Steph Gunnoe grew up in Charleston, West Virginia. Her mom sang opera and her dad played the banjo. In high school she listened to the Who and the Velvet Underground, rejecting much of the music from her own roots. But when she was 19, she moved to the North West where she discovered Hazel Dickens and other sounds from home.
She learned to play the guitar and started writing songs in a style more akin to the music from the coalfields than to that of the thriving grunge scene that surrounded her. In 1998 Gunnoe moved back to Charleston where she continued to write and play. A Charleston compilation CD of local songwriters featured two of her songs including the title track, “Glad I Stayed.” In 1999 she moved to Knoxville, Tennessee where she still resides.