Singer/Songwriter Steve Broderick may be known to a generation of Trans-Siberian Orchestra fans as the voice of their classic "Old City Bar", as he sang that song for a decade with the act's East Coast touring company. But there is so much more to music industry veteran Broderick - from fronting powerful rock bands and touring North America, being represented by major industry management, and releasing a string of rootsy solo records in an on-again, off-again recording career - that is very much in the "on" mode once again. I caught up with Steve to talk about his experience as part of the TSO cast, his bands Mama Kettle, American Trash and 100 Watt Suns, and what he is up to musically today.
Dan Roth: I'd like to kick things off by talking about the first band that I was aware of you being in, Mama Kettle. Was that the first band you had where you released an album?
Steve Broderick: I went to SUNY Oneonta for school in upstate New York and loved it up there. I started a cover band while there and despite finishing school, I still found myself playing in the band more than anything else. When we graduated, we all moved to the City and made the switch from covers to originals. This was back in the early '90s and our day jobs were all working at record companies at the time. We released an album called Mama Kettle And The Exploited Freaks Travelling Sideshow Band.
DR: Did you guys have a steady following back then?
SB: When I moved to New York, I just fell in love with the city and with this band, we really learned how to do it. We were very committed but at the same time, we were very green. We'd do any gigs that came our way; Tuesday evening on Bleeker Street at 2 in the morning, for example. But with a lot of intestinal fortitude, we learned all the steps - wrote and recorded our original music, made an album, and did a lot of touring.
DR: I have seen some live videos of the band, from a Public Access show.
SB: Yeah, that wasn't the most flattering production with the lights and stuff, but it was kinda what the group was.
DR: Understood. I was digging the organ in the band.
SB: That Hammond organ player, his name is Mike Bianchini and his uncle was Felix Cavaliere of the Rascals, and that organ was the Rascals' organ.
We as a band really were hooked and committed to it. We had a space that we rehearsed in and gigged all over the city. I was out every night of the week either playing or seeing someone; I was completely immersed in it. That leads to getting a pretty big manager and we eventually were represented by Bud Prager and ESP Management, best known for managing Foreigner. Bud eventually got us a good booking agent and our first tour was opening for Tesla! Moving from playing gigs in the city to touring major venues was really eye opening. Our next tours were with Bad Company, Ted Nugent, and Lynryd Skynyrd. We would be backstage and looking at their setlists and there was just hit after hit that we all knew from growing up and hearing them on the radio and we were opening for these guys. This is also when I got close to manager David Krebs, as he was pursuing us.
We recognized that we still had a lot of growth to go to even approach bands like these and there is a level we're not hitting. Eventually we got frustrated with Bud because things were going in the right direction but he didn't leverage all of this touring into a bigger record deal.
You remember the tv show "Behind the Music"? It was an hour and the first half hour everything was going great and the second half hour was going into the ditch. [Laughs] So, the second half of Mama Kettle is going into the ditch.
DR: Krebs of course was also managing Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and, based on their initial 1999 touring success, Krebs decided to launch two touring companies. So, in 2000, suddenly TSO is casting roles and performers for two touring companies. Was your relationship with David Krebs what helped open the door for you there?
SB: Well, that is the short story, for sure. David certainly helped there, but it was a unique situation. Right about 1999, 2000, that was the first time I had gotten out of music. What's the expression, "If you're not growing, you're dying". Through the '90s, we had been touring amphitheaters with Mama Kettle but then when the tours kinda stop and the record stuff gets quiet, it became "What are we doing here?". I had reached a point where I decided that I was 100% done with music, so I thought. In 2000, I was not active in music. I had cut my hair, worked in real estate; I was done. And then I get a call from David Krebs.
