Steve Silverton Interview
Q: You mention on your Bandcamp page that you have you been in a variety of bands since your teenage years. Can you talk a little bit about that and how it led to your solo effort River and Roads?
A: I'm in my ‘50s now, but I played my first gigs in bands at age 16 - in 1977. I first played lead guitar in a punk band called Spanker. We played on the same bill as the UK Subs at the famous London punk venue The Roxy, in Neal Street, Covent Garden. Then in the late ‘70s I was in a New Wave band called Tank Commanders. We had a live interview and a showcase of songs, including one of mine, on Radio Medway. I wrote some songs for both those bands. Then there was a very long hiatus from my mid ‘20s until my early ‘30s during which time I didn't pick up the guitar as much - only to jam with friends.
I started playing in bands again, and writing songs again, in my early ‘30s. These songs were now instrumentals for the funk band I played in - this was the mid '90s. We played festivals mainly and some London gigs. Then around ten years ago I started to play with an acoustic band that did a lot of Dylan and Cohen covers and roots/folk kind of material, and I got very into songwriting as an art form: the intimacy of vocals and acoustic guitar. 'Three chords and the truth', if you like. I fell in love with songwriting as an art form - particularly the songs of Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed, Dylan and Tom Waits, and more recently Townes Van Zandt.
I had always wanted to do an album of original songs and around two years ago I started working seriously towards getting a set of original songs together to perform at open mics and so on. I had scraps of lyrics and musical ideas that I had written down and recorded over the previous five years and I started working to put these together. I would try to be receptive to any new ideas that were coming in, writing down words and recording chord sequences and riffs on a smartphone. Just so they got remembered. Then a friend told me about FAWM - February Album Writing Month. This is an internet forum for songwriters and the challenge is to write an album's worth of songs in February. I entered this in February 2015 and managed to write and record six songs. With the help of Joe Read, who produced the album and plays some keyboards and bass on it, I then polished up these recordings. At that stage the idea was just to produce some high quality demos. But I then realized I was already half-way to an album. Joe is a professional musician who has played with some well-known people including Mick Taylor of the Stones, who he played with in a band called the Textones. He's a very talented guy with a great home studio, a good ear and he's very encouraging and easy to work with. So I worked on more songs, recording at home then polishing and adding instrumentation and backing vocals at Joe's, until we had the whole album.
As well as the more recent influence of the great songwriters, the album reflects the whole history of my love of music and involvement with it. So you have Dylan and Cohen but also punk, The Who, Bowie, Ian Dury and more in there as influences. I wanted to get not just American but English and particularly London influences in there - so that's where The Who, Bowie and Ian Dury come in.
Q: Most of your music felt heavily inspired from the ’60s and ’70s . Some of your songs veer towards Dylan style folk while other have a classic rock vibe - I even heard some reggae and surf rock in there. How would you classify River and Roads?
A: I don't think it is easily classified because of the different genres in there but I think the closest would be singer/songwriter. If you think of an album like Hunky Dory there are really a lot of different styles of songs on there. From the pop of “Oh You Pretty Things” to the proto punk of “Queen Bitch” to the Dylanesque “Bewlay Brothers” and “Song For Bob Dylan” and the power ballad “Life On Mars.” I love albums like that, with a range of styles, but unified by the fact of having the same songwriter and musicians singing and playing them. Of course I'm not in any way comparing myself to Bowie in terms of standard here. But the sense of presenting a smorgasbord of styles on one album - that's an idea I like.
Q: Rivers And Roads is a lengthy album with a wide variety of songs. My personal favorite may have been “Dreams and Dust.” I was wondering if there are any songs that stick out to you now that the album is finished?
A: “Dreams And Dust” is my Townes Van Zandt tribute. At a songwriting retreat I attended, in 2015 the singer/songwriter Tom McCrae was one of the tutors and he told me that he thought my song “Loser's Game” reminded him of Townes Van Zandt, who I had never heard of at that point. So I started listening to Townes and was blown away. Some of his songs are up there with the greats I think. One of my favorites on the album is “The Way Things Have To Be,” which is a Dylan tribute. I was pleased with the words, the melody and the guitar playing, and I love the swirly Al Kooper-style organ that Joe plays on this.
