Carol Stevens is originally from Whitley Bay and lives in Northumberland. She has enjoyed music from a young age when she sang in the school choir and Salvation Army choir. She began playing piano at the age of 5 and completed all of the grade exams. She performed at Newcastle City Hall when she was just 10 years old, returning later to support Lindisfarne.
During her teenage years, Carol discovered the sound of the organ and went on to learn to play. She got her first professional music job at the age of 17, as a backing musician at a caravan park in Whitley Bay.
Carol has provided backing music for many artists and appeared in shows with other including Dave Allen, Lynne Perry (Coronation Street), David Essex, Roger De Courcey, The Batchelors, Bobby Davro, Bobby Thompson, Chubby Brown, The Drifters and Jimmy James.
Carol was playing for ballroom dancing when she decided to include some singing which led to her becoming an artist herself and starting to write her own songs. She was unable to afford the high cost of recording so the songs were put on hold.
In 1986, Carol met her husband Dave and together they performed the rock band Jynx and the duo Double Trouble. They mainly worked on the cabaret scene but Carol’s heart was in country music. She went on to form Carol Stevens and the Rebel Country Band followed by the trio Carol Stevens and the J.D.Bros. They played the country scene to great success winning awards and receiving frequent positive reviews.
Carol began writing songs in the 1980s and had three songs accepted by Nashville-based publishing organisation BMI along with the offer of a tour. However, circumstances at home meant she was unable to commit to the deal and she stopped writing shortly afterwards. It wasn’t until the Covid lockdowns of the early 2020s that Carol began writing again with songs including “I’m Swinging”, “My Friend”, “Celebrate” and “Down The Road”. She is currently completing a new album “Back On Track Again” and is receiving airplay on radio stations in the UK and around the world.
Carol has performed all over the world, singing and playing keboards, including Germany, Ireland, Tenerife, Menorca, the UAE and the US where she sang at Stockyard’s Opry and Billybob’s in Fort Worth, Texas. She has also worked as an extra in TV shows including “Wire In The Blood”, “Vera”, “55 Degrees North” and “The Gambling Man”.
Carol was named UK Artist of the Year 2023 by US country music radio station Countrybeatsradio.com
No Surrender was written while Carol was on holiday in Tombstone, Arizona. She was out in a bar when a sheriff came in, she recalls, “he was huge and had all these weapons on him, he looked really mean, and his sidekick looked half Indian and had a huge Bowie knife down his leg and guns as well. That;s where I got the inspiration for the song. Hence the first lyrics, ‘Meanest looking sheriff’s out there searching for my soul’, and then the rest of the lyrics and music came to me and I finished the song when I got back to where we were staying in Tombstone”.
The song was a finalist for Best Modern Country Song in the World Songwriting Awards in the spring of 2023.
In September 2023, Carol released the single “Down The Road”
Carol says, “The idea for Down The Road came to me when I was staying in a place called Crossville, Tennessee. We were driving down the road and I saw this hobo, walking down the road. I started wondering what it must be like to be him, waking up in strange places everyday under the stars or whatever the weather and not having any money, not knowing where the next meal was coming from but still enjoying life as a hobo. So the first line “I’ve never got a dime here in my pocket”, led the way into the song, which I wrote in about an hour, I arranged it with my friend when I got home, and the song was born.”
In February 2024, Carol released the single “The Ring”. “I wrote The Ring as I was looking at my mums engagement ring on my hand,” she said. “I thought about what happened in my mum’s life when she wore it, as rings live on forever, even after the person dies.”
“So, in that ring is a story,” Carol added. “The song begins as the couple get married and he gives her his mother’s ring which already has stories from the past. As their life passes, children grow up and leave home, and then one of the couple dies, so the other has to live on until they meet again.
“When eventually this happens, the ring is passed down to their daughter who will again pass it on in her future. People die, but the ring lives on with more stories in its wake.”
