Seasick Steve: I Started Out With Nothin' and I Still Got Most of It Left
Seasick Steve: I Started Out With Nothin' and I Still Got Most of It Left
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Saturday, 27, Sep 2008 03:44
Warner Music, out September 29th.
In a nutshell...
A trawler dredging the ocean deep for a music dead long before his time.
What's it all about?
It's about a guy regaling his children with stories of being down and out. He spins yarns while waiting for rides, picking fruit and getting drunk. He talks about the old delta blues men and sounds like the new-wave delta blues revivalists who surfaced in the late 50s and early 60s.
From his new home in Norway, Steve remembers the cold winter nights that forced him to migrate south when he was an able bodied young American.
There's no dissatisfaction here, no regret. The slide guitar is neat and warm. This is the music of a contented man.
Who's it by?
Seasick Steve is a hokum traveler who spent his formative years with his mother and her violent boyfriend. He ran away from home at the age of 13 and passed his time riding the rails, working state fairs and buskin' in the Blind Lemon Jefferson sense of the word. He's a happy guy and pleased to find the youth of today's interest in the blues is paying his bills.
As an example...
"If you're gonna sing a song about drinking wine, you better drink some wine." - Thunderbird
Likelihood of a trip to the Grammys
I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if this Warner Music artist won a Grammy. With America's economic tail firmly between its legs, Seasick Steve's coffee table-ready slide guitar could be just the medicine people need.
It's unobtrusive, nostalgic and can surely speak to the masses as they feel just a little more trapped by these credit-crunched times.
What the others say
"His story chimes with a certain kind of British music fan's romantic, Cormac McCarthyesque notion of a mythic lost America." -
So is it any good?
This certainly sounds a lot more settled than Seasick Steve - proud as punch though he is - would like it to sound.
He talks about his youth at the end of the album on a track called My Youth and waxes rhapsodic about how he's lost faith in settling down.
But, longing for the days of cutting loose and shirking responsibility, Steve now has a team of session musicians and marketing folk to sate.
His limited life experience leads to a limited pallet with which to paint, and it's his backing band that lift him on this recording.
It all seems a little one-sided to me. It sounds like a tribute record to someone who's still alive.
5/10
Martin Fell
"This is a nice review and well-written but there are a few factual errors that I would like to address. First of all, there are no session musicians on this album, and no backing band, as such. Steve's drummer Dan plays all the drums on the album and apart from that Steve plays everything else (excepting of course songs which blatantly feature other artists, such as Just Like A King with Grinderman and Happy Man with Ruby Turner. There are also a pair of gospel singers who make a few appearances. But every song was written, compossed, and performed by Steve. The second thing I want to address is the statement about a team of marketing people. Yes, when you join to a major label they do try to over-market everything, but Steve (due to the nature of his deal) retains complete control over the project, and the creative and marketing side of Steve's stuff is looked after by his oldest son, who makes sure that nothing inappropriate or cheap gets produced. It's all in the family and there aren't any industry suits running the show behind the scenes. There are no PR people telling Steve how to dress or what to say. What you see is what you get with Steve. Lastly I want to comment on the statement about "limited life experience" - again, if you knew Steve the way I do you wouldn't say such a thing. Steve has almost undoubtedly lived in more countries, worked more jobs, and seen more things than any other person I have ever met in my life. The fact that he chooses to write his songs about a certain period in his life is down to simply that he WANTS to write about that period. That's where his inspiration comes from, and those memories are what provokes the strongest emotional response from him. So that's what he writes music about. It's hardly fair to say he draws from a limited palette. Rather you should see that he's chosen this, on purpose, because this is what he wants to share with you. If one day he wants to write a song about his time in Seattle producing/recording punk bands, then he'll do that. But until then, this is what you get. :) All the best, The Skunk." - The Skunk@seasicksteve.com
I concur - Entertainment Editor