Stephaniesǐd

Career

In 2001, Morgan decided to start a pop/rock band with a number of jazz musicians. They performed one show, which she describes as "disastrous". After taking a break, she met Chuck Lichtenberger, a classically trained jazz pianist. Morgan needed a substitute pianist for a jazz standards group with which she was performing, so she asked Lichtenberger to perform with her. They later began to perform her songs together. They started out playing shows with only the two of them, but later brought on Vic Stafford, who later produced three of stephaniesǐd's albums. Currently, the two usually perform with a drummer and "some kind of bass", which can include keyboards. Morgan says that almost thirty people have played with the band over its entire history.

In July 2006, stephaniesǐd premiered at Bele Chere, a music and arts street festival in North Carolina. The band also started the POPAsheville festival, an indie pop and indie rock music festival which took place annually for a few years until the last festival in 2009.

stephaniesǐd's debut album, Spiral In, was included in the Top 100 National Releases by public radio station WNCW. The Asheville Ballet choreographed a ballet entitled ANNA! A Rock Ballet to music from the album. Jane magazine used the single "Popsicles" from Spiral In in the Jane Magazine 2005 Reader CD. The song "White Guys Selling Cars" from This EP is Money won third prize in the Unisong International Song Contest's social/political category. The band's single "Unmistakably Love" has appeared on two national compilations, as well as compilations released by CMJ and Paste.

Name

Morgan explains the "ǐd" in the band name: "the 'id' allusion is of course to the Freudian/Jungian seat of all impulses and desires, which I frame as mine or anyone else's 'guts' or proverbial 'little light'." She then changed the band's name to "Stephanie's Id" after issues with pronunciation. However, the band encountered problems with the name being mistaken for "Stephanie's ID", as in identification. The band then changed to "stephanie's Äd" and "stephaniesÄd", remembering a book from Morgan's childhood that used "sound spellings".

Musical style

stephaniesǐd self-identifies as "indie pop" or "pop-noir". However, others have described the band's style as "alt pop-rock noir" and "soulful dream-pop". The band sometimes makes use of instruments such as horns and vibraphones in its music.

Discography