Two Gallants Arise From The Wreckage

Two Gallants Arise From The Wreckage

Adam Stephens back with Two Gallants after wreck: Aidin Vaziri | Think you had a rough year? Try being Adam Haworth Stephens. Just a few days before the San Francisco musician, the singer and guitarist for the beloved folk-punk duo Two Gallants, released his first solo album in August, he was hit by a car while riding his bike to a rehearsal space in the Mission. "I had convulsions," he recalls. "My body was flailing around. Then these kids who were riding by stopped to check in on me and they turned out to be Two Gallants fans. So while I was drifting in and out of consciousness they were telling me, 'Your band is rad!' " With his regular outfit on a break, Stephens managed to recover from the accident in time to take the album, "We Live on Cliffs," which was produced by the Grammy-winning Joe Chiccarelli, on the road with keyboard player Matt Montgomery and drummer Omar Cuellar. On a cold November morning on Interstate 80 in Wyoming, their white Chevy van hit a patch of ice on the road and rolled several times. Stephens, 30, suffered a dislocated shoulder, broken rib and severe nerve damage. He also walked away with the kind of psychological fallout that sent Bob Dylan into seclusion after his motorcycle crash. "At least for the first few months after the accident I cut myself off from the world," Stephens says. "I'm feeling a lot better now." Read more.