From his call, I thought I was being invited to go and jam with the Savatage guys. I'm thinking I will be jamming with this rock band and listening to some new tunes. Now, I'm a New Yorker - I live on the East Side. And the jam that I think I am going to is like 42nd and the Hudson River [Laughs] It's August and like 150 degrees out and it was so far out there, you get off the subway on the West Side and you still got a 30-minute walk! I finally get there and it is not jammin with a rock band. It looked like a TV Show audition. There was a room with a bunch of Broadway people and sheet music and we were all in this waiting room and I hear "Next" and I see the guy handing sheet music to the piano player. I am thinking "What the fuck am I doing here?!" [Laughs] I don't know who is in that room and all I can think is that something went wrong. I went downstairs and tried calling David from a payphone and I can't get a hold of him. At this point., I'm just rattled. I literally decided to leave and started walking back to the subway in that heat. After a few blocks I stopped into a bar and had a couple beers - literally just trying to keep up with what I was sweating out. [Laughs] After drinking for a bit, I decided to go back up there.
I ended up getting into that room and there is a table that looks like what eventually became that American Idol look. At that table are Paul, David and Taro [Meyer]. I look at David and I'm like "What the fuck is this? What am I doing here?" [Laughs] I wasn't being irate or an asshole, but I knew David a long time and I guess out of respect for David, Paul let me sing for them. Paul stands up, picks up an acoustic guitar and plays what sounds like the intro to Cat Stevens' "Father and Son", and I'm the biggest Cat Stevens fan in the world; I can actually imitate him really well. So, I started singing "Father and Son". That song starts off kinda quiet and then eventually gets to that ass-tightening point and at that point, me and Paul are jamming! And that was the link that got me involved with Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Honestly, if he hadn't started playing what sounded like "Father and Son", I don't think I ever would have been involved. And I definitely would never have sung "Old City Bar". That was the audition.
DR: When they were casting the roles and songs for the Show, were you cast for "Old City Bar" from the get-go?
SB: No. Look, I am rock singer. No more, no less. Vocalists - the Celine Dions and the Adeles - that's an amazing thing but that's not what I do. I respect singers and I respect a lot of different genres of music. But when Creedence screams "737 comin' out of the sky", THAT I get. I think realistically as a singer, there is a huge limitation and the only thing I ever had was a 'sound'. I struggled for years to get that consistent and work on that. So, belting out a rock song and sounding like me, yeah - everyday of the week! Trying to be cast in a part was weird. Some of the rock songs they had were a better fit. I don't know how I ended up with "Old City Bar"; it's gotta be from that Cat Stevens thing.
DR: Were you already familiar with TSO when you showed up that studio that day?
SB: Yeah, because their record came out in '96. I was with Krebs at that point and I had also worked at Atlantic Records. I was a huge Savatage fan though - that Poets and Madmen record was so good. We used to jam to that while on tour.
DR: O'Neill was infamous for having the singers really get in a certain mindset for the songs they were assigned.
SB: Yeah, that part is fascinating to me and it really took on a life of it's own, beyond any of the tempo drama that existed. I do think its a masterpiece of a song and give him all the credit in the world for that writing and the redemption that's built into it. I love the original recording and love the original vocals, done by John Margolis. I heard a live version from 1999 when he sang it and that was just "it". I never came close.
DR: The presentation of "Old City Bar" certainly changed over time with costumes and a bit of acting, both with you and with Bart Shatto in the West cast. Did you start out singing it straight while in the TSO tuxedo?
SB: I am a big fan of Bart's and of Broadway and really respect what he did with it. I will say that that element of being in character - I love it as a fan. That was never something that was a good fit for me. The coat and props all came from Bart and really had nothing to do with me, and I'm not sure if I ever was comfortable with all of that, but it became part of the deal if I wanted to stay there. You know, I was really close with the late James Lewis. We were unbelievable friends. Other than a little John Hiatt, there is no one else that sounds like James. When "Christmas Nights in Blue" came along, it was just the perfect fit for James. All he had to do for that was go be James! In a perfect world, I would have had a song where all I had to do was be me! [Laughs]
In the early days of TSO, it was a scenario like Saturday Night Live, with a cast hired for this brand entity. And with SNL, it was "This year, Joe Piscopo is going to make the movie, Eddie Murphy will make a movie, next year David Spade is going to make a movie" and so on. There was this element where there are so many talented people and there is this audience and it was discussed that being in this TSO cast would eventually help with some of your own music. Obviously, I don't think that happened with anybody. So it eventually becomes "you either leave or you don't". I love that there were different genres of musicians and singers working together, but that idea of "I got the spot in the cast" was not me. I wanted to be in a band doing the kind of music I loved, I was not looking for a gig.
