Cover photo © 2025 Marilyn Stringer

At any moment, there are thousands of musician playing around the world. Music is indeed the universal language. For many of those who do it for a living, life is about playing in a band backing the star, the person out front that everyone came to see. If they are lucky, these backing musicians may get a brief moment or two in the spotlight at each show, enough glory to keep them grinding away night after night.

That role is not for everyone, but it is one that Lewis Stephens managed to turn into a storied career that has seen him play with major artists in several musical genres for audiences around the world. It would have been hard to imagine the arc of his career back in the early days when he passion for music was formed.

Stephens started piano lessons at the age of five, shortly after the youthful American classical pianist Van Cliburn had traveled to Moscow in 1958, where he won the first International Tchaikovsky Competition.

“I studied with the best piano instructors in the Fort Worth area, mainly because my mother so wanted me to grow up to be another Van Cliburn, like most mothers in Texas at the time. After ten years, I got interested in the Beatles after they were on Ed Sullivan show, so I got a guitar when I was in sixth grade and started learning some of the material of the day, had a little three piece band that played at school functions, doing songs like “I Fought The Law,” “96 Tears.” and other songs that were going around in that era.

“So I played the guitar for three or four years, and then as The Doors came out, I went back to keyboards. I got an old Farfisa organ and learned a lot of the Doors music and, of course, “In A Gadda Da Vida.” Once the band Santana hit, it was time to get a Hammond B-3 organ. It was a natural progression. I’d been going into clubs at 16, 18 years old, so I could sit in and play. The night I graduated high school, I went to a club in Dallas called Gertie’s, sat in with the band Nitzinger, and was asked to join the band. That band had John Nitzinger and Bugs Henderson on guitar plus Linda Waring on drums.

“After a few months, I got a call from Jack Calmes, who managed Nitzinger as well as Freddie King. Freddie was looking for a new piano player. Jack asked me to get the three albums that Freddie did for Shelter Records, learn ’em, and then fly to Lake Spivey in Atlanta and play with the band the next weekend.

“I used the old school method of picking up the needle off the turntable and trying to get to the place in the song that I needed to listen to. I learned the songs, and then flew out, got picked up by a limo at the airport. I ended up meeting Freddie and the band at the top of the stairs getting on the stage. We followed Lynyrd Skynyrd. That’s how that went.

“I started with Freddie in September of 1973 and stayed with him for three years. We did some great tours. We did Tower of Power tours with Santana. We were on an American Eric Clapton tour, then played with Clapton at the Crystal Palace Bowl outside of London. It was a pretty heady time for an 18-year-old from a small town, having as much fun as we could without getting into trouble. We did a really good Australian blues tour that had Hound Dog Taylor, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee, and Alexis Korner, who was kind of the father of English Blues

“Playing with Freddie, we traveled an awful lot, like 250 days a year. It was a very tiring three years. It was rewarding, but still I got a little weary of it. In October of 1976, I was home, in between tours with Freddie. I got a call from Delbert McClinton asking if I would join his band. I agreed  and went to work with him in, I think, October of 1976, shortly before Freddie passed away unexpectedly. I was a big fan of those early Delbert and Glen albums. They were so good, I was getting worn down, and Delbert was a hometown town guy. I lived close to him, so it was comfortable.

“I went back to riding around in vans, doing it the hard way. It was great band. The drummer, Darrell Norris, was just top notch. Delbert had just done some albums for ABC Records albums. It was his first outing as a single act away from Delbert and Glenn, so he was motivated. It was crazy times. We played the Lone Star Cafe in New York City about every six weeks. All the Saturday Night Live people would come out. John Belushi loved to get up, sit in and sing.”

Stephens stayed with McClinton for several years before leaving as the grind got to him one more time. But Lady Luck was waiting right around the corner.

“I was playing at some local Country & Western clubs, just kind of licking my wounds as it were. Then I got a call from Vassar Clements’ wife asking if I’d be interested in moving to Nashville and playing with him. I was familiar with his work. He was riding pretty high at that time after the album, Will The Circle Be Unbroken, with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, his collaboration with the Grateful Dead, and an album with Dickey Betts. Vassar had a tour bus and a great band.

“Marty Stuart was the guitar player. Buzzy Meekins on bass and Jimmy Charles on drums had a place in the southern music scene before they joined the band. Vassar was self-taught, didn’t know anything about reading music, but he could play in any genre We did everything from bluegrass to jazz fusion in a set. It was challenging and very rewarding.

