Interview: Steve Postell-Singer, Songwriter, Guitarist, Producer

Interview: Steve Postell-Singer, Songwriter, Guitarist, Producer

By Martine Ehrenclou

Singer, songwriter, guitarist, composer and producer, Steve Postell, is best known for his work with The Immediate Family, David Crosby Band, and Our House. He began playing with Pure Prairie League years ago, and now composes and performs for Broadway shows, TV, and films and produces. Steve was the composer for the documentary ‘Dying To Know’ narrated by Robert Redford. He also contributed guitar to David Crosby’s ‘Sky Trails’ and co-write a song for his last record ‘For Free.’ In addition to Crosby, Postell has worked with John Oates, Jennifer Warnes, Kenny Loggins, Eric Andersen, Ian Matthews, Robben Ford, Warren Haynes, Eric Johnson and many others.

The Immediate Family includes Steve and other legendary session musicians such as Leland Sklar, Waddy Wachtel, Danny Kortchmar, and Russ Kunkel. He’s surrounded by some of the best musicians, and plays, performs and produces with several of them.

Postell is set to release his new solo album ‘Walking Through These Blues,” on Friday March 14^th via Quarto Valley Records. The release features 12 tracks of inspired Americana rock n’ roll, which sees Postell joined by a cast of extremely talented musicians who happen to also be friends: Glen Phillips, Leland Sklar, Danny Kortchmar, Steve Ferrone, Bekka Bramlett, Russ Kunkel, and the late David Crosby, among many others.

To celebrate his new release, Postell and his all-star band with special guests will perform at a record release party held at McCabe’s in Santa Monica, CA on April 15^th. See here. 

Steve and I connected by phone from his home in Southern CA.

After congratulating Steve on his new album and expressing enthusiasm for his songs, I asked him if he wrote the songs for the album with guest artists in mind.

Steve shared, “Most of the time, I would hear them playing on it or singing. When I wrote ‘Buried Stone’, I heard a woman’s voice. Bekka Bramlett was that voice. Luckily, she said yes.”

Curious about his beautiful, atmospheric song ‘When The Lights Go Out’ featuring David Crosby, I asked him to elaborate on his story about writing music when the power went out and he was engulfed in darkness.

“I was sitting, as many of us do, surrounded by electronics and media. Literally, I had a guitar in my hands. I had the computer in front of me, I had my iPad, the TV was on. I was charging my phone, and all of a sudden, there was a blackout. It was silent. No lights. It’s a great metaphor. When I teach songwriting workshops, I say there’s about five or six ways you can start a song, and one of them is, you could have a melody, you could have a groove, you could have the title, you could have the idea. So, I had the title right away like, “When The Lights Go Out.” There’s a song to write.”

Wondering how Steve was able to write and play guitar in the dark with little charge left on his mobile phone, I asked “But you were doing it in the dark?”

“Yeah, it’s true. But I still had enough juice on my phone to record my ideas.”

I asked him to tell me about the process.

Steve explained. “I had a feeling about the song, and that feeling got me to tune the guitar into an open tuning. It just felt a certain way. And to accomplish that, I wanted to have a very modal, open tuning. It’s a very mysterious process. Some people would say it’s magical. You know how a sculptor would say, or it’s a common concept that the sculpture is inside the block of wood, they just have to carve out the stuff around it.

I feel like the song is there, it exists in some alternate plane, and my job is to find it. It’s kind of a channeling feeling of ‘what is this song?’ Where am going to find it? And I don’t know how that works, but on a good day it works.” He laughs and continues. “As I tuned it into the open tuning, I kind of felt this feeling in a three- or six-time signature as opposed to four. And it just started to flow.”

I thought about how songwriting is a curious craft. There seems to be a magical component to it, something unharnessed, that simply comes. I asked him to elaborate on that. “Do the words or lyrics come first or do you start with a guitar part?”