DR: Clearly you were also involved in the Show with singing backings and the occasional extra song in the second half of the Show, but "Old City Bar" was a little different. For most of the Show, there is non-stop action - lights, fire, blocking, various effects and so forth. When you and Alex Skolnick come out for that song, all of that chaos is gone and it is just the two of you and a spotlight. Clearly you were a seasoned performer, but was that nerve wracking at all?
SB: That is really perceptive and a great question. It is a double-edged sword. I was always like "Why me?!" [Laughs] There's fucking bombs going off and dancing girls and all you've got to do is go out and rock for three minutes. No. You're going out there for fifteen minutes; It was like being fed to the fucking lions! [Laughs] There were moments with Alex and the emotional impact of that song and getting through how exposed you are - it was like "Holy Shit!". Paul's thing with this song is redemption and that was personal to me. To go through all of the struggles of being in bands and opening acts to now being in arenas and Paul gave me that chance. There was just so much in delivering it and connecting with it but also the other side of it with "How did I get here?".
DR: Sounds like just a heavy moment all around.
SB: It really was. Ya know, one of Paul's baseline rules was "Whatever happens, don't stop." And one particularly memorable moment was when Alex and I were out there doing this song and there was some sort of arc flash in the lighting rig that broke a clamp and a light came down that narrowly missed somebody right in the front - mid-tune. We had to keep going like nothing happened, but it was a real "Holy Shit" moment - it was like an explosion.
DR: You mentioned how much you liked the original recording, which is just over six minutes long. The tempo was certainly slowed down when performed live and seemed to get longer over the years. We know that was the direction being given, but did you ever try and pick it up at all?
SB: Yeah, I was younger and I was a rocker. Look, I fought the law and the law won. [Laughs] I am lucky that I didn't get thrown out of there sooner. Paul's premise was that bands play everything faster live, which is true, and he felt the lyrics get lost and he wanted his lyrics heard. So there was this premise that we're going to slow it down. And honestly, it probably went too far. I am sure you have heard the story from when Roger Daltrey was guesting with us. That was the greatest thing ever. One, getting to jam with these legends was amazing and I will always be indebted to Paul for those experiences. The way it would work is we would know about a month before the appearance and we would learn the material and play it at soundcheck. The day the legend would arrive, that soundcheck would be the rehearsal and then we would do it. We start the rehearsal with Roger and we're doing "Pinball Wizard" and it is much slower than the speed on the record. And Roger Daltrey, within ten seconds, [Laughs] "Hold it, Hold it, Hold it. Who the fuck picked these tempos?!" [Laughs] And Paul is standing right there. We couldn't say that, but Roger could.
DR: After you were no longer in TSO, you had a bit of fun with the tempo and recorded a solo version that clocked in less than three minutes.
SB: I loved doing that. I can't say it was sanctioned by Paul, but I know Paul heard it and he got a kick out of it.
DR: During the finale of the TSO Show, traditionally another performer comes out with a guitar and for many of those tours you were on, that was you. I know you were keen to rock out a bit more and I'd imagine this was a fun moment for you?
SB: Yeah and for the last three or four tours I was on, there was a bunch of tunes where I am playing guitar. I am a bass player by trade and have done a ton of work playing bass. I can play the guitar, but I have never had the desire to do the work to really became fluent, but I can play. That was kinda cool. Even when they started adding more parts, a lot of it was just single-string riffs and stuff, almost like playing bass.