“It was a big jump from Delbert. I had to learn the rhythms of the bluegrass music. Everything was very fast and there’s some different rhythm patterns. Vassar did a little bit of blues, and Marty would do his bit as the lead singer, so he would do some blues songs. That got me back to what I was used to. But there was a learning curve.”

That gig lasted about 18 months before Clements’ wife, who was also his manager, decided to make some changes to the band. Stephens was idle for a short time, until once again, the phone rang.

“I first heard Tracy Nelson at the New England Blue and Jazz Festival when I was up there with Freddie King. It was a tough ride in an SUV to get in, but once we parked and got out, I could hear this beautiful voice singing that song, “Down So Low.” I mean, it just put chills down my spine hearing it. I had to walk around and see who it was. And it was Tracy.

“Later, she somehow got my number and called, offering me a tour. At that point, I was trying to figure out if I was going back home to Texas or stay in Nashville. That’s when Tracy Nelson called. She had gone back to playing live. I went out and played with her all down the East Coast, maybe six months or so. Playing “Down So Low” was really something. She would go to the acoustic piano while I accompanied her on the Fender Rhodes piano. That was always one of my favorites. Still is.”

Stephens wasn’t without work for very long. It was a familiar tale – somebody says something to somebody and somebody gave his name to somebody else.

“I think it was Mitchell Stewart, the road manager for country star Bobby Bare, who called and asked if I’d come and audition. We went to SIR rehearsal studios in Nashville and played around for a couple hours, then I was asked to start playing with Bobby full time. That went on for a couple years.

“Bobby was one of a kind, very popular in Nashville with everyone. He was the “songwriter’s best friend.” That’s what people called him because he did the first cuts on Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson songs when they moved to Nashville. That got them over the hump as far as songwriters go. Bobby was a lot of fun, a funny guy with lots of funny songs. I recorded one album with him, Drunk And Crazy. Shel Silverstein wrote most of the songs. We did a lot of touring coast to coast, and always had a grand piano for me at every event.”

By 1981, Stephens had worn out his welcome in Nashville, He had left Bare’s band, waiting for a few months to see what might come his way. This time the phone didn’t ring.

“Yeah, that was pretty much the drinking thing. I slept through a bus call with Bobby, who had bailed me out a lot of times on different situations, and that was the last straw with him. The final night I was in Nashville, I played with singer Marshall Chapman at a really nice club. I had all my stuff loaded in the back of my friend’s El Camino. I didn’t have much. As soon as we finished, we drove to Texas and he brought me home. It was good to be back. We moved  in with my parents and chilled for a while. I quit drinking maybe six months after my son was born, and haven’t looked back on that.

“I had a few years off, then in 1985, Delbert asked me to play in his band again . At that time, he had a hit with “Givin’ It Up For Your Love,” so things were going well for him, playing better gigs and festivals. I was with him for a year and a half, until Chris was born. Traveling back then was not like it is now. There were no cell phones, no FaceTime. When you were gone, you were gone. I missed home and missed my son. We were in New York City and I went to Delbert and Wendy, his wife, went into their hotel room to tell them I was going home to be a daddy. That was the end of that. I pretty much stopped playing for 10 or 15 years, completely.”

Needing to find work, Stephens eventually ended up in the offices of the Texas Employment Commission, learning that his years out on the road left him with seemingly few prospects.

“They told me they didn’t know what they could suggest. They said, you’re really not qualified for anything except maybe demonstrating pianos and organs in a mall. I kind of thought, well shit, my life’s all come to an end at 28, 29 years old!

“Thankfully, my wife DeeDee had a good job. I started real estate school, aiming to get a real estate license. One of my teachers was the vice president of the big Colonial Savings and Loan here in Fort Worth. This was at the start of the savings and loan collapse in the mid eighties. All the lenders were getting houses back by handfuls every month. This VP was talking about how they were trying to remodel their foreclosures to get them ready for resale. I thought, hell, I can do that. So I went and got a pad of those office supply proposals, looked at one of the houses, and got the job.

“That started the business, Property Rehab Services, that we still run. It has provided a good living for our family as one of the most respected, high-end building and remodeling firms in the area. We did the foreclosures at first. I didn’t know about the private sector and the remodeling work. It was a great training ground to go in and rehab these torn up houses or neglected houses that people had stopped taking care of because they knew they were on their way out.

“I got to repair just about every circumstance as far as home repair. It was a great training ground. We developed a group of subcontractors that worked with us, some still with us all these years later. Then I got asked to do a couple of kitchens, which got us into the private market for remodeling just as the foreclosure work kind of dried up.

