Stephen Bennett

About Stephen Bennett

Whether playing his great-grandfather's harp guitar, his 1930 National Steel or a standard 6-string, Stephen Bennett is a musician to hear. His playing has won awards and critical praise. In live performance and on record, his diverse musical influences and interests are joined with a lifelong love affair with the sound of guitar strings.

August 13th Concert with Bill Gurley in Falls Village, CT

The show starts at 7:30 but doors open an hour before that. You can bring in food and drink as you like. The address is 103 Main Street. Falls Village is tiny so you can’t miss the venue. It’s the Center On Main. Which used to be a church and is now used as an art center.


I think it’s 2 dozen times that I have performed at the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas over the years, after attending for some years before that as a contestant in the guitar championships. It’s a wonderful festival. I was asked to play there this year – which happens to be the 50th anniversary of it. I agreed to do so and also asked the festival to hire my friend Bill Gurley. Bill had played the festival with me several times over the years and like me, thought it would be fun to do so again. Somewhat to my surprise, the festival agreed. The last time Bill and I played a show together was probably 15 years ago and we hadn’t recorded since 1997. That period of time – 25 years – is also referred to as a quarter of a century! How did THAT happen? So we had some work to do. Bill lives in Virginia and I have lived here in Connecticut for a dozen years.
We started working regularly via FaceTime for a while and made a lot of progress. But it is, of course, very difficult to do music that way; there’s just no substitute for being face to face. So I went to Bill’s house in May and we worked for several days straight made much more progress. We’ve continued to meet online since and now he’s coming to my house in a couple of days to rehearse again. We’re looking forward to playing our material for a live audience next Saturday night! I’ll go to Virginia again in a few weeks and we’ll rehearse again there, spend a day recording an EP and then play another show down there. That should have us in decent shape for the big festival next month!


Here’s a tune of ours from that 1997 recording. Enjoy! We wrote the tune together, Bill’s singing the lead and playing mandolin, I’m playing harp guitar and singing harmony.
So if you have a hankering for some live music in a relaxed atmosphere, then come on out!
Best wishes,Stephen

July 23rd, 2022. Written by

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