STAV

“I tend to focus on what brings people together, as opposed to what tears people apart. And I think that starts with allowing myself to be vulnerable in my songs.”

Burgeoning West Coast songsmith Stav is explaining the personal and creative philosophy that has driven the journey towards his debut EP Borders, which is due out early in 2020. He’s just 21, but has actually been performing in front of an audience for nearly a decade, having made his first open mic appearance all the way back in 6th grade.

What has compelled him on since then is actually an extraordinarily encouraging audience – something obviously not easy to come by. Indeed, he recalls that at subsequent gigs, “there was always at least one person that would come up to me and say, ‘Wow, you should keep doing this.'”

Not surprisingly, Stav grew up in a Northern California household with a great appreciation for music. And there, his mom turned him on to everything from Norah Jones to Paolo Nutini to – perhaps particularly importantly – Queen and Freddie Mercury. From the latter, he learned something possibly a bit more indefinable, even transcendent.

“I was inspired by Queen in a grand sense,” he confirms. “If there is a dramatic side to my music, I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a lot to do with it.”

What he also gleaned from them and pop virtuosos like Abba is a keen sense of the significance of a great melody. But he clearly also shares a kinship with a current crop of artist-songwriters who have been reshaping the zeitgeist: the stark soulfulness of Matt Corby, the haunting atmospherics of Gregory Alan Isakov, and Hozier’s way with a captivating hook, all seem to have touched Stav’s own music in some way.

It allows the poignant messaging in songs like “Brother” and “Borders” to come comfortably to the fore, his strikingly affective lyrics conveyed in a distinctly mellifluent fashion.

Those lyrics also happen to be uncommonly mature, even particularly poignant, considering his age. “Borders,” for instance, was inspired by his travels throughout Europe, where he keenly observed that despite our differences, “everyone needs water, everyone needs food, everyone needs a place to sleep, everyone needs clothing, everyone needs love.”

And with “Brother,” he quite consequentially articulates the gravity of true friendship, and the sense of longing when it is most missed.

“Don’t you miss the days / When we went off together
Don’t you miss the days / The grapevine and the heather
Brother I’ve been lost now / Since you have been away.”

Like all the best songwriters, he is in fact a storyteller. And like the best storytellers, it all comes from a place of earnestness and authenticity.

“I tend to tell stories with my songs, but not intentionally – it just kind of happens. It has to do with whatever is very alive in my mind at the time. Stories tend to come through because I do think a lot about the world and people, and I find people’s interactions with each other, and people’s stories and journeys are very interesting.

Stav’s own journey is about to take him to Boston’s Berklee College of Music, where he hopes to add “technical proficiency” to his arsenal of talents. He also hopes the experience will help him to develop and discover a deeper sense of himself as an artist and songwriter.

“I’m still searching. But it feels like with every song I write I get closer and closer to my true music identity.”