A song about an evening I had while living in Chicago in '95. I was playing a solo gig at Nick's Tavern on Milwaukee and this older gent with a cowboy hat and a guitar asked if he could sit in for a few songs. I said yes, we had fun, and then he invited me down to another bar, The Gallery Cabaret, to pick with him where he was playing an open mic, or something like it. He was a very kind and talented fellow who made an impression on me, and his name was Dwain Story.

Dwain Story

A murky tale about  the summer of '76 in a little river town, told from the perspective of a 10 year old boy with a head full of the fantastic and a belly full of fear. 
   I grew up in a little SW Iowa river town, in a house across the street from the large grove of willow and cottonwoods that the Nishna-Botna river wound its way through. It was the 1970s, and we spent our summers on our bikes, riding all over town, and often down by that river. My folks didn’t like us going down there unattended but they knew that we probably would go anyway. So my dad made up some story about a creature called a Wheelie Monster that lived in that river, to scare us away from its slippery mud banks and sandy sinkholes. 
   I wrote this song about that, sort of…and about the huge old willow trees near the river that served as our private clubhouses; and about my Spirit of 76 plastic AM radio that I won playing bingo at the bicentennial celebration in town that summer.

Pottawattamie County 1976

My version of a song by Yo La Tengo, of my band The Mayflies album "Saturday Afternoon Girl."

Saturday Afternoon Girl

Did I Tell You (Yo La Tengo cover)

Traditional song arranged by me and played with my band The Mayflies in 2006.

Jerusalem Ridge

St. James Hospital (trad. arr by Stacy Webster)

I first learned this traditional English tune in a hotel room in Des Moines after a desperately lonely evening. I was feeling like a rover; on the road and trying to sort out my self. Like the song's main character, Spencer the Rover. 
Spencer found his way back home as a better man and so did I.

spencer the rover (trad)

Singer/guitarist/songwriter born in the bay area of California and raised in the fertile Loess hills region of the midwest. Who spent his young adulthood honing his craft as a musician living and playing music in the mountains and cities of Colorado and New Mexico, and in cities like Chicago, Minneapolis and Ann Arbor. Currently based in Eastern Iowa, Stacy plays all over the greater Midwest region, and in Colorado with his band Winterland. Currently working on a solo record, there will likely be touring in the fall with a new band in support of this release.

Stacy Webster Music

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