At age six, Dusty Lee Stephensen received his first guitar, and naturally he began writing songs and singing right away. Since then, Dusty has forged a successful career in the performing arts industry, most notably with the Wanderers.
At this year’s Adelaide Guitar Festival, Dusty is debuting his new solo project, Dustyn. Glam Adelaide spoke to Dusty about this exciting new project and where his love of performing and the guitar came from.
“From as early as I can remember I have always wanted to play and perform music. I got my first guitar when I was six years old and I haven’t really looked back ever since. I worked out pretty early on that it’s just an expression that is quite intuitive for me, and probably makes translating my feelings clearer than my words sometimes can. It’s always done that for me, even when I was younger – it’s a bit meditative for me. I could zone in and out of life when I play.”
For the past few Adelaide Fringes, Adelaide audiences would have seen Dusty rocking out with the high-energy 27 Club.
“We’re about to do a season of the 27 Club in Sydney during September. A lot of the music in the show I grew up absolutely loving, especially Hendrix. Hendrix was always my gateway into Rock ‘n’ Roll, and into unlocking the potential of guitar. In the 27 Club Hendrix is a big focus. It’s just unfortunate that all the artists we feature in the show all passed away at that age. The show works really well because they all had such different strengths, and it’s been fun pulling them together. There’s some incredible arrangements in the show and it creates a lot of potential to take the audience on quite the journey, and ourselves as well.”
Dusty shared that the idea came from his new solo project.
“It’s been a long time coming for me. Anyone who’s known me reasonably well knows that I first started talking about having my own solo project maybe 10 years ago, But I guess it never really felt like the right time until now. The Wanderers has been my main focus for many years. As a band, we’ve been releasing albums and touring for almost the last decade. But during COVID when everything stopped I had my home studio and just was writing all this music. I was used to writing for Wanderers, but there were a bunch of songs I started writing that I felt didn’t quite match their sound, so I kept them for myself. I had no idea what that meant at the time. I wasn’t sure whether to put it out as Dusty Lee Stevenson, or I was toying with the idea of coming up with a whole alter ego. It’s worked out that the songs that were close to me that it actually seemed appropriate to put it out under my birth name. Another reason is because I wanted a clean slate with it. It’s rare that you can have a project and the name you’re releasing it under is your real name – same spelling and everything: Dustyn. My parents have always called me Dusty but I like to think that these songs are similar to how I might have felt about the world when I was a curious child called Dustyn.”
Effortless in its fresh, soulful sound, textured with vocal harmonies and lush strings, Dustyn is a remarkably layered journey of release and resolve. This magical performance will see Dusty being joined by Ross Irwin (The Cat Empire, The Bamboos) and a 10-piece band as he shares these songs live for the first time, stripping away the tarnish of adulthood and rediscovering his essence.
“It’s going to be a very special night. Wanderers fans are used to seeing me do the big, loud pieces, but this show is more about songs of expression. The Adelaide Guitar Festival has allowed me the opportunity to explore the full extent of what is possible for me with my music. I have a string quartet joining the band. I had this idea of blending those classic cinematic soundtrack style string lines with the music I was up and writing, which is kind of a late night soul vibe. This is the music I wrote on the piano or guitar while my daughter was sleeping at 1am and I couldn’t sleep. I was trying to be quiet but it brought this different colour out in my voice and in the sort of chord progressions and melodies that I would choose but I always heard dreamy strings going through it. When I explained that to Ross Irwin one time about the scope of the project and just seeing if he’d want to do some string arrangements for me I was stoked that he wanted to. He saw the vision as clearly as I did.”
Dustyn – Adelaide Guitar Festival
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre
September 15 at 7pm
https://guitar.adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au/whats-on/dustyn
Photo credit: Michelle Grace Hunder
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