After a pause, he said, “Joni Mitchell is famous for this saying that she always writes the words first. There are some writers who always write the melody first and add the words later. I’ve always found it interesting to shake it up and try to write songs from many different vantage points. For one thing, if I get stuck in one, I can go to the other. Sometimes I’ll write it from a guitar. Sometimes I’ll write it from a hook line. Sometimes I’ll write it from just an idea. There’s all these different inspirations that you can take from the different modalities of how you build a song. And I’m not wed to any one way. It’s always different.”

I asked, “Since you produce and arrange for TV, movies, Broadway shows and you arrange your own music, do you hear all the parts?”

Steve said, “I can hear all the parts. That’s something I’ve trained myself to do. When I was at the Music Conservatory, I was always blown away by the orchestrators and the conductor students who could hear 20 parts at once. But I understand a lot more now because I can hear in the context of the kind of music I make, I can hear all of it at once. You asked me about having all these guest artists on the record– I would prefer to let some brilliant friend of mine come up with something that I wouldn’t have heard.

As a producer, I really believe that one of the gifts is to bring in the right musicians and let them add to it, let their expression take hold. And if it’s not right, you can always change it.

I’m very fortunate in my work as a producer and studio musician and touring musician. I know a lot of great people. And this record, since I have my own studio, I could really take my time. I write a song, and then think about who would sound really great on this?

On the first song ‘Bad Weather’, it’s a very bluesy song. I have a friend named Tony Furtado who I think is one of the best bottleneck dobro and banjo players in the country. He’s phenomenal. He was my first choice for that. I heard differently for the song that David Crosby sings on. I was like, “Boy, I would love to hear his voice on this song.”

At the risk of gushing, I said, “That song is beautiful, those harmonies on that song are stunning. And of course, it makes it easy because you were in Crosby’s band. So, he said yes.”

Chuckling a bit, Steve said, “He didn’t always say yes to things, but he did say yes to this. And also I played on his record, so he owed me one.”

I gushed some more. But I was honest because Steve’s songs on the album are truly beautiful, thoughtful and so well arranged, the melodies and music compelling. His voice, not unlike Jackson Browne’s, allows you to hear the song instead of being overpowered by the vocal or a roaring guitar solo. “Tell me about that song, ‘Bad Weather.’ You completely revised the song from an early version. Everything about it was just– I loved it, honestly.”

Steve explained. “Thank you so much. I wrote that a long time ago. It was on my very first record that I made in 1990 or 1991. It was really different; it was much more up tempo. Often, I’ll remember, ‘Hey, there was some good ideas in the song I wrote a long time ago.’ Sometimes I’ll grab part of it and re-envision the song. And that’s what happened with ‘Bad Weather.’ I actually started playing it out, before I recorded it again. I started playing it in a new way that was more appropriate to where I’m at now in my life and as a musician. I want to record this again, but record how I would do it now. I did that with a couple songs, actually.”

“On this record?”

“Yeah, ‘Wait Until You Get Here,’ is a song that I recorded.

I jumped in. “Oh, another beautiful one.”

Steve continued. “Thank you. I recorded that with my band, Little Blue in 1996. It’s a great recording, I love it. Eric Johnson plays a beautiful guitar part. That was a terrific band we had.”

I urged him to talk about his song, “Walking Through The Blues.”

There was excitement in is voice. “I was teaching a guitar lesson. And the student wanted to learn a song by John Mayer that had a very particular guitar pattern. He’s a fabulous guitar player. It took me a second to figure out exactly what he was doing, and I taught this song to my student. And then I was like, that’s such a cool right-hand guitar pattern. I just started playing.’.

I mentioned that “Walking Through The Blues” has such a soulful, peaceful vibe, similar in some ways to Keb’ Mo’s music, even though a different genre.

He said, “I had Keb’ Mo’ in the studio once and watched him work, and he’s just one of my favorites. He’s a master.”

Continuing, Steve said, “It’s a concept I think about, probably write about a little too much, because a lot of my songs, if you dissect them, are about the concept that there are going to be hardships. No matter what. And how you approach them, how you face them is going to determine the quality of your life. That’s what “Walking Through These Blues,” is– the blues are there. A Buddhist concept that you don’t get happy by pretending that there aren’t things that are difficult or sad, you meet them head on and have an acceptance to them. And that’s what makes it tolerable.”

