The title of Oakland singer-songwriter Stephen Steinbrink‘s new album comes from a video of David Blaine doing close-up magic on the streets of Barstow, CA in the early ’00s. He makes a quarter disappear off a teenager’s hand, who, dumbfounded, can only muster “cool” in response. “I’ve watched it probably a hundred times,” Steinbrink says, noting he relates to the kid and Blaine. “It cracked me up but also blew my mind open— the feeling of wonder I experienced watching this video became a guide as I navigated new ways of staying in the realm of what’s both real and magical.” That sense of wonder is all over Disappearing Coin, an album of dreamy pop that has one one foot in ’70s/’80s boat shoes soft rock and the other in sensitive indie folk. Steinbrink has the perfect voice for this, high but smooth (shades of Christopher Cross), floating alongside the delicately picked acoustic guitars, gently bouncing piano, swooning pedal steel, and brushed drums. Songs like “Cruiser,” “Opalescent Ribbon,” and “Cool and Collected” are the pop equivalent of spending the day under a tree, staring at the clouds. Listen to the whole thing below.
We asked Stephen to tell us about some of the other inspirations behind Disappearing Coin, and his list includes artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda, musician Ruth Garbus, John Cage, and more. Read his list and commentary, below.
STEPHEN STEINBRINK – INFLUENCES BEHIND ‘DISAPPEARING COIN’
Ever Ending Kicks – Small
Paul Frunzi of Anacortes, WA has been my friend and collaborator for years, and his specific brand of art making is inspiring to me. He’s a fearless maker and a doer, and is successful at pulling off his ideas through his ability to dive deep into the mechanisms of whatever medium he’s working with, picking it apart piece by piece to see how it actually functions. That’s why his 2022 album Small was such a fascinating record as a turning point for Paul’s recording project Ever Ending Kicks. He somehow merges this well developed observer/mechanic approach with a new raw and vulnerable emotionality that makes for a beautiful collection of songs about betrayal, forgiveness, and self-acceptance.
After Life – Hirokazu Kore-eda
Hirokazu Kore-eda’s film After Life is about a limbo realm between the border of life and death that resembles a large abandoned municipal building in the middle of the woods. The recently deceased arrive at the building in groups, and are counseled by workers who help each of them re-enact a single cherished memory from their lives on film. It’s weird and slow and beautiful, half-documentary, half fictional narrative. I’m so inspired by Kore-eda’s approach to storytelling— I read an interview where he says that artist shouldn’t make work for a large, unseen audience, but instead for a single person in mind, and that your efforts should be focused on the emotional comprehension of that person. I think about this constantly now in relation to my own writing.
Briana Marela – You Are a Wave
I’ve been lucky to have been in the same music and art communities as Briana for years, both in Olympia and later here in Oakland. Witnessing her career evolve and grow from the Olympia DIY scene, to the pop-indie context of her Jagjauwar records, and now to her more recent experimental performances in the Bay Area that hybridize movement, poetry, and synthesis has been thrilling and compelling.
Ruth Garbus – “Squirrels”
I associate images and colors with my favorite music, and when I listen to “Squirrels” by Ruth Garbus it evokes this specific memory image of pulling my van onto a dirt road near Cloverdale, CA in the 100 degree October of 2020, searching for this secret spot on the Russian River that lived in a distant corner of my memory. It was during the suffocating wildfire months that year, and I was living in my head a lot— and listening to Ruth Garbus music while in that state is a wildly evocative experience. She is a master of conjuring fully formed images in maximum detail with her words, her voice itself is an adjective.
“Danse I Måneskin” – Trine & the Moonlighters
I heard this song on KALX, the community radio station in Berkeley. It’s symmetry and catchiness is initially almost off-putting, a little disturbing, kinda like the feeling of playing a video game for six hours straight. It’s such an earworm. I’ve often wondered if it could be a Danish government psy-op… Anyway, once you submit to its power, your life is over.
Jean-Michel Basquiat – King Pleasure
I was lucky to see King Pleasure, the first exhibition of Basquiat’s work curated by his family. It didn’t feel like a traditional retrospective, it was immersive and made you feel the presence of the artist in a multidimensional sorta way. His studio was recreated in one room, as well as his childhood living room. His bicycle was propped against a wall. Seeing his lines and colors up close was inspiring as I sat down a month later to complete the cover art to Disappearing Coin.
The Incognito Lounge – Denis Johnson
This is my favorite Denis Johnson poem. We grew up in the same city 40 years apart, though the Arizona he describes in this poem is still emotionally legible to me. The way he teeters between abstraction and literalism is magic, “whatwhatwhatwhat” to onomatopoeically describe a police helicopter, and this stanza:
I was raised up from tiny
childhood in those purple hills,
right slam on the brink of language,
and I claim it’s just as if
you can’t do anything to this moment,
that’s how inextinguishable
it all is. Sunset,
Arizona, everybody waiting
to get arrested, all very
much an honor, I assure you.
Love, Icebox: Letters From John Cage to Merce Cunningham
I think writing a good love song is actually hard to do — every time I attempt, it ends up wanting to be about another emotion, maybe a love-tinged emotion. After reading “Love, Icebox” John Cage’s collected love letters to Merce Cunningham, the possibilities of form made more sense to me. Soon after, I wrote “If There’s Love in Your Heart”, a strange attempt, but technically successful from my subjective perspective that I owe to reading these letters. At the end of one of the letters, Cage says: “pardon the intrusion: but when in september will you be back? i would like to measure my breath in relation to the air between us.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLok1r28e_I
—
Stephen has a few West Coast dates lined up for November:
11/10 – Seattle, WA @ The Vera Project
11/17 – San Francisco, CA @ Bottom of the Hill w/ Briana Marela
11/18 – Los Angeles, CA @ Genghis Cohen w/ Dear Nora and Cole Pulice