On March 20th, 2026 New York singer/songwriter and longtime musician George Usher released a special multi-media project titled Stevensonville, the culmination of 30 years of waiting for the right conditions for a creative project to see the light of day. Twelve original songs comprising Stevensonville are a story cycle set in the same small town, and they are presented as a vinyl LP accompanied by a 12×12 inch booklet with a large illustration for each of the tracks, fully painted by the artist’s wife and visual artist Laurie Webber.

Limited to an exclusive pressing of 200 copies and arriving via Strothard Bulldog Productions, Stevensonville was conceived in the 1990s by Usher and Webber, and arose naturally out of Usher’s songwriting direction, delving into storytelling. Inspired by Rock operas of the 1960s and 1970s as much by great American novels and short stories, Usher suggested the project to publishers but encountered a wall of resistance. It was too expensive to print a large scale book in an era veering towards CD format, and the idea of bringing the visual and musical aspects of an American town together didn’t appeal to them.

While the songs were presented live a few times, and the paintings that Webber created were shown to those audiences as accompaniment, the ways in which the paintings provide clues and details to the songs went largely unappreciated. That is, until Usher fortuitously teamed up with an old friend to record the album in the studio and bring Stevensonville to completion on his own terms. With a blend of genres that help explicate the characters, the sonically adventurous album tells dark tales, but finds underlying hope for characters facing all-too-relatable pressures and influences.

I spoke with George Usher about the long history of Stevensonville, his inspirations, and the experience of seeing the project completed after such a long wait for the right time and conditions for release.

Hannah Means-Shannon: I love combinations of visual art and music, so I’m so glad that you’ve been able to bring this project to fruition. Is that combination something that’s always appealed to you?

George Usher: Well, when I suggested it, people didn’t really seem to know what to make of it, believe it or not. I thought it was old news, because it had been done in the 60s and 70s. I’d seen it done, and I thought it would be alright, combining a couple of different mediums. We were illustrating my songs and I had a song publishing deal. The publishers didn’t like the idea that there were illustrations.

I was trying to head it towards a project like Stevensonville, like a whole cycle of songs, that was literate, and songs started in one place, and ended in another. We were developing this, but it couldn’t catch on. Everybody was against it. At the time it had been conceived as an album, an LP, that was forty minutes long, twenty on each side. The illustrations were really large, and would be part of a booklet.

But in the mid-1990s, which is when we were heading towards actually doing that particular project, Stevensonville, we were moving into CDs. Then, all the illustrations would have been tiny. Nobody wanted us to do it. I think I did a performance of it in 2006 at The Bowery Poetry Club, but nothing more happened with it.

HMS: What changed that made this project more viable for you? Or kept you from giving up entirely on it?

GU: This project has a long arc, because back in the late 70s and early 80s, I was working in a record store in New York, and there was a young teenager who used to come into the store after school each day. I was in my twenties and I was a sort of older brother type. He’d come in and tell me his woes, whatever they were. We stayed in touch through the years. I fulfilled my God-given journey as the poor poet-songwriter [Laughs] and he went on to Wall Street.

Then, we were having dinner a year or two ago, and he said, “If you had a chance to do a project, what would it be?” I said, “There was a project 30 years ago, the one song cycle I finished, and Laurie illustrated, and we just never did it.” He said, “Well, let’s do it!” I told him it would take him a larger budget than the normal records I make. He took my reasonable figure, and doubled it. And this is the album. Everything about it is perfect. I’ve made nine or ten albums, and there’s always some little thing wrong. But this one came out just the way that I hoped it would.

HMS: That’s an amazing situation to be in, to have a friend backing you like that. Did that freedom mean that you recorded it any differently than you usually record albums?

GU: Recording it in the last couple of years was a kind of out of body experience. I didn’t have the same kind of precious feeling, either, and was it was easy to let the other musicians contribute ideas. I wasn’t so married to it. We could have some fun with this, since this was a work that had been around for a while. Each song is about a different character in the town. We hung up the illustrations in the studio, so we could match each song to the illustration.

HMS: I did wonder if, when you recorded it, it was a bit like performing a musical. In the 60s and 70s, there had been some Rock musicals, for instance.

GU: There was The Who’s Tommy, or the Kinks’ albums, like The Village Green Preservation Society, which is of a certain world, but you can construct the narrative. The characters in my album do speak to each other across songs. The illustrations inform the lyrics, as well. There are things that you can learn about a song by looking at the illustration, things that are not in the song. I have to stress that the booklet is part of the record. The illustrations are conceived as part of the experience.

HMS: I totally get the experience that you’re talking about. I think it’s a natural extension of the ways in which we look at album covers, and inserts, while listening to music. If someone buys this record from you, what will they receive? Can you describe it for us?

GU: It will be a vinyl LP and a 12-inch, 28-page book. The book goes in the other sleeve. And there will be a certificate, because at this point, we’re only pressing 200, to make it a special thing. It’s a special experience. I grew up working in record stores, so the vinyl LP is important to me. Here vinyl has come back again.

HMS: If vinyl hadn’t come back in fashion, it would have been much harder to do this project, I agree.