I asked, “Is it also about approaching those challenges with a feeling of gratitude? More focus on the light in our world?”

He said, “Oh, for sure. And that’s why it’s walking through, we’re not just standing there in this dark place, we’re walking through it. We’re still moving forward. And of course, another Buddhist phrase is, “You can’t have a clean shirt without dirty water.” Without the things that maybe make us sad, blue or are challenging, we wouldn’t have the other side of things.”

Having watched a YouTube video about Steve and his guitars, I asked him about them, in particular his vintage 1957 Gibson J-45. “Is that your guitar of choice?”

Steve said, “That is definitely, and I am a glutton for instruments. I have a lot of instruments. I’m not sure I’m supposed to say it, but I have 86 guitars.”

“Where do you put all the cases?”

Steve laughed. “I have these racks that I built. But it’s one of the things that I think about, especially when the fires happened. I was in New York playing. What guitars would I grab if I could only take one. That would be the acoustic guitar, even though I have a beautiful Herringbone D-28.

The ‘57 J-45 is not really replaceable. Even if I found another ‘57 J-45, it wouldn’t necessarily sound as good as this one. There’s about five guitars that would be hard to replace. And there’s an old Gibson 335 that I have, and those guitars never leave the house and the studio. They don’t travel; they live here. And I record that J-45 a lot. That’s one of my main acoustic guitars. But I also have the Martin, which has a slightly different, very beautiful sound. Whatever I’m recording will tell me what guitar to play off of.”

“You just know when you get into the song, which guitar is a good match?”

“Sometimes … Yes, usually. Particularly when I’m playing a guitar solo and the guitar is just not speaking the way I want it to,” he said. “And I’ll realize I need to switch guitars. Sometimes the guitar is spurring me on, and sometimes in some ways, holding me back.”

We discussed some of the guitar riffs and solos on his album, and Steve revealed that on his previous albums he had a number of celebrated guitar players. “On my other records, I’ve had a lot of guest guitar players like Robben Ford and Warren Haynes, and Eric Johnson. But on this one, I just wanted to play most of the solos myself.” He added, “Robben’s played on a number of my albums, and Warren Haynes, and David Grissom.”

I wondered how he got involved in The Immediate Family.

Steve shared, “The Immediate Family, which if anyone doesn’t know, is myself, Waddy Wachtel, Danny Kortchmar, Leland Sklar and Russ Kunkel. Not only four of the greatest touring and session players who’ve ever lived, but four of my musical idols. It started with a relationship I had with Danny. I got to know Danny through two mutual friends.

“Is there a new record that you’re working on with The Immediate Family?” I asked.

“Yeah. We just finished recording. It’s a record of all the hits that these guys did. This record is “Dirty Laundry,” “Somebody’s Baby,” “Werewolves of London,” “Lawyers, Guns and Money.” It’s all these very prominent, wonderful songs that the guys are involved with– James Taylor and Jackson Browne and Warren Zevon and so forth. I’m actually in the process of preparing it for the mix. I’m excited about that one.

“Since you do the mix and arrange and do everything yourself and you have your own studio, when do you know that a song is done?” I asked.

Steve laughed. “Here’s the rule, it’s never done. You just finish it. It’s never done. I have a recording studio. I have unlimited time and tracks, so it gets a little crazy. I mean, I’ll mix a song nine times, 10 times, 11 times, because I can go back in. What I do, which is the same thing we’ve done for 50 years, is do a mix, listen in the car, listen to my headphones, listen to my speakers, listen on the TV, and then go, okay, this needs that. It’s not enough of this; it’s not enough of that.”

I said, “I was just wondering since you have the freedom to revise all the time, if you’re a perfectionist.”

Steve laughed again. “I’m totally a perfectionist.”

“When The Lights Go Out (Feat. David Crosby)”

 

For more information about Steve Postell’s record release party and concerts on May 15^th at McCabe’s in Santa Monica, CA see HERE. 

Steve Postell website

Stream the album here