On debut album Cocoon, singer-songwriter Steve Stinson turns life’s unexpected detours into nine tracks of blues, folk and Americana, exploring heartbreak, identity and the possibility of finding purpose through change.

The title track sits at the album’s emotional centre, reframing heartbreak as a catalyst for personal growth. Elsewhere, ‘Does Anyone Else’ questions the pursuit of career success at the expense of fulfilment, while ‘Evergreen’ celebrates music as a constant amid life’s upheavals.

‘Fly Away’ reflects Stinson’s move from the United States to Australia and his subsequent travels, exploring the idea that home can be less about geography than personal discovery. ‘Always On My Mind’, ‘Lost In The Tide’, ‘Make You Move’, ‘New Reality’ and ‘The Ledger’ further trace a life shaped by uncertainty, experience and the gradual evolution of identity.

Born in Stillwater, Oklahoma, raised between the US and Australia, and now based in Papua New Guinea, Stinson draws on a life of movement to inform his songwriting. Influences ranging from Bob Dylan and Fleetwood Mac to The Fray and Coldplay underpin a sound built on melodic warmth and rich storytelling.

With Cocoon now out in the world, Stinson takes us track by track through a deeply personal debut about heartbreak, life’s unexpected detours, and finding the perspective to turn uncertainty into something meaningful.

‘Always on My Mind’

This is a song I’d been working on for quite some time. What’s funny is that when I first came up with it, I always heard the whistle. A lot of songs evolve completely from where they start. You might write something on piano or guitar and eventually it becomes a completely different instrumental or vocal melody. But in this case, in a great way, the whistle survived.

I liked that it was a slightly unconventional way to open the album. It also somehow connected back to the country element of my heritage and growing up in Oklahoma. I’ve had a few funny comments from people at work about the slightly “howdy doody” nature of it, but it works!

Underneath that, though, it’s a deeply personal song. It comes back to a question most of us probably ask ourselves at some point: what’s all this for? What do you want to leave behind?

For me, music has always been one of the answers to that question. I know it’s important to me and I’d love to leave something behind that connects with people, even if that ends up being a relatively small group. So wherever this journey goes, Always on My Mind felt like the right first song on my first album. It’s a reflection of who I am, and I suppose a declaration that this part of me is here to stay, for better or worse.

‘Cocoon’

Cocoon came immediately after a pretty significant heartbreak. I thought I was going to move overseas for somebody. I’d essentially told work I was leaving, only for the relationship not to work out, which meant making a slightly embarrassing U turn afterwards. My parents were probably sitting there thinking, “Maybe slow your roll, buddy.”

In hindsight, though, it worked out for the best.

For whatever reason, that experience became the catalyst for taking music much more seriously. It was the point where I started turning the resilience that comes from something difficult into an opportunity to do something I’d wanted to do for years.

It also forced something more tangible and personal into my songwriting that I don’t think I’d found before. I knew it when I heard it. It felt like I’d started finding my own voice and style.

That’s ultimately what Cocoon, both the song and the album, represents to me. It’s about challenge turning into opportunity and one state of your life changing into something different and, hopefully, better. It was where the passion and the reality finally started to intersect.

‘Does Anybody Else’

I wrote this around the same period, when I was working absolutely massive hours. Sixty, seventy, sometimes eighty hour weeks. I was also smoking far too much at the time, hence the line about “cigarettes for breakfast and skipping lunch.”

This song is where the practical reality of having a dream kicks in.

It’s great to decide you want to pursue something. Maybe you’ve finally got enough money to put behind it. Maybe you’ve admitted to yourself that it actually matters. But then what? You still have a career. You still have responsibilities. Nobody suddenly gives you another eight hours in the day because you’ve decided you want to make an album.

So Does Anybody Else is really about that seesaw. How do you reconcile those two lives and actually make the dream happen?

I definitely didn’t have the balance right when I wrote it. After a few rounds up and down on that seesaw, I think I’m getting better at it. But the song captures the moment when I realised I’d crossed a threshold. Music wasn’t just something I wanted to do anymore. I now had to figure out how to actually do it.

‘Evergreen’

Evergreen is really about recognising that this dream has always been there.

Ever since I was a kid, music has been somewhere in the background. Jobs changed, countries changed, life changed, but this one thing never really disappeared. It didn’t wither or fade. It was evergreen.

At some point you have to acknowledge what that means. If something has stayed with you for that long, maybe you should actually listen to it. Because I think the alternative is eventually looking backwards and wondering why you never did anything about it.

