“[The artwork] was so beautiful,” he says via phone while driving through his Nashville home. Stephen Sanchez performs at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 7, at Jacobs Pavilion. “I remember really, really wanting to listen to it. That was what sparked the rest of the record hunting. I really just wanted to find the most beautiful album covers. At that time, there was not a single album that did not look like a work of art. It was easy to get entrenched. I was experiencing love for the first time as a young guy out in the wild. I think that music spoke about it in a unique way that I wasn’t accustomed to. It wasn’t around too much when I was growing up. It’s kind of a unicorn for me. It was just the mystery of it that pulled me towards it as I dived in.”
Having grown up “in the church,” as he puts it, Sanchez originally tried to write a gospel tune when he began writing tunes in his teens.
“It was really terrible,” he says of the track. “It sounded more like a suicide song.”
He recovered from that experience and then caught on with a mainstream audience when he released a cover of Cage the Elephant’s “Cigarette Daydreams.” His rendition went viral.
“I thought Cage was a cool sounding band at the time,” says Sanchez when asked about the cover. “It was influential in my younger days because it’s talking about the existential crisis of growing up and feeling a great deal of everything all at once. It was one of the first songs that helped me understand those feelings at the time.”
When it came time to cut his debut, 2021’s What Was, Not Now, he worked with established producer Ian Fitchuk (Beyoncé, Leon Bridges, Maggie Rogers, Kacey Musgraves, Baz Lurhmann, Joy Olodokun, Chris Stapleton). Though he was new to the recording process, he adjusted quickly when he realized he would work in Fitchuk’s home studio.
“It had the elements of a studio for sure, but it still felt very chill and very relaxed,” says Sanchez when asked about the space. “It wasn’t too intimidating. It’s anxiety-inducing to work with anyone for the first time. If it was a decked-out studio that would’ve made it worse. It was good that we were in a home with good people. It was in Nashville, where we’ve done everything so far. We’re doing some stuff in New York now with Mark Ronson who’s worked with Amy Winehouse and did the Barbie soundtrack.”
In the wake of that EP, Sanchez released Angel Face, a concept album about a troubadour who falls in love with a woman named Evangeline. The songs show off Sanchez’s Roy Orbison-like croon. He just reissued the album with bonus tracks. Some of the the bonus tracks came from the same sessions, and Sanchez pulled others from the vault.
“It’s exciting to be able to reintroduce a little more of Angel Face and close that chapter out,” he says of the deluxe version. “It gives us a reason to tour more too.”
The shivering, Elvis-like “Howling at Wolves,” a standout on the reissued album, has a haunted energy to it.
“It’s just a revenge song for Evangeline after the troubadour is gunned down,” says Sanchez. “She goes insane and becomes a rampaging murderous, vengeful woman hoping to take down that no-good rotten hunter. What better song to be that soundtrack than this spooky number?”
His new summer single, the chirping “Baby Blue Bathing Suit,” shows off a different side of his sound.
“We did it with some good folks,” he says of the tune. “Amy Allen and Dan Nigro, who did a lot with tons of different artists, worked on it. We worked on that track for the Beach Boys documentary. It was very exciting. We got to be connected with the Beach Boys, who are just incredible in their own right and legends in their own time.”
Sanchez says the current tour will aim to represent the Angel Face storyline with its production.
“It’s going to be the most unbelievable show that anyone has ever seen this year,” he says with only half seriously. “You can go see Sabrina Carpenter and see Noah Kahan, but if you go and see Stephen Sanchez, it will absolutely knock you on your ass and make you feel like you stepped back in time and are in a completely different era. We have incredible acts joining us. It’s the first time we’re doing a big set show that’s a theatrical production. It will be the last time we do it too. People need to come and see it. They definitely need to come and see it.”
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This article appears in Jul 17-30, 2024.
