Steven Delopoulos

This former Burlap to Cashmere frontman turns new folk genius on his solo debut. The intimate guitar and ageless composition echo such artists as Peter Gabriel, Jim Croce, and Paul Simon (as well as the exploratory musical personality of Harry Nilsson). "Holy Sunlight" is a mountaintop experience.
- Amy Bartlett
- Rhapsody

This is an album for those who love to kneel in the dirt and watch their garden grow. As they pull out the weeds and plant flowers or vegetables, they find a picture of salvation as clear as the moon. They, like God, have taken over a section of dirt, cleansed it, rid it of its accursed thorns and thistles, and filled it with useful and beautiful plants. Time proves that weeds still lurk under the surface, but with faithful tending, they are never able to overcome the new growth. Steven Delopoulos may not use this exact analogy, but on Me Died Blue he does tell the story of those living gardens that bear the mark of the Father and constantly battle against the foul vegetation of the old man.

While each song offers a different story and a different tone, Me Died Blue's underlying theme of redemption is reflected in every one of them. Album opener "Another Day" captures the vibrant hope of our dreams as it dances between childhood memories and cultural reflections. In the end, it eloquently sums up why we, as Christians, can look forward to each new day: "Here's two colors, mixed and swirled / With wood and blood together twirled / Goodbye my friends, today I'm dead / To resurrect and change the world." A self-confessed nod to Paul Simon, "Jungle Trail" ponders the paradox of having salvation without clear direction. "Here I Go Again," a simple testament of Delopoulos's vocal abilities, longs for the rain of grace to wash away the hopelessness of a broken world. Similarly, "Daisies and Sandalwood" (Delopoulos's 9-11 reflection) longs for the world to look away from temporary things to the One who was, is, and ever shall be.

Other songs turn away from personal musings to stories of people and snapshots of other places. A neighborhood scene of families and friends is found on "12 West Front Street," a flashback to younger days when dreams were a dime a dozen. "Rocky Boat," appearing a few tracks later, shifts gears to the present where dreams are replaced with the realization of God's faithfulness to keep our footing steady as He works out His will in our lives. Another water-themed song, "Mediterranean Waters" sounds like a sunny afternoon on a Grecian beach, complete with the lazy observations of a sunbather.

Two songs answer all of these questions and musings. The first is "Holy Sunlight," a passionate cry for salvation in a world where our faith often gets lost in the tide of humanity and humanism. "People Come and Go," the album closer, surrenders any remaining doubt and confusion to our blessed Father who both gives and takes away.

While Steven's colorful lyrics are the driving force behind these songs, the instrumentation aptly aids his poetry, providing a rich background that beautifies his redemptive pictures. Indeed, Steven's picturesque guitar skills will grab you and keep you in your chair long enough to soak up all that he has to say. Along the way, you'll also feel producer Monroe Jones's presence as you hear his subtle addition of keyboards and percussion intensify an already colorful scene.

Just as every day brings something new to your garden, so will every listen open your eyes to something new in your heart. People, like gardens, come and go, but the Father is always there, perfecting them until He puts out their earthly fires and brings them home into the holy sunlight. - CMusicWeb

Me Died Blue is a thoroughly modern record that uses the past as a way of investigating the present. Rock, folk, and country touches and pop hooks are used as way of getting the depth in this material across in the same way Paul Simon in his best material used Tin Pan Alley New York of the 1940s and '50s. Delopoulos charts a terrain of cracks, dead-end leads, broken spirits, mysterious sights and sounds, and whispered truths from the mouths of the least likely personages. Together they make up a crazy map of beauty, tragedy, and drama. His songs express simple truths in refracted ways and complex truths are revealed as quandaries that change lives. In sum, Delopoulos' musical terrain is where the song becomes the story itself, which in turn is truly worthy of the timelessness of song. Brilliant, Me Died Blue comes from a heart broken enough to be tough and wily, and as a result open and tender enough to say: "This is the door, come inside, that I may come out to meet you and sing." —Thom Jurek, All Music Guide - All Music Guide

Me Died Blue is a dramatic, animated collection of tunes in the grand tradition of American storytelling and songwriting that borrows from various musical traditions, from the theater and cabarets and the ephemera of dying or dead popular culture — aka history. The title track, with its wildly strummed guitars, balalaikas, and chanted choruses, offers a view of the song as an experience contributed to from many external sources and purified through an individual's vision. The inhabitants of the words welcome the listener to join not only the story as told, but as it continues. On "Here I Go Again," with its beautiful accordion lines and strings, a shimmering series of jazz chords comes slipping through underneath Delopoulos' voice — which has a faint resemblance to Joe Henry's — where pondering is reported as the various actions one takes while in deep thought. The track sounds melancholy, but it is actually a prayer to the Muse; it asks, no, pleads for deliverance from the ordinary. "Another Day," the album's opener, enters with a faint, shimmering keyboard before Delopoulos' nimble fingerpicking — think Dave Van Ronk, Jack Elliott, Woody Guthrie, and early Dylan's tradition — covers it over. But a ghost enters in the lyric; it is Chapin's as he observes life in the process of being lived either as life or as existence via the stunning hooky complexity of Delopoulos' melody and singing voice. His characters, first and third person, have no time for false parades and tinny shining surfaces. These people are marked by brokenness, lost dignity, and unfulfilled dreams; they are fearful of what is to come, yet are unrepentant for the past as the refrain comes from all of them simultaneously: "Another day, another day/Where dreams they're not so far away/Where seeds they grow to land and branch/Harmonies and second chance." This track is an anthem in the same way Martina McBride's "Independence Day" or Robert Frank's classic book of photographs The Americans is. It speaks from the seemingly (and self-acknowledged) insignificant personal view out into the world of many as a way of belonging, as a way of asking for shared experience, simply because in it one comes into being. - Paste Magazine