Also, while I did "Old City Bar" for all of those tours, early on I also got to sing in the second half occasionally doing those Tommy Farese songs, "The Snow Came Down" and "Find Our Way Home". It was cool to get those opportunities as well.
DR: TSO is, particularly in those formative years, a real melting pot of talent, with musicians and singers from all over the musical spectrum - from Broadway to metal to r&b to rock. For you, a rocker at heart, fun to be immersed in while on tour?
SB: Oh yeah! That was amazing and eye-opening and I wish I saw some of that level of talent sooner. Take Alex, he was still going to school and studying jazz in 2000 and he was on tour transcribing Miles Davis charts for his homework! That level of commitment was amazing. Daryl Pediford was a God. I have this one image burned in my head. Those old tours were in these cool theaters and we are in the upstairs dressing room with one raw light bulb and there's Pediford putting his tux on with the cigarette and the smoke swirling around. He was shining his shoes - dude, it's like fucking Eddie Kendricks! And what he would do on stage, the kind of person he was and his warm presence. It was an honor just to be around him. After Shows we would go to a bar and if there was a band playing, we would get up there and jam - the music that just came out him was unbelievable. He was taken from us far too soon.
DR: Looking back at your time with the TSO, what did you take away from it?
SB: I mentioned the redemption thing earlier, which is a big reason why it resonates to me personally. But selfishly, there was also this element of validation. All of those years of garage bands, backyard parties, and shitty bars - there was something incredibly validating to me to play with TSO. I will give Paul credit. He was the only person that I ever heard that looked at all of that stuff as an apprenticeship. Take someone like Tommy Farese. I grew up on the Island and back then there was such an incredible cover scene - these musicians and bands playing seven nights a week and absolutely killing it. I didn't have the heyday of that, but Paul saw value in that. This was the price of the education to be prepared to do something like that.
DR: Just curious - Chris Caffery always introduced you as "Stevie B". Where did that come from?
SB: It was unfortunate that there was this dance guy in the '80s called Stevie B and it just kinda stuck. I love Chris and his mom was often at shows and I was close with them. His mom always got it wrong. She would always say "Stevie D". [Laughs] She was great and recently passed. I consider Chris a close personal friend and major talent.
DR: We talked a bit about your involvement with David Krebs and TSO, and you made it clear that you were hoping to get to rock out and be yourself a bit more. While in TSO, you started a band that had a harder, more mature sound. Let's chat about American Trash. I hear influences of Aerosmith and Guns N Roses in there.
SB: [Laughs] Perfect! There's an expression that says the good ones borrow and the great ones steal. We wanted that sound! The guys in American Trash were a mixture of musicians from New York and Connecticut and one of them, Joe Delaney, had a studio and we ended up getting that together. All of things that I wanted to achieve to get to that next level, American Trash had that. We would scare the fuck out of the headliner. With Mama Kettle, we would get blown off the stage by the headliners. With American Trash, those headliners better have been on that night or we'll eat their lunch.
DR: One of the stand-out tracks off the Element of Doom album is "Hole in My Soul". Tell me a bit about that one.
SB: This band was just a roundhouse kick to the face. Everything about it was just "Kaboom!"! I loved it. It was really special. "Hole in My Soul" was written by JoeTown (Joe Delaney). We had two albums out, manager David Krebs was behind us, and we had a major record deal in front of us that got fucked up.
So one day I am in my apartment and I get a phone call and it's "Can you hold for Clive Davis?"! I am thinking "Who is fucking with me here?" [Laughs] and then Clive Davis gets on the phone and says "Congratulations, you have a hit song"! But in the end, it didn't work out. And the reason that deal didn't work out was we were in our early 30's and there was all this focus on image and photo shoots and marketing concepts instead of us playing live. They wound up giving that record deal to a Philly band who were all in their 20's and they got sent out on tours with Van Halen and Aerosmith. My takeaway from that was that I was too old and too stupid to quit. [Laughs]
DR: Wow....so close and it really seemed like you were on the right trajectory with the band, the tunes, and David Krebs behind you. I understand that Paul O'Neill liked that particular song also.
