up with the production, and make it sound like garbage music, but at the heart there’s still this song that works, and that’s what people gravitate toward.”
Mabey’s interest in songwriting led her to join the Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI) around age 14. She began focusing on writing and co-writing songs for other artists, mainly in the country genre. A pivotal moment came for her when she won a songwriter’s competition and the chance for a publishing deal—a deal which, she says, “did not go well.” From that point, Mabey says, her focused shifted from writing songs for others to writing for herself, and developing as an artist in her own right. Along with that shift came a migration in her musical style away from pop/country to the more expressive, quirky, occasionally tongue-in-cheek style that appears on Dreaming.
Playful is one word Mabey uses frequently to describe her overall sound. “I have a 4-year-old,”, she says, “and being in that imaginative space with her, and starting my day off with like, playing Play-Doh, I feel has really opened up for me some creative territory where I can be more playful in my music.”
That playfulness (along with a healthy dose of dry humor) really shines in the record’s first single, “Zombie Song,” which Mabey says she wrote as sort of a joke for her brothers. “They were so into zombie culture a couple years ago, and I picked up the Zombie Survival Guide, and I just thought, ‘Why not? This could totally be a love song.’ The music video not only went viral, but also gained attention from local TV and radio media in several states.
Mabey is careful to emphasize that the album itself isn’t limited to the comedic vibe found on “Zombie Song,” but that the record expresses a wide range of emotions. “There’s some real serious moments,” she says. “I’m excited to see what can happen with a project like this. ‘The Zombie Song’ I sort of saw as something to initially get people’s interest, which is kind of what’s happening a little bit; but I’m hoping that substance that’s in the record will keep people there, because I feel like it goes all across the board.”
In keeping with Mabey’s background as a songwriter, she says she really tried to focus on creating well-crafted songs. “I feel like the thing I’ve tried to do with all of them is create these little short stories in the most airtight way that I can, but also keep them relatable as far as the universal themes that I’m using them to express.”
While we are saying goodbye to Stephanie Mabey as a Denver resident, don’t expect her to disappear from the Denver scene; she plans to visit and play shows frequently in the area. Meanwhile, look for a late winter/early spring release for Wake Up Dreaming. Denver will miss Stephanie Mabey, but her record is one you won’t want to miss.
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