Americana singer-songwriter living in NJ.  Appeared in venues in NJ, Pennsylvania, Maine and New York including the Bitter End in NYC.

In the years since his first album, 2004's Last Call, Nashville singer-songwriter Stephen Simmons has wandered the wide landscape of American roots music, from contemplative country and finger-picked folk to rugged and ragged blues-rock.

 On his 12th album, Hunch, released October 24, 2025, he hints at the thread that ties 20 years of ideas together.

"It makes me feel better when I tap into the truth" he sings in the closing track on Hunch, "Someone Like You," a ballad brimming with Rhodes chimes and gentle longing.

Tapping into the truth doesn't only mean one thing, and the 10 tracks on Hunch show the breadth of what it means to mine what feels real, from connection and disconnection to wonder, sorrow, reflection and confusion.

"It's not therapy, but it's therapeutic," Simmons says. "People talk about when you first start writing, sometimes it's almost like clearing your throat. You're not really at the thing yet, and sometimes you write for a while before you get in some kind of flow. And then something starts coming together. And when you feel it, you know it's true — and you didn't know yet how you were gonna say it 'til it comes out. It's gratifying."

Hunch's predecessor, 2020's Family Album, explored the truth of where Simmons comes from in deep detail, with 18 songs about family and hidden history captured inside his grandmother's empty house in Woodbury, Tennessee.

Released amid the pandemic, it originated and unintentionally stayed close to home, as Simmons and so many of his contemporaries got stuck introducing and supporting new music virtually, smartphone sets streaming from living room to living room.

Hunch is the post-pandemic door flung wide open, carrying Simmons back to the road and miles away from Tennessee. He's in a Dresden sushi bar, wondering how and why love sparks. He's in a rented car in Amsterdam, tracing what takes us toward wrong turns. He's gazing at the moon.

But wherever Hunch travels, the narratives always seem to pull Simmons back home.

Mid-tempo country cut "Grandpa's Jacket" considers how we crave ties to where we came from, even while we chase adventure. The album's title track, while just as imbued with truth, comes at life decisions with a wink and a bluesy lurch. Everyone had ideas for where that kid from Woodbury might go. But, "Uncle Glen had the best plan of the bunch," Simmons sings, "strummin' on the guitar and live your life on a hunch."

"That's the only one that's a little cheeky," Simmons says. "It's tongue-in-cheek. It's a blues-rock song. Then everything else goes a completely different direction. I don't know why, it just kinda felt like a pivot."

 To render the full pivot, Simmons turned to folks who've been part of his musical story tracing almost back to when he first left Woodbury.

 Goffrey Moore (Jonatha Brooke, Maia Sharp) produced Hunch in his Madison, Tennessee, studio, and he and Simmons invited contributions from lap and pedal steel player Paul Niehaus, singer/pianist Molly Jewell, bassists Dave Jacques and Billy Mercer, and drummers Matthew Crouse and Bryan Owings.

 All accomplished players who've collaborated with country and Americana greats from John Prine to Patty Griffin, they've all played with Simmons on various songs and stages over decades.

These well- and long-established personal and musical connections allowed Moore and Simmons to experiment in comfort, letting songs go where they seemed to want to. The songwriter's initial intent was to hole up in Moore's century-old cabin to capture a stripped-down set. But as the recording progressed and friends came in, Hunch took a more dynamic and textured turn.

 "It was a different way to do it for me," Simmons says. "It kinda lent itself to, like, 'OK, well, maybe we'll go big on this one.' And then all of a sudden, it presents itself."

 Call it following intuition. Call it living on a hunch.

“Eleven Birds” is the first “solo” collection of material that I have released since 2010. The album was recorded in Nashville, Tennessee and produced by Shawn Byrne. You will hear a wide range of influences on this album that range from 80’s post punk (REM, early U2, Echo & The Bunnymen, Psych Furs) to Bowie, Dylan, The Beatles, The Kinks, and the Stones.  (Release date 11/11/2023)

Previous releases include:

"Bridge St Main" - (Tiki God, 2000)
"April's Fool" - (Wingding Records , 2005)
"Charlie Degenhart" - (CGMP, 2010)
"TVA" - (Allrights Reserved, 2017)

My new album, "only the love songs", is now on Soundcloud. It's the latest in a series that began last year, as I set out to release online the best songs I have written over the last 50 years – none of them having got onto the radar screen of the public before. Some I already had good recordings of, but many needed to be recorded for the first time. The project continues...!

BIO:
In his mid-20’s, grad student J.M. Kearns was bitten by the songwriting virus, planted by the insidious influence of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and other reprobates. He wrote his first song after getting his heart broken on a canoe trip, and after that the songs just kept coming. So he ditched a future in academic philosophy, and thumbed his way to Los Angeles, where songwriting was hot.

In L.A. there were a couple of near-breakthroughs — an audition at Electra-Asylum Records, a song meeting with Warren Beatty — but then things got real. Kearns had to eat. He worked as a house painter, then a telegram-singing donkey, and then he really hunkered down, as a bureaucrat at a huge downtown law firm, exchanging molecules with tall office buildings. He did a lot of writing and recording, but not a lot of performing.

That changed when he moved to Nashville. After a thousand writers’ nights, he was given his first real gig, an 8:30 slot at a notorious club called the Gold Rush. Good things started to happen. Kearns found his mojo as a performer and a band formed around him, dubbed the Lonely Mammals. In 2007 he issued a CD with them called Death or Life, and Elmore magazine gave it a rave review. Also that year, his novel The Deep End was published (https://www.amazon.com/Deep-End-J-M-Kearns/dp/1500502707 ). And five of Kearns’ songs were recorded by independent artists. 

In 2010, pursued by a giant snowstorm with his cat in an old Ford hemorrhaging oil, Kearns made the move to Cape May, a sunny beach town at the southern tip of New Jersey, where he performs in a trio called The Squares with his partner Debra Donahue and their friend M.Q. Murphy. And of course, he keeps writing songs. Oddly, his life’s circle became unbroken when a musician friend got him a job teaching philosophy at a nearby university. In May 2024 Kearns released his first solo album, Before the coffee gets too cold.

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