[Cover photo credit to Mark Abernathy]

Texas-based singer/songwriter and Producer JM Stevens will be releasing Wish on a River Bridge, his second album within a year, and his third solo album on March 7th, 2025. It will arrive via his own Crosstie Records. Stevens is also playing a series of shows in honor of the release this month and beyond.

Stevens says that he wanted to:

…make the best music I can, where I am in this moment in time, and get it out in the world. The longer you sit on songs, there’s the chance they might marinate a little too long, and it’s so easy to talk yourself out of things.

Songs on the new album focus on “protagonists who are navigating old beginnings, new starts and myriad in-betweens.”

While he toured in 2024 promoting his second solo album, Nowhere to Land, Stevens worked the 10 Wish on a River Bridge songs into shape during his solo shows.

He explains about his studio, East Austin Recording:

I’m sitting here with a studio in my backyard, and I’d like to think I know a little about making records at this point, or at least I ought to. I’ve been doing this stuff in some fashion since I was a kid messing around with makeshift recorders, so it was just a matter of diving in and following my heart.

These songs also reveal a stripped-down approach that Stevens has never used before. After “road testing” the album by listening to it while driving a long distance, Stevens decided to put aside his original mixdown to half-inch tape and remix the album to quarter-inch tape.

He adds:

I was looking to give it more of a vintage sound with a bit more squeeze — or as I sometimes say, throw some dust on it.