3 HAND STEPHEN

Welcome!

3 Hand Stephen's new hardcover book, Baggy Red Pants and Other Stories, features short stories, poems, lyrics, and visual art. click here to order your very own copy!

The Closing List is on Stephen's real life and fiction album

Lyrics of The Closing List, Thomas, Let's All Root for the Home Team, Baggy Red Pants, and Miniature Planet are in the book.

Thomas is on the Human Voices album, recorded with Stephen's band Let's All Root For The Home Team is on Stephen's The Three-Handed Man album The Tree People in 1984 and reissued by Guerssen Records in 2009 Baggy Red Pants and Miniature Planet were recorded at home

below: Stephen's song Love, Love, is performed by the 2020 Be About Love Festival performers Stephen Cohen, La Rhonda Steele, Nicole Campbell, Christopher Shotola-Hardt and Terry Robb at the Blackfish Gallery in Portland.

Where Do We Go?
features 2017 Music OMI fellows Stephen Cohen- voice and cigar box guitar, Yuan-Chen Li- piano, and Alberto Novello- electronics recorded at the Ghent, New York Art OMI Barn by Alberto Novello

photos are from Stephen's 2017 deFeniks Art Center residency in Mortsel, Belgium and 2017 Music OMI residency in Ghent, N.Y.

Where Do We Go? by 3 Hand Stephen
is available as a physical vinyl album and a downloadable digital album and follow Stephen on Bandcamp

above: Ally the Cat features Stephen on voice and cigar box guitar, above: Stephen honors Fred the pug using his 1 String Thing instrument.

Stephen with his guitar and "sculptural percussion" instrument in the cover photo for his digital album, "The Three-Handed Man".

We are pleased to announce the release of The Three-Handed Man, which has 5 reissued songs from the 1988 cassette of the same name. It was recorded by Doug Daniels in his Eugene, Oregon home studio way back when, and features Stephen Cohen- voice, acoustic guitar, and his original sculptural percussion instrument, with guest appearances by James Thornbury- harmonica on "The Dusty Old Freight Train", Joe Kasik- bamboo flute on "New England Leaves", and Kate Waterbury- voice on "This is a Test". Sadly, everyone involved in the album but Stephen has passed away in the last 11 years. They are all dearly missed. download the album on Bandcamp

above: Stephen first played Skip to My Lou when he was 14 years old.
He revisits the folk song, adding some timely lyrics.

right: Postcard
Stephen uses pen and acrylics to create a poetic postcard:

above: Stephen plays his original, homemade 1 String Thing instrument above: Stephen and pianist Yuan-Chen Li at a Portland house concert

above: Stephen performs with pianist Yuan-Chen Li and vocalist Maeve Stier above: Stephen performs The King of 3 Strings and talks music

below: Rain, Rain, Rain, which Stephen sees plenty of in Oregon below: Stephen plays his homemade gongs with a trio:

below: What's Wrong on miniature guitar The Road West on acoustic guitar below: Read the lyrics and hear the original version of Stephen's song,
Atomic Clock voice and cigar box guitar with Yuan-Chen Li on guqin: Miniature Planet, written during the 2016 election:

What's wrong, what's wrong with us people? Why do we hate, why do we make the same mistakes? Why does push come to shove, why can't we love?

Stephen with Yuan-Chen Li at the Grant Street Studio in Portland.

Stephen talks about 2 of his instruments and plays A Pug Named Fred and Interplanetary Chatter at the close of the Music OMI
Guerilla Improvisation Concert at the Basilica in Hudson, N.Y. :

Above: Stephen performs What Now? on and the King of 1 String on
his original homemade musical sculpture his 1 String Thing instrument.

Miniature Planet by Stephen Cohen I saw a miniature planet, slowly spinning around, I saw a miniature planet, slowly spinning around, with miniature sights and miniature sounds and miniature cities and miniature towns and miniature people with miniature brains and miniature cars and miniature trains and miniature houses and miniature planes and miniature clouds with miniature rain and miniature rivers and a miniature sea and a miniature forest with miniature trees.
I saw a miniature planet, slowly spinning around, I saw a miniature planet, slowly spinning around, with miniature sights and miniature sounds and miniature cities and miniature towns. There was a miniature election, with miniature selections and miniature choices with miniature voices in a miniature debate, with miniature candidates, with miniature platforms and miniature stands and miniature minds with miniature plans.
I saw a miniature planet, slowly spinning around, I saw a miniature planet, slowly spinning around, so I'm singing this song with my miniature guitar, and here we are.

Ride the Train from Here was the closing piece of the 2017 Music OMI Concert in the Fields. Music OMI is an international artist residency, and Ride the Train from Here features Stephen with artists from Peru, Nigeria, United Kingdom and Germany:

Stephen composed Garden of Bees on a beer-can guitar he made as an Artist in Residence in Belgium, and later created this video:

Stephen used a beer can from a local Belgium beer for his hand-made beer-can guitar.

He composed the piece in a studio overlooking the bees, performed it in concert, then recorded it back in Portland.

above: recorded at Stephen's residency at Jack Straw Studios in Seattle

Below: Stephen plays at the C.B. Gitty Juke Shack Stage in New Hampshire in 2017: Below: Ride the Train with Stephen on cigar box guitar:

below: Stephen's first album, The Tree People, recorded in 1979 in a studio in the woods near Eugene, Oregon
and reissued in this century by record companies in Japan and Spain. cover drawing by Stephen Cohen
Stephen Cohen-voice and guitar, Jeff Stier- recorder, percussion and voice,, Rachel Laderman- flute, James Thornbury- electric bass, guitar and voice.

Below: music videos created by Stephen with songs from the 3rd Tree People album, It's My Story: Legends of the Tree People and Living with the Animals:

30 YEARS AGO acoustic guitar with Oregon high desert sounds is an album of solo acoustic guitar pieces originally recorded by Stephen for The Golden Desert, a New Directions "enviromusic" cassette produced by Diz Greer in 1990, which features Stephen playing acoustic guitar and percussion, with Oregon high desert sounds recorded by Diz Greer. download 30 YEARS AGO at Stephen's Bandca mp page

Stephen created this short film/music video/work of art, the Cistern Symphony, at Fort Worden, Port Townsend, Washington in 2012, with a team of musicians and artists during his Centrum residencies. It was shown at the AVI Festival in Jerusalem, Israel in December of 2016.

click to see and hear:

Stephen leading the parade at the Wilsonville Festival of Arts, playing a Khaen, a Thai mouth organ, while artist and educator Angennette Escobar plays Stephen's homemade gong.

below: Stephen created his sculptural percussion instrument, which he could play at the same time he played guitar, in the late 20th century:

above: Stephen's Family Show at the 2020 Be About Love Festival, with an audience of stuffed animals and musical sculptures.

Here Comes the Band, Give Me That Toy, Mr. Knickerbocker, and Baseball, Baseball are on Stephen's children's album, Here Comes the Band. Click here to see and hear more of Stephen's children's music and read about his interactive children's music performances.

"Here Comes the Band" painting by Christopher Shotola-Hardt

Stephen with guest singers at the Long Island Children's Museum. photo by Ben Sussman

Above: Stephen's Baseball, Baseball video

"You Need to Get to Know Me" is from a 2001 Oregon Public Broadcasting Art Beat show featuring Stephen's residency at Wilsonville High School, where he assisted special education students, along with several music and art students, in creating instruments out of found and recycled materials, composing music and writing songs, producing a CD, Junk Jam, and performing at the Wilsonville Festival of Arts.