Easy Steev

EASY STEEV STYLE Easy Steev has played at several open mics and played an acclaimed acoustic set as the featured act at Lincoln’s famous Zoo Bar. Natural interest in all styles of music led to a blues and folk-influenced style of acoustic rock songwriting and playing evident on his 2002 CD “Uncle Beaker’s Trailer” and on over 40 of his original songs.EASY’S STORY and SONGS Born into a musical family, Steev’s natural musical interest was first memorably portrayed in a photograph of Steev and his brother Paul jamming on plastic recorders dressed as two of Disney’s notorious Seven Dwarves. Piano and trumpet lessons followed.Steev altered the course of his traditional classical musical training by picking up his mother’s classical guitar at the age of 15. By 17 he had penned the first of many original songs- “Teddy Bears are From Hell.” This heavy metal anthem reflects Steev’s humorous, against the grain urge to rock.Later, Steev came up with “Pint-sized Savior,” a bluesy tribute to the restorative powers of binge-drinking. This song is a darkly comic take on a 12-bar blues rocker. Struggle, as in “Teddy Bears,” is followed by dubious resolution:"When I woke up I realized I’d been arrested/ My pain was gone and my vision had been corrected/ I felt okay, so I said “Praise the Lord!”/ It’s the happiest story that’s ever been/ The good Lord healed my poor soul with beer"These early endeavors were followed by noticeably more creative and complex tunes such as “200-pound Pig,” "Pigs‘ll eat a man, if he‘s just lyin‘ around/ You might lose someone to a pig, but they won’t be found" and “Unwiley Coyote” - a tragic song about the hard-luck life of a coyote inspired by a fossil of an ice-age coyote found underneath the skeletons of two mammoths with interlocked tusks.Real life events and observations are at the heart of Steev’s best work. On Halloween night, 1997, Steev, dressed as Marlon Brando’s character Johnny from The Wild One, had one too many and crashed his motorcycle on a treacherous curve on a Santa Fe road known as “Nun’s Curve.” Two families generously offered assistance to Steev during these times- one is the subject of “A Christmas Song.”"Three kids, two dogs and a casserole welcomed me into their home/ They said “Make yourself comfortable,” so I sat and warmed my bones"In 1999 Steev moved to New Hampshire and became a kind of “camp counselor” at an outdoor education camp. He resided in Cabin 8 and become good friends with two fellow rockers- Brother Brian Tighe (BT) and Crazy Brother Larry (BL). Together, he and BT formed the seminal Camp Cody band Four-foot Mammoth (4FM). Guitar, horn, and herb-powered party rock were hallmarks of 4FM. Jams took place nightly at an acoustic microphone and were ornamented by BL’s Chris Kuroda-influenced, pyrotechnically brilliant stage lights. In addition to mad partying, Steev also led campers through various camp-friendly songs during the nightly camp sing-a-longs.In 2000, Steev traveled to Nepal and served as a science teacher for 6th and 7th graders. Inspired by the unique beauty of his new surroundings, yet isolated from other Westerners in a small hill-town (a 6-hour hike from the nearest “auto road“), Steve penned the melancholy “Third-world Busses” and “This Wind.”"I ride on third-world busses, puke my guts out on the road/ So come and have a toast to life in the hills here with me, so I don’t have to drink alone"Upon returning to the United States in 2002, Steev recorded his 12-song CD “Uncle Beaker’s Trailer.” Included in this recording is “Sentimental Reunion,” a song about the hapiness and sense of belonging upon returning to friends and family after a long separation.More recent songs include "The Blatt" and “Shanghai Rooster,” a bluesy rocker about a stud rooster."If your love life’s dull and dreary, let me shine some light right through your clouds/ You might be my kind of woman, if you’re short, tall, soft, or loud/ I think you’re gonna like me, I stand up straight and I strut real proud"