GU: It would have been a different experience, with tiny illustrations, or a multi-media experience. It wouldn’t be the same experience that I used to get when I opened Quadrophenia, or even a Ringo album. They had giant booklets with illustrations that were simply part of the experience.

HMS: For some people, that’s why they still buy vintage albums. It’s so exciting to find one that still has the poster, or still has the original booklet included.

GU: Oh yeah! There are also all the out-of-print albums. There are also the ads that are on the dustcovers of the LP to look at.

HMS: Do you envision that listening experience being similar for Stevensonville? To sit and hold the booklet while listening to the album, image by image?

GU: Yes, and the package opens up, so you are able to look on the inside, too. When I was growing up, getting an album was a big deal. I remember, growing up, getting In The Court of the Crimson King, the first King Crimson album. The cover is this screaming face. I bought the album just because I loved the cover! I had no idea what they sounded like.

You’d study the front, and the back, and the names, and you’d pour over the credits. Getting an album was a serious business when I was growing up. Even with CDs, you have something. It is an empty experience for me, downloading an album without getting the artwork. I can’t do it, it makes me nuts.

HMS: There are a lot of people who agree with you. There’s even a rise in CD sales lately.

GU: It can’t all just be in “the cloud.” People need to be down to earth once in a while.

HMS: I think it’s really interesting how the album is pretty dark, and has some feeling of satire surrounding these characters, but there’s also something underneath for most of them, something worth saving.

GU: Oh yes, that’s true for all of the characters, even the ugliest of them, there’s something worth saving. You even feel bad about poor old Marjorie Hayes, who was a mean church lady. She winds up sort of alone, and you’re allowed to feel for her. You don’t have to revel in her loneliness. You can hope that there’s someone to bring her a lunch or something.

It’s funny for me to look back at these things. There’s a character called Martin Godfrey. At the time, I was concerned that the technology in the early 90s was getting a little too intrusive. He’s concerned about Army people coming down his hallway and knocking on his door. You hear about that now, and it means something else entirely!

HMS: That’s why I feel this album is quite relevant.

GU: Everything means the same thing, but worse, thirty years later. The Reverend is still giving a sermon that’s fully of fire and brimstone, and they still are. They just gave one because of Bad Bunny at the Superbowl.

HMS: Yes, I can’t even comprehend that.

GU: They don’t even understand it. They don’t even know what they say, but they know that it’s bad! [Laughs]

HMS: What are we living in?? I really liked the portrait of the Reverend, and I think in that song, “Reverend Thomas Pardee”, every word is very carefully chosen.

GU: It’s fun to sing. It’s very rhythmic and Rock ‘n Roll. I was channeling Chuck Berry, when he would write those early Rock ‘n Roll songs, where the lyrics would just roll off the tongue. That was my effort, to come up with a lot of rhythmic phrases.

HMS: There’s that one, and then “Town Elders”, has a really good Rock ‘n Roll and Blues sound, which I really appreciate. It almost gives you the opportunity to use those genres, and those musical languages. I think the different songs give you the opportunity to go in different sonic directions.

GU: Exactly.

HMS: There are softer ones, more piano-driven ones, and you have the opportunity to go heavy, and to go light.

GU: By the same token, one of the piano songs is a total love song. But when you look at the illustration, you see that this woman is in love with fat Elvis.

HMS: Yes! I saw that. That’s “Annie Dunn”.

GU: Even the Jailhouse Rock Elvis is fat, all of the Elvises are fat, and there are even little rats running around in the illustration. In a way, that is the inexplicable love, but it’s still love that a lot of people have for artists like Elvis. Or even Michael Jackson, or even Trump, where people say, “This person is the second coming.” It’s an inexplicable love.

That song, if you listen to it, is a true devotional long. You have to be informed by the illustration that love comes in many ways, and can be interpreted, or misinterpreted, depenind on where you’re standing. I tried to make that as pretty a song as I possibly could, even though I knew that the illustration was fat Elvis and rats!

HMS: It’s a fine line, isn’t it? It’s about how we relate to our heroes and how we feel about them. It does bring light to peoples’ lives to feel that way, so I wouldn’t take that from them. I won’t take that from myself. But when it’s taken to such extremes, that level of devotion, it becomes scarier, or even dangerous. But you really get down to humanity, there. It’s a beautiful song.

GU: Thank you. I sang my heart out on that one. I’m not the greatest singer in the world, but I tried to at least make the lyrics count.

HMS: Sometimes you have a cheerfulness in the sound of a song that’s different from, and contrasts with the lyrics. With “The Reverend Thomas Pardee”, you have your organ going, and an almost dancing feel to some of it, though we’re talking about a very dangerous person.

GU: That’s what I learned from The Kinks. Ray Davies was a classic at that, with his best material. That was the ironic thing about The Kinks, that he’d write beautiful songs, but you somehow knew he was sticking it to you.

HMS: He doesn’t leave anyone out of that firing line.

GU: Right! There’s some anger under there with The Kinks, and they had a right to be angry. They got blackballed out of the US in the 1960s and never seemed to get the respect that they felt that they deserved.