Stephen Lee Veal

Picture an East Oklahoma brush-arbor-camp-meeting with a five year-old Stephen Lee Veal on the front row, enthusiastically banging away on a tambourine to old time gospel music. His mother, Virginia, was the guest Lay Preacher. Replay this scene a couple of hundred times across scrubby hills. Toss in a Dad who sang and played Cowboy Guitar/Harmonica. Add a bunch of Hank Williams, a family move to the Central Gulf Coast with it’s gumbo mix of Country, Blues and Cajun and you’ve got good roots for a songwriter.Wood Newton, Jimbeau Hinson, CJ Watson, Les Kerr and Tammy Vice are some of the successful writers Stephen Lee has co-written with in Nashville. He has also been featured on fifteen writers’ rounds at the Bluebird Café in Nashville and for seven shows in New Orleans at the House Of Blues/Parish Room for "15 Minutes of Fame". In Nashville, for Lee Rascone’, Stephen headed up a monthly “Alabama Songwriter’s Round” for three years running.On the Gulf Coast, Stephen produced the Songwriters’ Saturday Showcase monthly for six years at Veet's and has been a regular at the Frank Brown International Songwriter's Festival since 1998.Stephen’s first cut was by the Gulf Coast Quartet in the Seventies His songs have won numerous awards, notably the first place in open and overall best for "Feels Like Alabama" at the 2002 Hank Williams Festival held annually in Georgiana, AL. Stephen is currently a co-coordinator of the Pensacola Chapter of NSAI.