Steve Young is a guy who knows what he’s talking about when it comes to music. He’s toured, he’s been a session player, he’s written music, he’s taught a plethora of instruments and he’s even been recognised by BBC Radio 2’s Bob Harris as “a top talent with extraordinary guitar skills".
At Live in the Living Room Gives Back, musicians and singer songwriters from all over the UK gathered at The Bedford pub in Balham, London, to raise money for Dementia UK. Steve Young chatted to Tea with G about his new single, why he got back into writing music and how he’s juggling his immunotherapy around everything else.
Young chats to me on Zoom from his home. He’s sat in his music room, and I can see quite a bit of kit behind him – as most musicians do. “A lot of these are left over from my when I used to tour,” he says about the array of guitars, “this is my Gibson Hummingbird that I got in 2007…this one I bought when I first moved to London in 1996 – that’s a Gibson Les Paul…this is just a regular Stratocaster.” The list was endless, with each guitar having its own particular use – and another wall of instruments out of shot including a mandolin. And no, he doesn’t name them…although he did when he was a teenager. “They serve a purpose, you know, Stratocaster I use for the Nashville Nights band. The Les Paul I use when I'm doing my own original stuff, the rock and blues stuff. Yeah, the Gibson Hummingbird I use for posh gigs.”
Nashville Nights is a band that Young heads up, commissioned by London based agency, Talent Bank. Set in the crypt of St Martin-in-the-Fields, at the edge of Trafalgar Square, the band comes together to put on a west-end style country show. With American bandmates Savannah Gardner and Sean Duggan, the group brings a bit of the honky-tonk fun to the UK. “It's quite an eclectic mix of songs as well because we do all the traditional Johnny and Dolly and John Denver but there's some cool stuff in there. We've got brothers Osbourne in there, we've got Chris Stapleton, we've got Shania Twain. It's a real mix of stuff.”
Young is a musician that has spent a lot of time on the road. He has toured with Lionel Richie, Peter Andre, and Darren Hayes, soaking up the atmosphere at venues all over the world. “The more famous they are, the more humble they are,” he says about what he’s learnt over the years, “Lionel Richie was one of the nicest most humble people I've ever worked with.” Young first worked with Richie back in 2002 doing a TV tour for shows like Graham Norton and Parkinson. “He was just so nice. Just such a humble person,” he says about Richie, “and I think it's just the professionalism. It's just people don't really understand what goes on behind a large tour.” Young tells me about the logistical jigsaw involved with putting a tour together, “you’ve got seven people in the band, but there’s actually 37 people in the band, really.” He smiles as he reminisces over the late-night bus parties after gigs and the nocturnal sleep patterns you inevitably fall into, “we would get in our bunks, and we would stay in bed and we'd get up for the soundcheck…and then the crew would go to bed. Right? They would get up at the end of the show…Everyone's on a strange sleep pattern”.
As he shares the tales of life on the road, we get to talking about the different venues he’s played in – his favourite being right here on his home turf, The Royal Albert Hall.
“That was the one that I just dreamed about playing my whole life,” he says about The RAH, “it was just like, oh, this can't be, it can't be happening in life. You know, and obviously, I knew about the gig like a year in advance. So, I had like a whole year to get excited about this gig at the Albert Hall”. Young turned down a chauffeur for that night, opting for a cinematic walk across Hyde Park with his guitar to fully embrace what was about to happen. “I didn't want to just get dropped off outside the stage door in a taxi, you know, [I wanted to] have this feeling of walking across the park… taking it in as it sort of came towards me.” Young knew that as soon as the show started, he would just be at work – completely focussed on what he was doing. “Sometimes I wish I could step out of myself and watch like from a third person to really appreciate what what's going on.” His soundtrack as he walked across Hyde Park would have been Running on Faith by Eric Clapton or something by Glen Campbell or Johnny Cash – we’ve all imagined that soundtrack moment, right?!
Another stand out venue for Young is The Roxy Theatre on Sunset Boulevard, California. “Going up into the dressing room and seeing like Guns and Roses graffiti from sort of late 80s and 90s - that's so cool,” he says about playing the iconic venue, “just standing on that stage and just thinking oh my god, The Doors were here. Hendrix was on this stage. Guns and Roses when they were like unknown. Genesis, you know, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, I mean, when you think of the people that have stood on that stage…it's not just about the big venues, it's about the historic ones as well. Yeah, that was a real buzz playing The Roxy”.