SB: Yea, Paul O'Neill was obsessed with that song "Hole In My Soul" and said a million times he wanted TSO to cover it.
DR: One last TSO-related question. In 2013, they flew you over to Germany to sing with TSO for their 9-minute New Years Eve performance at the Brandenburg Gate. It was you, Bart Shatto, Chris Pinella, and Jay Pierce singing the Latin portion of "A Last Illusion"
SB: Yeah! That was unbelievable. That was so cool. Adam Lind and Kenny Kaplan, who worked under Krebs for so many years, had carried on successfully managing TSO once David was no longer involved and it was great to get the call from them to do this!
I was really active with my solo stuff at the time and it was such a cool thing to do. It was an amazing experience; I think they said there were a million people there! We had such a great time. I had roomed with Skippy (Dave Z) for most of my years on the TSO tours and it was great to hang with him again. They had this Christmas Marketplace that was like something out of a storybook. There were these great outdoor areas and you could go get a German beer and they had these ice slides that were right outside of our hotel. The gig was fun and we make our way back and he and I spent the night going down these ice slides in inner tubes [Laughs]. That was a hoot! I have such great memories of Skippy; another who we lost too soon.
I have to say, putting on the TSO outfit again after all those years, a lot had changed. Paul's vision for TSO with the tuxes and stuff all goes back to those Savatage videos of "When the Crowds are Gone" and "Gutter Ballet". The whole vision is there - the pyro, the strings, the tuxes. In the early days of TSO, there was a place on 86th Street in New York called Jack's Tuxedos and these things were rentals, dude. [Laughs] I'm 6-foot-something, a skinny rock dude with this rental tux - we looked like we were at our Junior Prom [Laughs] . Fast forward to getting to sing with them again at this 2013 gig and the cast now has costumes from Planet of the Apes! I was like "How did you guys get out of those crappy tuxes and into these cutoff-sleeves and shit!"
DR: [Laughs] I remember when the new coats, black jeans and wallet chains showed up and the jackets started coming off in the second half of the Show and there was this new look.
SB: We got gypped! [Laughs]
DR: You had released a solo record along the way with a very different sound, more rural and rootsy, and even included a Mama Kettle cover on it. And a great band with a couple guys that had been involved with TSO and even Joel Hoekstra on guitar, who wound up joining the TSO cast in 2010.
SB: Yeah, in 2004 I put out this record that was way more "Tom Petty" than "Guns N Roses". I have a history with Joel Hoekstra. Katrina Chester, who sang with TSO, was in a show called "Love, Janis" that was about Janis Joplin. I went to go see Katrina in that show and she had a great band - Joel on guitar, Rob Clores on keyboards, Eric Massimino on bass and Thommy Price on drums, who was a New York legend. I saw the show but didn't meet the band, but I was telling Katrina what a great band she had and she said that we should link up. Funny story - there were two guitarists in the band; one that looked like Eric Clapton and Joel. Katrina tells me that she is going to put me in touch with the guitar player and I wasn't sure which one she meant. We hooked up on the phone a couple times and made arrangements for him to come to my apartment to work on some music, and I open the door and I was like "You're not the Eric Clapton guy!" [Laughs]. We ended up writing together and he helped me tremendously with that record. Joel and I worked so well together and became great friends. It did really suck not to be able to tour with him when I was out and he was hired on guitar.
DR: Was the change to go from that full-on rock sound of American Trash to this more rootsy style intentional?
SB: Yes. Look, I grew up with metal like Iron Maiden and KISS, but I am the biggest Van Morrison fan in the world and that kind of music was not a stretch for me. When I moved to Connecticut from New York in 2007, there is a radio station that comes in from Long Island called WEHM that I just fell in love with. They'll play a classic Tom Petty tune, a Rolling Stones deep cut, and then a new artist that has all of those influences. That has kept me plugged into new music.