There’s more energy in this song than some of the earlier tracks, and that feels appropriate because it’s about action. It’s essentially me saying to myself: this is clearly part of you. It always has been. So do something with it.

‘Fly Away’

Fly Away is probably less specifically about music and more about my journey as a person.

I’ve moved around a lot. I was born in the US, lived in Australia as a kid, eventually moved back to Australia, then from Perth to Sydney, around Sydney, and now Papua New Guinea. Being on the move has always been part of my story.

I’ve always found something romantic about the idea of the traveller. There’s freedom in it, curiosity, possibility and the sense that something else is always over the horizon.

But there’s another side to that. If you’re always thinking about the next move, you can forget to actually inhabit where you are. You can’t spend your entire life waiting for the next flight without occasionally stopping to smell the roses.

So Fly Away is partly about embracing that instinct to explore while also reminding myself that movement isn’t a substitute for living. You can be a traveller and still put down roots. You can know life will change again and still make the most of where you are now.

‘Lost in the Tide’

Part of the inspiration for Lost in the Tide came from the story of John Newton, who wrote Amazing Grace. His experience surviving a violent storm at sea became a pivotal moment in his life, and I found myself really drawn to that imagery.

I wasn’t consciously trying to write a religious song. It just came out very naturally. It almost felt like one of those songs that had been sitting in a drawer somewhere inside me and finally found its way out.

The storm became a metaphor for what was happening in my own life. Sometimes you’re so caught up in the challenges and drama immediately around you that you become lost in the tide. You can’t necessarily see where any of it is heading. But eventually the storm clears, and sometimes clarity and progress come out of precisely the period you thought wasn’t going your way.

This was probably one of the most therapeutic songs on the album to write.

If Cocoon represents the transformation, Lost in the Tide is me looking back and acknowledging the part of myself that actually pushed through the threshold. There’s an element of honouring that version of myself in the song. Beyond that, however far it reaches, I hope somebody else can recognise something of themselves in it too.

‘Make You Move’

Despite the title, Make You Move isn’t my unexpected pivot into dance music. The “move” is emotional or metaphorical rather than physical. So if anyone gets to the end and thinks, “Well, I didn’t dance,” hopefully you were moved in some other way. It’s too late to change the title now anyway!

This song feels more confident to me.

I’ve always felt that I had a penchant for songwriting and storytelling, even during the years when I wasn’t doing much with it. Make You Move is an acknowledgement of that, but it’s probably more a statement about what I intend to do than a declaration that I’ve already achieved it.

There’s still some of the self reflection that runs through the rest of the album, but this one feels much more forward leaning. It’s essentially saying: I know what I can do now. I know what I want to keep developing. Let’s see how far I can take it.

‘New Reality’

I wrote New Reality later in the process, and I think that matters because by this point we’re past the Cocoon phase.

There’s less questioning. It’s more: okay, great. We’re here. We’re doing it. Let’s go.

There’s something hugely rewarding about finally doing something you’ve dreamed about for ten or fifteen years. The biggest change for me hasn’t necessarily been external. It’s what actually following through on something like this does to your perception of what is possible.

We build all these invisible barriers in our minds around what we can and can’t do. Then you knock down one of the big ones and suddenly some of the others don’t look quite as permanent.

Whatever ultimately happens with the album, I made it. I committed to it, invested in it, pushed myself and created something that I believe reaches a standard I’m proud of. Nobody can take that experience away.

That’s the new reality. I’m in it now. I’m enjoying it. And I want to keep pushing and see where it goes.

‘The Ledger’

The Ledger feels like the right song to close the album because it brings everything back down to earth.

If Always on My Mind begins with this question of leaving a mark and doing something with these songs, The Ledger asks a slightly bigger question: what do I actually want to do with my life alongside the music?

Because until this thing takes off in some spectacular way, this dude still has to keep working.

But it’s also about remembering that the ends don’t justify the means. Ambition is important to me, but I don’t want achievement to come at the expense of losing sight of who I am or how I treat other people.

Nobody gets that right all the time. I certainly don’t. But you can keep trying to improve. You can remember that you have no idea what might be happening in somebody else’s life. You can try to keep two feet on the ground and treat people with respect wherever possible.

So I like ending Cocoon there. After an album that’s largely about pursuing something, changing and pushing forward, The Ledger is a reminder to occasionally stop and ask what you’re becoming along the way.

Listen to the EP below.