Freddie Stevenson

Freddie Stevenson (born 9 March 1980 in Hereford, England) is a singer-songwriter from Edinburgh.

Early life

Stevenson is the eldest of three children born to Scottish artist and potter Charles Stevenson and children's television writer and producer Jocelyn Stevenson, co-creator of the popular programme Fraggle Rock. Stevenson was educated at Harrow School in north-west London from 1993-1998 during which time he taught himself to play guitar before moving to RADA to study drama.

Acting

Upon graduating from RADA in 2002, he appeared in a number of television and stage roles including Cambridge Spies, in which he appeared briefly, and State of Play, in which he was on-screen for just under thirty seconds. Latterly he toured both the UK and USA in Sir Peter Hall's 2003 & 2004 production of As You Like It, which included significant runs at both Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Los Angeles Music Center, during which time he became involved in a long term relationship with co-star actress Rebecca Hall.

Early song writing

Having always enjoyed writing songs and playing them to his friends, Stevenson eventually started collaborating with John Perry of The Only Ones in the middle of 2004. Culminating in a set of four well received acoustic demos, they began with a series of low key gigs around London and Edinburgh before embarking on a recording an acoustic EP that saw a limited release and was sold at live concerts, before being made available via the iTunes Music Store.

Body on the Line

In the summer of 2005, Perry introduced Stevenson to a group of Stockholm-based musicians comprising Brady Blade (Dave Matthews & Friends, Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, Bob Dylan) on drums, Surjo Benigh (Ulf Lundell) on bass, and Jan Petersson (Eric Bibb, Odetta) on keyboards. Recording sessions took place in Stockholm and London, and were mastered by Ted Jensen at Sterling Sound, New York.

Released in November 2006, Body on the Line mixes the original acoustic roots of Stevenson's music with multi-instrument sensibilities.

It has been speculated that the album's title may be a reference to a line of dialog spoken by Stevenson in State of Play, in which his character refers to "a body on the line".

Nashville sessions

Throughout the period of completing Body on the Line, Stevenson continued writing feverishly and new songs were regularly aired whilst touring in support of the first record. Shortly after the first LP's release in December 2006, Stevenson and Perry took residence in Nashville, Tennessee at Ocean Way Studios without a particular aim other than to record some new music. Re-joining Stevenson was drummer Brady Blade who suggested bass player Chris Donohue and multi-instrumentalist Phil Madeira be included in the band. The sessions were recorded and mixed by Prince's engineer and producer David Z. 19 songs were recorded by the group, with 15 of these ultimately being mixed at a second session in February 2007.

Although there was not an original intention to immediately release these new recordings, by the summer of 2007 it was clear the recordings had formed a cohesive album with stronger electric sensibilities than its predecessor. And after a third and final recording session took place in September 2007, without Perry, the album, now called All My Strange Companions, was deemed complete and ready for mastering. The album was released on 15 April 2008 in the US and later in 2008 in the UK and Europe. His tunes have already received praise from Variety and USA Today.

Freddie Stevenson coined the term 'blong' to describe short, spontaneous songs written and recorded like a blog entry, that are then posted to his online blogs along with their accompanying lyrics. In October 2010 Pledge Music released one song per day for 50 days. Once all 50 "blongs" were released, John Jackson of Sony released a hard cover booklet of each "blong" in its handwritten, artistic and original form. Freddie Stevenson has over 80 "Blongs"

• EP (2004)
• Body on The Line (2006)
• All My Strange Companions (2008)
• Blongs (2010)
• The City Is King (2011)
• Love Machine (2014)