“We’ve had our son Chris working with us ever since he graduated from college. It’s very gratifying to be in business with him. We’ve also been fortunate enough to keep both granddaughters during the day because we work out of our house, so Chris comes through here every morning, drops the girls off. That’s been a real blessing. He’s able now to run things when I’m out of town or traveling. So that takes a load off and let’s me go out and have some fun.”

In the mid-nineties, McClinton started discussions about having Stephens rejoin his band. Ultimately, Delbert decided not to make a change. However, he did invite the Stephens family to join him on his second Sandy Beaches cruise.

“That cruise got me reconnected with a lot of people that I’d known in my other life. We’ve done the cruise almost every year since. It’s been very good to our family. I guess about 13, 14 years ago, Mike Zito was on the cruise. We jammed a little bit, talked, and got closer. He was pretty much into Freddie King. I think that helped me get the gig with him.

“The first thing I did was go in and record that first Mike Zito and the Wheel album, Gone To Texas, at Dockside Studios in Louisiana, the beginning of our collaboration. He’s been very kind to our family, including me on some great projects. I played on a lot of sessions he produced before he had his record label, Gulf Coast Records, and more since. We were also busy with some great European tours and plenty of festivals. I guess you’d call it my second childhood.”

Stephens has been a part of the Blood Brothers project that features Zito and fellow guitarist Albert Castiglia along with a stellar rhythm section comprised of Scot Sutherland on bass with Matthew R. Johnson and Ray Hangen on drums. The band was an immediate hit on the festival circuit. But they really blew up when another celebrity joined the fun.

“Bill Murray, I mean, just his name value! It wasn’t one of those exponential increases. It was at one level, then skipped about three levels. We’re now playing 1,000 to 2,000 seat theaters, giving the Blood Brothers a fine showcase to do some of their music, then back Bill up on some songs that let him have some fun. Bill just loves it. He’s become really close with Mike. He’s asked for advice on how to do some things. I think he’s really enjoying being around the group of really qualified musicians that can push him. So what began as a skit on Saturday Night Live once again has become a mainstream, national touring blues group.

“Lately we’ve had Jimmy Carpenter on saxophone, so that is 4/5ths of the Wheel back together. And we have Jimmy Vivino over there on organ. He’s a very talented organ player. We had two keyboards going sometimes in Freddie King’s band – a Hammond B-3 organ played by the great Deacon Jones and me on grand piano. That’s the thing I’ve always enjoyed about Delbert’s cruise, getting to play with the great Kevin McKendree a lot. That’s something you don’t normally get to do, play with another keyboard player, so it it’s always fun to double up on that.”

When asked why he thinks so many notable artists have sought him out to get his help in realizing their musical vision, Stephens takes a minute to gather his thoughts.

“I think it goes back to my classical training as far as technique, learning how to play piano correctly. Technically, I could pretty much do anything once I learned the different styles. Another important milestone was playing guitar by ear instead of by written music like I did when I was playing classical music. I could improvise, I could stretch out and explore different things without being bound by a fixed piece of music. That was a real important development point, learning to play music without music.

“My goal is to try to play the music of the artist, serve the song, serve the artist, make the band better. It’s a good mentality to have being a side man, just not wanting to be up front. Just go and do the job, and whenever somebody points at you, let it go! You play a couple of turnarounds for a solo and then go back to getting down in the rhythm section with the bass player and a drummer to make the sound a little wider than it would’ve been without you. That may not be a tangible that everybody can recognize, but I think it’s an important thing that I do that is recognized by the people that really know what’s happening.

“I’m grateful that my mom decided when I was five years old that she was going to buy the neighbor’s piano, have four or five strong men move it across the yards of both houses and set it in our house, then start me on piano lessons. It’s given me a great life. I wouldn’t have done any of it if my mother hadn’t been inspired by Van Cliburn winning the Tchaikovsky medal.

“When I went on the road with Freddie, it was hard on her. I was an only child and so we were kind of tied together at the hip. She was having trouble with me leaving. My dad understood, having gone to war and he said, “Mama, you gotta let him go.” I’ll never forget watching them on the front porch when Freddie King’s bus pulls up in front of our house in white settlement, Texas. She was still standing there looking when that bus drove away. It was quite a moment.

“They really knew that I was doing well when Crystal Gayle played at Six Flags Over Texas. My dad was always a Loretta Lynn fan, and subsequently a Crystal Gayle fan. Her road manager had been Vassar’s road manager when I was in his band. So I called him for help getting my parents backstage where they sat in the dressing room with Crystal, her husband, and the band and visited. That’s when my Dad and Mom figured out that I was doing okay, because they got to go sit backstage with Crystal Gayle! In the end, it’s been a great life, well lived.”