At the young age of sixteen, Dan Stevens' romantic streak was ignited by his first guitar teacher in small town central Pennsylvania who told him stories about the lives of traveling blues musicians like Mississippi John Hurt and Fred McDowell. After being inspired by Woody Guthrie’s book, “Bound for Glory”, the magnetic lure of the road captured his imagination and he hitchhiked and hopped freight trains - guitar in hand - across the United States five times, eventually covering over 100,000 miles.
Always seeking diverse experiences, he has worked as a teacher in Pennsylvania and Arizona, a rock-climbing instructor in New Mexico, broke his collarbone riding bulls in Colorado, and sailed schooners for a living on the Eastern seaboard. He lived full time on his own wooden sloop in Mystic, CT for a couple of years while performing solo up and down the East Coast. A high-light of this period was sailing throughout Central and South America as mate aboard David Crosby’s (Crosby, Nash, and Young) sailboat, the Mayan.