Q:What was the inspiration for the album? Are there any reoccurring themes?
A: I think there were two sources: Firstly a desire to pay tribute to the great songwriters who have given me so much pleasure and enjoyment and to my love of rock music, particularly the music of the ‘70s. Secondly, over the past seven years I had experienced some major losses: including both parents and my long term relationship. So the album is a working through of that. The best songs come out of heartbreak and loss, I think, but are a way of transcending that and not being crippled by it. 'The blues is happy music' as someone said. To make art, poetry and song out of our pain is one of the highest human possibilities. Even on my own modest level the process of doing the album was very satisfying and kind of therapeutic for those reasons.
Q: Can you talk about the songwriting and recording process?
A: Some of the songs were written over several years and others in about 20 minutes. I had over some years been recording riffs and chord sequences that occurred to me. I would write down scraps of lyrics in note books. Then from February 2015 onwards I started working in a more focused way to produce some finished songs out of this material. So for example “Pocket Universe” is a combination of a chord sequence and guitar solo that was originally recorded in 2009 or 2010 with lyrics and other instrumentation that were added around five-six years later. Similarly, the musical framework for “No Living Left To Do” was recorded around five years ago and this then got built on and worked into a finished song five or six years later. “A205” was also done in this way. But other songs got written very quickly. The melody and the words to the first couple of verses of “Back To The Flow” came to me while walking down the street. “Thread” and “Dreams And Dust” took a bit longer. There are highs and lows in a creative process I find. Times when you're on a high with what you're doing and thinking it's wonderful and then times when you completely lose belief in it. It's a bipolar process with manic upswings and depressive downswings!
Q: Do you plan on playing these songs live? What does 2017 have in store for you?
A: Yes I have started to perform some of them at open mics and with the acoustic band I mentioned earlier, which is called Samadhana. We play gigs in London and Brighton and at festivals in the UK. I have mainly been a guitarist and happy to be a sideman rather than out front singing. So being out front or solo is a challenge for me but I am working on my singing and performance skills. Open mics are a good way to do this.
Q: You mention on your Bandcamp page that you have you been in a variety of bands since your teenage years. Can you talk a little bit about that and how it led to your solo effort River and Roads?
A: I'm in my ‘50s now, but I played my first gigs in bands at age 16 - in 1977. I first played lead guitar in a punk band called Spanker. We played on the same bill as the UK Subs at the famous London punk venue The Roxy, in Neal Street, Covent Garden. Then in the late ‘70s I was in a New Wave band called Tank Commanders. We had a live interview and a showcase of songs, including one of mine, on Radio Medway. I wrote some songs for both those bands. Then there was a very long hiatus from my mid ‘20s until my early ‘30s during which time I didn't pick up the guitar as much - only to jam with friends.
I started playing in bands again, and writing songs again, in my early ‘30s. These songs were now instrumentals for the funk band I played in - this was the mid '90s. We played festivals mainly and some London gigs. Then around ten years ago I started to play with an acoustic band that did a lot of Dylan and Cohen covers and roots/folk kind of material, and I got very into songwriting as an art form: the intimacy of vocals and acoustic guitar. 'Three chords and the truth', if you like. I fell in love with songwriting as an art form - particularly the songs of Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed, Dylan and Tom Waits, and more recently Townes Van Zandt.
I had always wanted to do an album of original songs and around two years ago I started working seriously towards getting a set of original songs together to perform at open mics and so on. I had scraps of lyrics and musical ideas that I had written down and recorded over the previous five years and I started working to put these together. I would try to be receptive to any new ideas that were coming in, writing down words and recording chord sequences and riffs on a smartphone. Just so they got remembered. Then a friend told me about FAWM - February Album Writing Month. This is an internet forum for songwriters and the challenge is to write an album's worth of songs in February. I entered this in February 2015 and managed to write and record six songs. With the help of Joe Read, who produced the album and plays some keyboards and bass on it, I then polished up these recordings. At that stage the idea was just to produce some high quality demos. But I then realized I was already half-way to an album. Joe is a professional musician who has played with some well-known people including Mick Taylor of the Stones, who he played with in a band called the Textones. He's a very talented guy with a great home studio, a good ear and he's very encouraging and easy to work with. So I worked on more songs, recording at home then polishing and adding instrumentation and backing vocals at Joe's, until we had the whole album.
