Stephen Fearing

Born in Vancouver during the mid-1960s, singer-songwriter Stephen Fearing passed the bulk of his childhood in Dublin, where he absorbed Celtic folk influences that would later shape his sound. Returning to Canada in the mid-1980s, he launched his career by performing at clubs and festivals throughout the region. His debut effort, the self-released Stephen Fearing (The Yellow Tape), appeared in 1986, after which he joined the Canadian imprint Aural Tradition for the 1988 album Out to Sea, also issued in the U.K. by Black Crow Records. Although Blue Line was tracked in 1989, Fearing devoted most of that year and the next to extensive touring across the U.S. and Europe alongside a Celtic package that included appearances at Peter Gabriel’s WOMAD Festival and the Reading Festival. True North, the Canadian label, signed him in 1991, reissuing Out to Sea and Blue Line before unveiling his major-label debut, The Assassin’s Apprentice, in 1994. The record featured contributions from Sarah McLachlan and longtime friend Richard Thompson, and it simultaneously served as Fearing’s U.S. introduction via Cooking Vinyl Records. Industrial Lullaby arrived in 1998, followed by So Many Miles two years later.