After 20 years of constant playing, Young was suffering from persistent shoulder pain so when the dreaded L word came around – that’s right, lockdown – Young was pretty grateful for the rest. Like all of us, he thought it would only last a month, so he started doing a live lunchtime stream where he played a song every day, “eventually I had people all around the world listening…people were getting up early in America and staying up in Australia”. By day 75, Young knew it was unsustainable, so began his new, ‘Steve’s Sunday Service’, where he put on a two hour show every Sunday. “It kind of reignited my sort of love of just performing music,” he says about his live streams, “because as nice as it is to write songs, it’s also just as nice to play someone else’s song – if you do it in a way that makes you feel nice.” Young talks about the learning curve involved with something like live stream performances. With no rowdy crowd to hide behind, Young quickly realised how technically precise he needed to be, “you hear every bum note, you know, you hear every false note in your voice or every missed note and the first couple of weeks…I was awful – sounded terrible”. Young learned to play in a way that was suitable for what he was doing, “I did it in a way that made me feel more comfortable, and that was in a more sort of bluesy country way…and that kind of reinstated my love of performing”.
There was no plan to write or release music before lockdown, but when Young came out the other side, he was ‘itching’ to get back to it. He’d spent those months playing because he enjoyed it, making the songs his own and being comfortable with that. “I was writing them without an agenda,” he says about his creative flow, “I wasn’t writing because I wanted to get Maverick magazine to review or because I wanted to go and do Country 2 Country again…I just wrote.” He calls the songs, ‘cheeky, bluesy, swampy’ and started to play them on his Les Paul – which hadn’t been out of its case for ten years. “I just went down the studio and put it through two massive amps and I was like, ‘oh, I like this sound’, this sounds good. The casting was like shaking off the walls and the ceiling was crumbling but I sort of looked over at the guy that owns the studio, and I was like, ‘I really like this sound’.” The sound of the song now drives what Young puts together, with a lot of summer festivals drawing crowds of thousands, Young wants to know what will sound great on his Les Paul through a massive amp on a festival stage, whereas before, he was focussing on the more intimate sounds for smaller gigs like open mics.
“And now I’ve got an album’s worth,” he says about his new music, “the first one was ‘Looks Like You’ with this style, and then ‘Feelin’ Fine’ was the second one. And I've got a bunch more that I'm going to play at the festivals over the summer, and then go in and record them after the summer once I know how they need to be”. Young has just released his single, ‘Feelin’ Fine’, with the music video already being streamed over 20000 times. “I filmed it at my local pub here,” he says about the video, “pretty much everybody in the video is a friend or a local…it was really good fun.” Fellow bandmate from his Nashville Nights show, Savannah Gardner, features as the main role and her love interest is Kristian Lawrence where the track was recorded, mixed and mastered. “It’s fairly tongue in cheek,” Young says about the story behind the lyrics, “it’s about how relationships I’ve had in the past where somebody kind of falls in love with you, because they love the kind of the music side of it…until about a year later when they realise that actually it’s just really, really hard work.” He laughs as he tells me that this is his first evening since the middle of March where he has no plans, and he doesn’t know what to do with himself. Young plays around 200 gigs a year and teaches music four days a week in schools – it’s not all glam being a musician!
At the end of last year, Young was diagnosed with skin cancer, having a melanoma removed. “It’s all good news, by the way, I’m OK. I’m not going anywhere,” he says as he tells me about the impact that this has on his music, “but I’m having treatment for it for the whole year.” Young is undergoing preventative immunotherapy throughout this year which means that he’ll need to take it easy on the performing. Or at least, he should. His second dose coincided with a very busy weekend, “I had the treatment on the Thursday, I had a school concert on the Thursday night, teaching during the day Friday, I had a late night gig on the Friday night, Nashville nights at The Crypt on the Saturday night then I had two gigs back to back on the Sunday and then I had a gig on the Monday afternoon because it was a bank holiday.” A jam-packed weekend for anyone, never mind someone who is receiving immunotherapy. “I really struggled,” he says as he recounts the weekend, “immunotherapy boosts your immune system, so it acts as an inflammatory, so I think my lungs were a bit sore – it was just really painful breathing…I felt really foggy in my brain as well.” However, by Sunday, Young was back to his normal self, “I woke up on the Sunday morning absolutely fine, did the two gigs Monday…it was just that 48 hours”. Young says that he’s trying to stay close to home this year and be healthier – eat better, exercise more, drink less – and then next year he’ll go crazy…
Young’s parting message is one that is shared by musicians all over, “I wish people appreciated music more.” Young wishes people were less hung up on the Nashville accolade, “just sing the song and if you don’t feel like singing your own song then sing a song you love because it’s all the same”. He wants more people to understand that music isn’t all about sob stories, but also about “making people feel good and celebrating a talent”.
You can follow Steve Young on his social media and website through his LinkTree here.
This interview was conducted in collaboration with Live in the Living Room.
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