Manassas Songwriter Stephen 'Stevie Oneshoes' Ward Records 'Anthem For Virginia'

MANASSAS, VA — Stephen "Stevie Oneshoes" Ward loves his home state so much, he wrote a song about it.

"An Anthem for Virginia" debuted on YouTube and Facebook in March and has struck a cord with many Virginians, some of whom have reached out to Ward over social media.

"I've had people that have responded to this, that have said things to me that, 'Tomorrow, if my life would end, at least in that aspect of things, this musical journey for me has been fulfilled,'" he said. "I had a woman say ... 'This will definitely be on my playlist when God goes to take me to Heaven.' They tell me their stories. 'I moved away. I was gone. Virginia always called me home.'"

This type of feedback can be a bit heady at times and make it difficult for Ward to talk about the response to the song and what he wrote about.

"It's meant not to be anything other than something that I think reminds us all to stop looking for something," he said. "Stop searching for something, or start recognizing the blessings that we have. We as Virginians are pretty blessed in terms of all that we've got around us."

Having grown up in Virginia, Ward has learned to appreciate its mountains, the sea, the hills and forests, the panoramic views and the four seasons.

"Virginia is an amazing place to live, an amazing place to raise your family," he said. "It's full of a lot of people that actually do live the spirit of Virginia and do demonstrate that Virginia is for lovers, and I think there's something to be said about that tagline."

Ward's father fell in love with Virginia. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, he served as a helicopter pilot in the U.S. Marine Corps. Stationed at the Pentagon, he brought his family to Virginia and loved it so much that he decided to spend the rest of his career there.

Ward grew up in the Oakton area and met his wife, Tara, at Oakton High School.

"I've been with my wife now for almost 30 years. We met when we were kids," he said. "We went to college for a little bit, ended up having my first kid a little young."

The couple moved back to Northern Virginia, raising their three children first in Herndon and then South Riding over the next 15 years. Then, seven years ago, the couple started an equestrian business in Prince William County.

"We're in the heart of the Manassas battlefield," Ward said. "She grew up an equestrian. I grew up with some experience there. She wanted to make this a career path. It went from starting a business called Morning Side Stables with about 20 students to now she's got about 180."

The genesis for "An Anthem for Virginia" came from Ward's journey, starting as a tech entrepreneur to becoming more of a blue-collar guy who worked 60 hours a week.

"The love of this land really helped, I guess, bring this thing out of the sky and into my head," he said.

Music had always been a passion for Ward. When he was younger, he had rock 'n' roll ambitions and even played in a popular local gig band in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

"Then life kind of came at me and career development and family growth and all that kind of stuff. I said, 'Look, it's time to hang up the guitar. It's time to put the rock 'n' roll dreams away.'"

For the next 15 years, Ward's guitars collected dust on the walls of his home. It wasn't until about five or six years ago that he reconnected with his love of music.

"I've always been an amateur songwriter, always been kind of receptive to little ideas," he said. "I call them microbursts that kind of fall out of the sky. I've never been a guy that likes sitting down and going to write an album. But more if an idea funnels into the brain, and it doesn't leave you alone, you kind of keep pulling on that thread."

During the pandemic, Ward decided it was time to do something with that thread of a song. He booked a studio at 38 North in Falls Church to record it with the help of producer/engineer Sean Russell. Then, with the help of director Carter Louthian, he made a video.

In March, Ward timed the YouTube launch with the debut of his new band, Cats at Play. They performed for the first time in public at Sinistral Brewing Co. in Old Town Manassas. Since then, the video has garnered more that 44,000 views.

"The last few weeks have really just been just a whirlwind, trying to manage the day job, manage the farm," he said. "I really made a conscious effort to try and respond to everybody who's taking the time to say something about the video on all these various different Facebook pages, and it must be thousands of people that I've talked to at this point in time."

As the video views climbed, Ward began to receive gig proposals from all over Virginia.

"Smith Mountain Lake, Lake Anna, and down in Radford — I just did a radio interview in Radford a week ago," Ward said. "We'll probably take the next couple of months and really kind of hone in and zero up our sound a bit. And then, you'll probably see us gigging a lot, maybe say starting in the July timeframe."

Only one question remains: Where did the Stevie Oneshoes name come from?

Ward laughed and explained that the band he played with in college jokingly called him "Stevie Noshoes," because of his habit of removing his shoes before going on stage. Years later, the aging rocker decided he needed to update his alias.

"Our home has always been open to having parties and trying to keep the youth alive," Ward said. "One strange thing that always happens is you wake up the next day, and it's the aftermath of the party or the chaos or whatever. And there'd be just a random shoe laying around. Somebody's high heel of boot, whatever. I never could figure out how they could leave the house with just one shoe on, Cinderella-style or whatever. And so, I said, 'Nah, I should be Stevie Oneshoes,' and thought that the singular and the plural had its own irony and all that kind of stuff."