While the name Stephanie Erin Wittmer might be a new one amongst fans of modern country music, one listen to her debut EP Pilot reveals songwriting and vocal chops on par with seasoned professionals. Recorded at Modern Electric Sound Recorders in Dallas, TX with Jeff Saenz and Beau Bedford at the helm (known for their impressive output with the likes of Texas Gentlemen, Paul Cauthen, Ruby Boots, David Ramirez and more), Pilot merges 90s country influences with modern folk-pop flourishes that make for an inspired journey along open roads and past tumbleweeds, “only stopping for good views” — or news, depending on the chorus.
Growing up in small-town, rural Illinois, Wittmer was exposed to country music and performing at a very young age; she recalls putting on performances for her parents when she was three or four years old. Like many children, she took piano lessons, wrote poetry in her journal, and then finally thought to merge the two when she was a teen. Her post-college life took her to LA, and the road from there to her present sound has been a winding one. Before going back to her roots or “finding the flame” that she once knew, as she sings in the EP’s title track, she teamed up with some friends for a bedroom electronica project and also spent some time writing singer-songwriter tunes on the piano. “I had all these ideas for songs, that I just had to get out … too many,” she says. “I started writing all these country songs and realized I really love this genre.”
On “The Difference,” Wittmer paints a gorgeous picture of a lover who’s stepped out — and probably won’t be coming back. The song begins with a classic country tone before shifting into ’90s country pop decadence. The transition works because of Wittmer’s sure-footed songwriting. On this one, she literally did it in her sleep.
“Pretty sure parts of this came to me in my sleep, though I can’t quite remember how this one started,” Wittmer writes. “I remember I had this chorus idea that I loved down, but it took me a minute to figure out what I wanted the verses to be. I really wanted to portray the irony of the house the person left and how the only reason everything in the house was the same as they left it (old coffee still sitting out, one side of the bed still made) was because that person never came back… which was the only thing different about the house. That and all the pain they created by leaving.”