DR: One of my favorite songs from this album is "Fifty Fifty".
SB: That's Joel's riff. That just came out of one of those writing sessions I mentioned and he brought that riff with him. I love writing lyrics and that lyric to me, was about a relationship where she was not going to accept anything but equal partnership. I had a friend from Oneonta that loves to refer to the line I wrote in that song, "Time has the tendency of glossing over the lunacy" - there's a lot of lyrics in that one that I really like.
DR: The first song on this album is a remake of a song you did on the Mama Kettle record. What made you want to re-do this one?
SB: Even with how much I told you about Mama Kettle, with the big manager and record deals, there was so much pressure to write. We could hand in The White Album and they would ask for more songs [Laughs]. "Love is Wasted on Me" got a lot of attention for the band and is something that I was always proud of writing. When I did this time around as a "solo guy", that was a nice connection to the past. There is another song on there called "Dripping" - a couple of Mama Kattle bandmates didn't make it and this is about one of them and is very pointed about some of the occupational hazards.
DR: Oh wow. I am familiar with "Dripping" but now those lyrics take on a bit of new meaning.
Apart from Joel, you have Mark Ambrosino on drums. Among other great gigs, he was a long-time back-up drummer for TSO. Did you know him from your TSO touring days?
SB: Well the producer on that record is Mike Lutz, who played bass for Ted Nugent, when we toured with Ted. Mike is a Detroit guy and I recorded a lot of this record in Detroit. Mike was also in a band called Brownsville Station and he co-wrote that classic "Smokin' In The Boy's Room". He brought in Blue Miller from Bob Seger's band and I brought in Joel. As you mentioned, Mark was in the backup band and I will never forget - opening night of the 2003 TSO tour, Jeff Plate's sister had passed and Mark got the call to play on very short notice and did an incredible job. Mark is a killer drummer and really skilled as a studio guy with engineering too. So he really fit right in.
DR: One last song I wanted to ask about from this record is "Never a Day Goes By". I see you have re-released that and re-did it a bit?
SB: Dan, I know you have some health issues. I just went through something too and have been dealing and processing it. I have had a lot of starts and stops with music and thinking about mortality issues has really got me focused more on my music. I am writing quite a bit, upgraded my home studio and looking at some of my older stuff too.
There's something really cool with "Never a Day Goes By". There was a band in the '70's called Artful Dodger that was managed by Lieber-Krebs. David Krebs told me "These guys should've been huge. They had this huge Cheap Trick/Power Pop-thing and you have some vocal similarities with their singer." He handed me a cassette with a few of their tunes and I instantly gravitated to this song. I recorded it in '04 and for the last 20 years, David has been trying to get me to do something more with it. So I just this year remixed it with Jay Messina. Jay was the original engineer for Artful Dodger! So yea...new, old stuff!
DR: So 2010 comes along, and apart from that one-off gig in 2013, TSO, their tuxes and American Trash are in the rear-view mirror. And we are greeted with a fresh new solo record called Shamrock Eyes. Is that your bass you're holding on the cover?
SB: Nah, that's my Martin Acoustic. Same Martin as the ones TSO used to use. I had moved to Connecticut, started meeting some musicians in that area and my old friend in American Trash, JoeTown, produced it. There is an element there of "I'm doing what I want" - very shoestring and just had a blast recording it. Making music for music's sake.
DR: One track that stands out to me is "Almost a Crime", which has a real Black Crowes feel.
SB: The tagline on Mama Kettle was "The Black Crowes meets the Red Hot Chili Peppers". I love those guys and they have a huge Stones thing and I'm a Rolling Stones fanatic. I could never escape that but that wasn't bad company to be in. That song definitely has some of that influence.
