www.seasicksteve.com
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Much has been written recently about the long and colorful life and late development of the career of Seasick Steve, not all that accurate. Facts, as far as he remembers them, are as follows. Steve Wold was born in Oakland, San Francisco Bay Area throughout the postwar era, when white people started to pay serious attention to the music of black America. His father Gene played boogie-woogie piano in a local band. Steve tried the piano as a kid, "but my fingers were not big enough to get anywhere." Instead, at age 7, he fell in love with a guitar he came over to summer camp. "It just gobsmacked me, how things looked. It was so great that I was, but the moment I saw it, I knew I would play guitar." It was fine with his father, who arranged for him to have lessons with a friend KC Douglas, once PERDITION of Mississippi Bluesman Tommy Johnson. After his parents split up, Steve went to live with her mother. When the relationship between her and her psychotically violent new partner "came to a point where I knew I was going to kill that guy for real" the 13-year-old Steve ran away from home. He spent the rest of his adolescence living rough: working as and when the farms, amusement park, which would pay cash without asking to see his paperwork. He got around by hopping freight trains, spent some time at a little place called jail, or "juvenile detention center" as the police preferred to call it. "I was not tryin 'to be a hobo," Steve explains. "I know that Many people wrote books about this, forward-thinking "it's cool, but I was just tryin 'to escape. And that was the only route open to me at the time." Well, not quite the only one. At 16 Steve began busking. "It was hard to earn good money Playin 'on the street, but the more I played the less I found I wanted to live under a bridge." Trouble was, he played music that was quickly go out of style. "The country blues was getting to be a dead issue in America. It had a brief revival in the early 60th century when they dug up the old Mississippi guys. But pretty soon they were back Workin 'on the train, or deliverin' clothes. "So, more or less, he was. For most of the 1970s Steve supported himself, his first wife and their two boys, working at the blue collar jobs he could find. "I tried everything." He recalls spending some time in Europe, busking in the Paris metro, before returning to America where he skittered around living in motels, cars, and when funds permitted, rental housing. The best it ever got was music gigs when he was hired as a studio engineer, played guitar in scratch bands of stars, he would not mention "because I hate name dropping, and anyways, they were just jobs." By 1980 rolled around, Steve had settled down with a Norwegian waitress he met at a bar in Oslo during one of his stints in a touring band. Moving to rural Tennessee he built a small studio, but when it did not work out "because there was this whole country and western, Christian bullshit thing that happens there down, "the Wolds finally had to pack up and leave again. This time due to the fact that Mrs. Wold was longing for the fjords -" she just wanted to live somewhere that looked like Norway. "- They chose to go north to Washington State, the North Western Seaboard It was after he re-mounted his studio in Olympia, a town an hour's drive south of Seattle, as Steve's musical career stepped up the gear. "Turned out this was the time when the whole punk grunge thing was to take up there, so I was making records with dozens of them grunge bands. "After recording albums for the likes of Bikini Kill and Modest Mouse, Steve became a bit of a face on the Washington music scene, and began to pick up a few orders of their own . In 1996 he supported RL Burnside when he played Seattle. "Everyone, even the kids were crazy, but I did not think anything of it. It did not occur to me that anyone would want to see me. At home I just like the old lava lamp in the corner, Playin 'guitar. "Ten years in the damp Pacific Northwest was enough for Elizabeth Wold. In 2001, at the insistence of her, her husband and their three boys (Steve's father 5 in total) re-located to Oslo. It was here that Steve bought his alias "Seasick" after a stomach-churning experience of booze cruise to Denmark. "I will not do well on boats. At all. Tell ya the truth, I did not like that name, but it just kinda stuck. "With not much else is happening in his new Norwegian life, took Steve leap in 2003 when he finally recorded an album of his own country blues variations with a couple of Swedish musicians." Cheap "by Seasick Steve and the level of Devils went surprisingly well. It was picked up and played in the UK a couple of influential key maker DJ, Charlie Gillett and Resonance FM's Joe Cushley, who encouraged him to come to London. Just when it looked like things were finally starting to happen for Seasick Steve, disaster struck . In 2004 he suffered a heart attack at home in Oslo. Fortunately for him, his wife re-trained as a nurse. "I was minutes away from dyin, but I survived," Steve says. "But then I realized I was really done. I thought it was definitely over for me and my music. "My wife thought otherwise. Hearing him plinking around on a busted 3 string guitar one day she insisted that he take himself and his 4-track recorder in the kitchen and take a few more songs." I think maybe she thought I would crash of in the near future, and that it would be nice to have some memories, you know. I did not feel like I was makin 'an album at all. "But he was, and there were plenty of people waiting in the UK to hear it. In 2006 Seasick Steve Dog House Music (now 200,000 plus and counting ) was released on the independent Bronzerat label. tongues wagged in the media village and a high profile appearance on Jools Holland's Hootenanny - Later big New Year's Eve shindig - was ordered. Steve is Steve "thought it was crap and that the audience will boo," but he were wrong again. It Later performance confirmed him as the hot new non-kid on the block. It also made him must see act on the European festival circuit in the summer of 2007. At this year's Mojo Awards, won Seasick Steve gong for Best Breakthrough Act. He is still modestly surprised by all the attention. "Every time I go out in front of these thousands of people, I think" Goddamn, how can someone who is young and not used to be famous already have all this success out of the blue? My belief is that I have come to the right time. People are tired of ALL "legs" so fancy. I guess they kinda like hearin 'me with an acoustic guitar Stompin' on a box. "Fortunately for them, in the spring of 2008 Seasick Steve recorded a new album in a studio at Wymondham in Norfolk. In addition to Steve and his drummer Dan Magnusson from the Level Devils, I started out with nothing and still got most Of It Left features guest performances by Nick Cave and his Grinderman group. Steve, who abhors what he calls "the blues police" and considers any recognition from the purist community "the kiss of death," is pleased to welcome all young people on board. "The children who come to my shows do not know nothing about Charley Patton or Son House," he observes, with some satisfaction. "They just know it rocks." I started with Nothing ... "Debuted in the Top 10 on album charts and sold over 250,000 copies, making Seasick Steve is one of the hottest" new "artists around. Since then he has sold out major shows including the prestigious Royal Albert Hall date, charmed every festival from Glastonbury to Latitude and became the oldest Brit Award nominee in history. Now Seasick Steve is back with 'man from another time, a resolute organic album that eschews modern studio trickery in favor of the warm style of "live" analog recording. Everything on the album was performed by Seasick Steve, except drums which are again credited his many years of Swedish sticksman Dan Magnusson. "I hope that by making records like this, that it will make people want to hear music that was recorded without the use of digital equipment, and that people's ears can get some rest from all that shit, "he explained." But if not, at least it was good for me. Me and computers do not see eye to eye. "
