Fred E. Stephenson
Velvet-Handed-Mystery-Guy

Born & raised in Stayton, OR in August of 1969. I grew up watching
my grandfather Fred play the blues on his 1956 Kay hollowbody guitar
& my mother playing boogie-woogie blues on piano. I come from a very
musical family with most all of my sisters & brothers playing instruments
from piano to guitar to accordian. My mother began taking guitar lessons
while I was 6 months in the womb which I believe is the primary reason to this day why I find solace in the soothing sounds of the guitar.

I fell in love w/ guitar when I met my best friend at 13 who had a red Fender Jaguar & a small amplifier. He hit the Big G chord with the volume cranked up & I was sold. My parents bought me and Ibanez Roadstar 11 and an amplifier & I was off to the races.

Me and a buddy in high school formed our first band on the afternoon of the high school talent show with an original song we wrote that day. We were to be billedas the Righteous Flowers but when the student announcer read our name, he misreadit as the Righteous Butterflies & we stuck with it. It went over so well, we kept the band & scheduled regular rehearsals eventually renting out community centers & throwing our own parties. We played at the high school pep assemblies & school dances but it wasn't until we landed the gig of playing in the school auditorium for the annual Stayton High School Dance Team competition to all the surrounding school dance teams, that I was entirely hooked on this concept.

After graduation & a year of slaving away working & driving forklift, I decided to attend Musician's Institute Summer Session in Hollywood, CA, since I couldn't afford to attend the entire year, I figures a summer session would do me some good. It was there I met a great friend & bass player by the name of Dusty Rhoades. We jammed as much as we could & aspired to put together the next Jane's Addiction. Well, summer session was coming to an end, and I was preparing to move back home
until Dusty told me to register for the school year which I thought was a complete joke, since it cost $6000 that I didn't have. He then informed me his mother was going to flip the bill as long as I went up to Portland, OR with him to meet her. That was the move that changed my life....

As time went on Dusty & I seemed to go our seperate ways & it was about that time when I met drummer Jeff Duffy(formerly of the Freddy Jones Band) out in the parking lot at MI listening to the Grateful Dead and taking care of other miscellaneous tasks. He popped his head in the window & asked me to join him and some friends for a jam session for a
Grateful Dead cover band. Well I did that, and that's when we landed a gig for a Hawaiian party for a modeling agency. We played the gig, the only gig as Shroom Sundae.

After I graduated at MI, I moved back to Portland, OR in hopes of joining a great band that would take me who knows where...
I began playing at blues jams at clubs such as Mark's Hawthorne Pub where I filled in for a band on guitar because there guitar player did'nt show up that night. Well, they decided to give him the Big Black Boot, & I joined Linda Madison & Blues Comin' at Ya'. It was there I met bassist Bill Rudolph of the Crackpots in Exile from Detroit and Jeff Haigerty on harmonica from Indiana. Jeff H. and myself would throw jam parties all the time and this is where I met the rest of my band soon to be donned the Treefrogs.

We began our journey in 1992 & played over 500 shows selling out the Crystal Ballroom for our Final Show. We recorded a Live CD & a studio CD together. After the Frogs disbanded, I put together a 7-piece band by the name of Blender & played some great shows at venues such as the Alladin Theatre & the Mt. Tabor Pub but it didn't last long. The music biz was beginning to feel a little like work, so rather than burning out I thought I'd take
a little break from the bandlife and wait until I started to jones to play out again with other musician's.

After a long 4 yrs. it was then I ran into an old friend at the 'ol Horse Brass Pub. A fellow I'd always talked with about putting something together. His name is Danny East & the rest is history in the making...
Stay tuned.