As well as the more recent influence of the great songwriters, the album reflects the whole history of my love of music and involvement with it. So you have Dylan and Cohen but also punk, The Who, Bowie, Ian Dury and more in there as influences. I wanted to get not just American but English and particularly London influences in there - so that's where The Who, Bowie and Ian Dury come in.
Q: Most of your music felt heavily inspired from the ’60s and ’70s . Some of your songs veer towards Dylan style folk while other have a classic rock vibe - I even heard some reggae and surf rock in there. How would you classify River and Roads?
A: I don't think it is easily classified because of the different genres in there but I think the closest would be singer/songwriter. If you think of an album like Hunky Dory there are really a lot of different styles of songs on there. From the pop of “Oh You Pretty Things” to the proto punk of “Queen Bitch” to the Dylanesque “Bewlay Brothers” and “Song For Bob Dylan” and the power ballad “Life On Mars.” I love albums like that, with a range of styles, but unified by the fact of having the same songwriter and musicians singing and playing them. Of course I'm not in any way comparing myself to Bowie in terms of standard here. But the sense of presenting a smorgasbord of styles on one album - that's an idea I like.
Q: Rivers And Roads is a lengthy album with a wide variety of songs. My personal favorite may have been “Dreams and Dust.” I was wondering if there are any songs that stick out to you now that the album is finished?
A: “Dreams And Dust” is my Townes Van Zandt tribute. At a songwriting retreat I attended, in 2015 the singer/songwriter Tom McCrae was one of the tutors and he told me that he thought my song “Loser's Game” reminded him of Townes Van Zandt, who I had never heard of at that point. So I started listening to Townes and was blown away. Some of his songs are up there with the greats I think. One of my favorites on the album is “The Way Things Have To Be,” which is a Dylan tribute. I was pleased with the words, the melody and the guitar playing, and I love the swirly Al Kooper-style organ that Joe plays on this.
Q:What was the inspiration for the album? Are there any reoccurring themes?
A: I think there were two sources: Firstly a desire to pay tribute to the great songwriters who have given me so much pleasure and enjoyment and to my love of rock music, particularly the music of the ‘70s. Secondly, over the past seven years I had experienced some major losses: including both parents and my long term relationship. So the album is a working through of that. The best songs come out of heartbreak and loss, I think, but are a way of transcending that and not being crippled by it. 'The blues is happy music' as someone said. To make art, poetry and song out of our pain is one of the highest human possibilities. Even on my own modest level the process of doing the album was very satisfying and kind of therapeutic for those reasons.
Q: Can you talk about the songwriting and recording process?
A: Some of the songs were written over several years and others in about 20 minutes. I had over some years been recording riffs and chord sequences that occurred to me. I would write down scraps of lyrics in note books. Then from February 2015 onwards I started working in a more focused way to produce some finished songs out of this material. So for example “Pocket Universe” is a combination of a chord sequence and guitar solo that was originally recorded in 2009 or 2010 with lyrics and other instrumentation that were added around five-six years later. Similarly, the musical framework for “No Living Left To Do” was recorded around five years ago and this then got built on and worked into a finished song five or six years later. “A205” was also done in this way. But other songs got written very quickly. The melody and the words to the first couple of verses of “Back To The Flow” came to me while walking down the street. “Thread” and “Dreams And Dust” took a bit longer. There are highs and lows in a creative process I find. Times when you're on a high with what you're doing and thinking it's wonderful and then times when you completely lose belief in it. It's a bipolar process with manic upswings and depressive downswings!
Q: Do you plan on playing these songs live? What does 2017 have in store for you?
A: Yes I have started to perform some of them at open mics and with the acoustic band I mentioned earlier, which is called Samadhana. We play gigs in London and Brighton and at festivals in the UK. I have mainly been a guitarist and happy to be a sideman rather than out front singing. So being out front or solo is a challenge for me but I am working on my singing and performance skills. Open mics are a good way to do this.