So, "Almost a Crime" is an interesting story. So sometimes I would hang out with [Guitarist] Al Pitrelli and we would work on some stuff. I love collaborating and I would be like "Hey, I'm writing, do you got anything?". He shows some stuff and he definitely had that hook for "Maybe I might lose my mind" and I was recording on my little work cassette. He told me that when he was working with Alice Cooper, he showed him the song and thought it might be another "Only Women Bleed". So, crazy thing. I call Al to let him know that I wrote the lyrics and ended up fleshing out what he shared with me and he gave me his blessing. The record comes out and a TSO fan gets a hold of it and messages me "Hey I didn't know you loved Alice Cooper so much!". I said "What are you talking about?" She goes "That part is just like an Alice Cooper song". And it was. I call Al - "What happened?" He says "Wires got crossed. I didn't know it was something from Alice Cooper already". One of the TSO guys was friendly with Alice's management and we kinda put the toothpaste back in the tube. So I think I inadvertently cowrote with Alice Cooper on that song.
DR: Wow! What a background to that song. A couple years after this record, you released an EP credited to Steve Broderick and The 100 Watt Suns.
SB: Yeah, that is an extension of Shamrock Eyes. Long story short, one of the biggest mistakes I made was not picking a stage name. Everything I ever did was under Steve Broderick and there is nothing cool about "Steve Broderick". It sounds like a plumber. I always wanted a band name. SO some of the guys who helped me with Shamrock Eyes turned into the 100 Watt Suns. We had a really good run throughout the Northeast. We had this new song on there called "You Can't Hide" that did pretty well on the AAA radio format.
DR: What is your songwriting process like? Do you write them all and then go into the studio? Or do you continue writing as you are recording?
SB: I have always said that music is an affliction. Even if I go "I'm not doing this anymore:", someone may say something to me that will resonate with me and things kinda gather. And then you have a stockpile of ideas. So when I decide to get going again musically, which I just started doing again, I have these things that have been gelling and I get them ready to track.
DR: It is great to see and hear new tunes from Steve Broderick, the singer. "Boots on the Ground" is your newest release. What can you tell me about it?
SB: "Boots on the Ground" is an expression we are all hearing too much on the news these days. But that lyric is not specific about military. For me, its more of a class warfare kind of thing. It's that gap and transference of wealth. I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth, not a silver spoon [Laughs] and its about that and a lot of strong feelings of something's gotta give. Starter homes are what mansions used to cost. People don't have access to health care anymore. So its a little approach to some political feelings that I have. I also think its funky as fuck and has a little Sly Stone in it. That works for me too. I worked with some great musicians here locally and Alex Wilhelm down in Nashville did the awesome mix.
On guitar we have Jerry Prejean, who is from Louisiana, and has a legit Chicken Pickin' thing going on, real talented and been doing some cowriting. I work a lot with an unbelieve drummer named John Seastrand who is just an unbelievable powerhouse. I would also love to mention Bill Light. He is an unbelievable slide guitar player who has a great sense of melody. A lot of times when you hear that, people think Allman Brothers, but his real thing is David Lindley, who played with Jackson Browne.
DR: Do you have any plans yet to start putting these together in album form and release it physically or digitally?
SB: Well my plan is to crawl out of my cave. Around 2015, I determined that squeeze wasn't worth the juice. I was enjoying it but it just caved in on me with family and life in general. I thought I was done, but I'm not. I want people to hear the new music. I've been getting my voice in shape and been singing a lot. We'll see what happens. I'm a glutton for punishment.
DR: You mentioned you're a Stones fan.
SB: That's an understatement.
DR: What do you think of their new record? Still inspiring you after all this time?
SB: Yea it does. I've been falling for the same trick for thirty years. You gotta go to the show because it might be their last. Last summer at Giants Stadium - these guys are in their 80's and put on an unbelieveable show. I remember when "Under cover of the Night" came out and I was like "Eh, I'm not sure". But those songs all age well. It's that Stones grease, ya know.
DR: Thanks for
taking the time, Steve. Appreciate all the insight and stories and looking
forward to new music!
For more info on Steve Broderick: Official Website
