Singing Solo: Duane Stephenson

IN JANUARY 2005, I saw To-Isis at the Air Jamaica Jazz & Blues Festival and was wowed by the the six-member singing group's exuberant stage show and pitch-perfect harmonies. They made Boyz II Men's stilted concert a day later seem even more like a karaoke fest, and I felt confident predicting big things in my review:

This young vocal sextet can nail harmonies with envious ease, and their exuberant stage show engaged the early-evening audience. [To-Isis] easily ran through Bob Marley numbers and reggae-fied versions of pop tunes, such as Bryan Adams' goopy "Heaven" — which was actually pretty darn good. ... A Jamaican boy band, sure — the guys double as models and actors — but To-Isis has the singing talent to break out to a large audience outside of their homeland.

"Big tings" didn't "gwan" for To-Isis, at least not off the island.

Not even close.

"It was a rough deal," says former To-Isis lead singer Duane Stephenson. "Reggae isn't as lucrative as it once was. It's in a rebuilding phase. And it's kind of hard to take a six-people group out of [Jamaica]."

But band size wasn't To-Isis' only issue.

"From the information that I've gotten, people never got to figure out exactly what we were doing because there were so many different genres of music that we were involved with; they couldn't pin us down," Stephenson says. "But that's just one of those things, you know?"

A little over a year after my concert-review rave, Stephenson left To-Isis to embark on a solo career, bolstered by a bevy of hit songs he had written during his To-Isis tenure but handed over to other artists to sing, such as Jah Cure's smash "Reflections." Stephenson's solo debut, "From August Town," came out last fall on reggae powerhouse VP Records.

"I was there for 10 years. I pretty much done my thing; I did everything I could do as a member of the group," he says. "My passion was, basically, roots reggae. Not everybody saw eye-to-eye about that; other people wanted to venture off into more dancehall and stuff like that. I just felt like the time had passed for me to do be doing all of that; I wanted it to be a little more serious thing, my own music. So I got to sing the songs I wrote [during To-Isis] but I never really got a chance to sing because the opportunity never provided itself. Plus, most of them were my very own personal stories. So that motivated me to step out on my own."

"From August Town" does rely mostly on roots reggae and the one-drop rhythm that provides its heartbeat, but there are still songs that hue closer to modern R&B than 1970s Jamaican styles. The Babyface-ish "Fairy Tale" is an acoustic lament about domestic violence. "Misty Morning" is a lighter ballad about pride and perseverance. "Dream Weaver" is a pop-soul lover's lament (and not a cover of the '70s Gary Wright hit). And "Exhale" is an uplifting doo-wop-ish collaboration with Tarrus Riley, with whom Stephenson performs on Saturday at Crossroads. They're both backed by The Black Soil Band, led by saxophonist Dean Fraser.

But the rootsier tunes on "From August Town" give the album its serious focus, particularly the song "Ghetto Pain" — which To-Isis once performed — and the title track, named after the tough community where Stephenson grew up.

"August Town is a community in the east of St. Andrew, which is adjoined to Kingston," he says. "It's a rough neighborhood; a low income neighborhood. It's violence-prone. It's hard to get out, and there's a particular stigma that attaches itself to those communities: these people are violent, they're not going anywhere, nothing positive comes from there. It's the same stigma that comes with all the rough neighborhood around; it's not indigenous to Jamaica. Other places in the world have the same problem.

"The album is stories that are true to me. The title track — these are actual events that happened with a close friend of mine," Stephenson continues. "All these views come from me having grown up in August Town. Where you come from makes you who you are, and I just wanted to make it clear so when people look and say, 'This man's from August Town and it's a positive thing. He's not singing about guns and shooting people,' or whatever people expect from August Town. So people can relate [the area] to something positive."

This time I'll keep my A&R hat stuffed deep in my pocket and won't make any wild predictions about Stephenson's potential international success as a solo artist. And even though the honey-voiced tenor with a slight rasp can more easily perform around the world and record his ever-growing catalog of songs, don't expect him to flood the market with new music.

"People in the reggae business have the habit of putting out a million different songs at the same time, which I don't think is the best way and it kind of prostitutes the music," he says. "People can't exactly focus on really getting to know a particular song of yours when 10 songs that are different from the ones on the album that they're playing at the same time. We try to keep it in one direction."

Straight back to August Town.

» Crossroads, 4103 Baltimore Ave., Bladensburg, Md.; Sat., 10 p.m. doors, $30; 301-927-1056.

Photos courtesy VP Records